KGW’s Straight Talk

Oregon is facing a drastic shortage of mental health care workers--the state needs as many as 35,000 new workers by some estimates to fill the mental health care needs in the state. But people interested and willing to go into the field are facing high barriers to doing the work. What can be done to change the system, and open up the pipeline of behavioral health care workers?

Dan Rayfield answers more questions about his plans for lawmakers ahead of the 2023 Oregon legislative session

Laural Porter sat down for a one-on-one interview with Oregon house speaker Rep. Dan Rayfield, to talk about his plans for the 2023 session. He says he hopes to foster a culture of respect at the Capitol, where Republicans and Democrats can work together toward affordable housing, health care, and taking care of the state's economy.

Nurses say Oregon's health care system is broken, and too many skilled nurses are leaving health care because they are stretched too thin to be able to provide quality care to patients. Oregon House Bill 2697 would mandate minimum staffing requirements for hospital nurses, and close loopholes around meal and break times.

Extra conversation from our regular Straight Talk episode. The majority of Representatives from both Oregon and Washington in the 118th Congress will be women. The northwest's newest elected leaders say they're well-prepared and ready to serve their diverse districts.

The majority of Representatives from both Oregon and Washington in the 118th Congress will be women. The northwest's newest elected leaders say they're well-prepared and ready to serve their diverse districts.

News editors from The Oregonian, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Willamette Week, and The Columbian joined KGW to discuss the biggest news from 2022, including the race for Oregon governor, the upsets in Congressional races, and Portland's new homeless plan.

Portland business leaders said there are positive trends in downtown Portland's economic recovery but acknowledge it's a "work in progress" and won't happen overnight. In this episode of Straight Talk, representatives from the Portland Business Alliance, Prosper Portland and Travel Portland join Laural Porter to discuss the state of the city's downtown.

During the early days of the pandemic, reliable and fast internet connectivity became a lifeline for nearly everyone in some fashion, whether it was online school, working from home, ordering groceries, or telehealth doctors appointments. It meant that people who don't have that connection for one reason or another had an extra burden during an already difficult time. The City of Portland is worki...

It was a historic election night in Oregon on Tuesday, with three women running for governor and more women candidates running for office up and down the ballot than ever before.  KGW's election night analysts, Democrat Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal and Republican strategist Rebecca Tweed, reflected on the midterm election in Oregon during this week's episode of "Straight Talk." J...

With just days before Election Day, Rene Gonzalez and Jo Ann Hardesty joined Straight Talk this week to talk about their vision for the city if they're elected to Portland City Council. Both were the top two finishers in the May primary election, setting up a November runoff after incumbent Hardesty fell short of the 50% threshold to win outright. The winner of the runoff will serve a four-year te...

With ballots mailed out and just over a week to go before Election Day on Tuesday, November 8th, voters in Washington's 3rd Congressional District are choosing a new face to represent them in Washington, D.C.  Six-term incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler lost in the top-two primary in August. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the only Democrat on a crowded ballot, was the top vote-getter while Republican Joe K...

Wednesday night on KGW, the three candidates for Oregon governor met for their  fourth and final debate before Election Day . Republican Christine Drazan, Democrat Tina Kotek and unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson got one last chance to make their case to Oregon voters. The candidates had an hour to tackle some of the biggest issues facing Oregonians: homelessness, mental health, addiction servi...

Oregon's congressional races are unusually tight in a typically blue state, and are drawing a lot of interest and money from both Republican and Democratic national party committees. One of the most competitive races is in Oregon's newly created sixth congressional district between Democrat Andrea Salinas and Republican Mike Erickson. The new district was created following the 2020 census and incl...

With the balance of power on the line in Congress, Oregon's hotly contested fifth Congressional district race is in the national spotlight. Neutral polls show it's a contest that is too close to call. Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who defeated incumbent Kurt Schrader in the primary, is going head to head with Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer. One certainty in the race is that Oregon will add anothe...

Portlanders are less than two months away from voting on Measure 26-228, a proposal to radically reshape the city's form of government, and supporters and opponents of the charter reform package are both pressing their cases. Melanie Billings-Yun, who co-chaired the Charter Commission that developed the proposal, and Sol Mora, campaign manager for the reform proposal advocacy group Portland United...

As CEO of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Care Systems, Becky Hultberg has a close-up view of the crisis gripping the state's health care sector — and she spends sleepless nights thinking about what the future holds. More than two and a half years since the start of the pandemic, hospitals and skilled nursing homes continue to face historic staffing shortages, and it's left Oregon's...

Portland City Commissioner Dan Ryan had hoped to have six Safe Rest Villages, planned tiny home communities for residents without homes, open across the city by the end of 2021. That didn't happen. The process has been slower and harder than anticipated, but in this week's episode of Straight Talk, Ryan said the work has taken on new momentum and he hopes to have all the sites open by the end of t...

Oregon's senior Senator Ron Wyden was at a pharmacy on West Main Street in Medford when President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law this week. "I was telling the seniors (at the Medford pharmacy) that there was a dose of good news," he said. "A big dose of good news for thousands of senior citizens in Oregon and hundreds of thousands across the state, because they were going to get...

Congress passed a sweeping, $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act this week, but the Senate vote on Sunday came only after an exhausting 16-hour marathon session. Senate Democrats stayed unified through the process, with all 50 members of their caucus voting in lockstep and Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaker vote in the evenly divided...

The race for county elections clerk doesn't often get the attention it deserves. Voters frequently skip over the non-partisan race when marking their ballots. Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall has served as County Clerk for 20 years and is running for her sixth term in the November election on November 8th. Hall has an opponent in the November election who is making her first run for public offic...

Southwest Washington voters will decide this year whether to reelect Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler to represent the state's 3rd Congressional District or to send one of her eight challengers to Washington D.C. instead, and they'll get their first chance to weight in on Tuesday. Her three leading opponents are Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republicans Joe Kent and Heidi St. John, both of...

More than 3,000 people in the Pacific Northwest are waiting for lifesaving organ transplants. The nonprofit  Donate Life Northwest  has registered nearly three million Oregonians to be  organ, eye and tissue donors , but a lot of people still haven't had the conversation about being a donor. A powerful new documentary called "A Donation Conversation" aims to reach a wider audience and spur more pe...

Grayson Dempsey with Lilith Clinic, Oregon's only independent abortion clinic, joined University of Oregon Assistant Professor Alison Gash, a specialist in constitutional rights, and OHSU's Dr. Paula Amato on this week's episode of  Straight Talk  to discuss what happens next following the Supreme Court's abortion decision.

Oregon is just one week away from hosting the World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, marking the first time the event has been held in a U.S. city.