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Oregon News
POLITICS
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek says she’s made progress on major issues. Even some fans are skeptical
OPB | By Dirk VanderHart, Lauren Dake
When an announcement does come, the governor’s team will be ready for criticisms that are sure to follow.
Since taking office in January 2023, Kotek has battled a housing shortage in the state. But Oregon is building fewer new units than it was when she was sworn in, and less than half of the ambitious goal of 36,000 units a year she set in her first week on the job.
Kotek has made improved outcomes for K-12 students another signature issue. The state’s standardized test scores and chronic absenteeism rates remain among the worst in the nation.
The governor’s other major focus, the state’s inability to address the sheer volume of people with mental health or addiction issues, shows a little more progress. The state has added treatment beds in recent years, and hundreds more are expected to open by the end of 2026. But many Oregonians who’ve grown tired of seeing people in crisis on the street corner aren’t feeling the change.
This lack of tangible results has left many underwhelmed.
“We’ve got potential, we just need leadership and people to say, ‘Hold onto my cape,’” said Greg Goodman, co-president of Downtown Development Group, a major property owner in downtown Portland. “I don’t see that in her right now.”
Goodman is a rarity: a person other than a Republican politician or political consultant willing to speak on the record with criticisms of a Democratic governor known for political retribution. Most people contacted for this story would only offer their reflections on background.
Among the more than 40 people OPB spoke with — Republicans and Democrats alike — there was a consensus that the governor is smart, hard-working and driven to take on intractable issues. There’s also a sense among some that she has underperformed.
“It’s hard to point at any statistic across the board where we’re doing better today when we were when the governor was elected,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Starr, R-Dundee.
Asked recently about this sentiment – and the lack of splashy political wins – Kotek seemed mystified.
“What does splashy look like?” she said. “I feel like we’re pretty splashy.”
The promise of her governorship, Kotek argues, was never instant gratification.
“When I ran for this office…it was about staying focused on the top priorities for the state and making progress also with the understanding that these aren’t things you solve overnight,” she said. “We have to put things in place that will get us where we want to go over the long term.”
No issue has motivated Kotek like housing. During her 2022 gubernatorial campaign, Kotek’s work on a bill that made it more difficult to sweep homeless encampments earned her a cutting nickname from one rival: Tent City Tina.
Yet both housing development and homelessness are headed in the wrong direction. Last year, Oregon added 14,621 new housing units, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, down from 20,321 the year before Kotek took office.
Critics say Kotek is reaping what she sowed as speaker, when she helped pass laws enacting rent control and allowing cities to mandate affordable housing in some new projects. They have called on Kotek to eliminate regulations they say have choked off housing projects.
“My disappointment with her is that she calls it a crisis, but we’ve never treated it as a crisis,” said state Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, his party’s chief expert on housing in the Senate.
State Officials Continue to Make Subsidized Housing More Expensive
Willamette Week | By Nigel Jaquiss
As the rainy season begins, two statewide elected officials made conflicting statements last week about the shortage of roofs over Oregonians’ heads.
On Oct. 14, Gov. Tina Kotek issued a statement listing the number of shelter beds her administration has created in response to what the governor called a “humanitarian crisis.”
“There’s more work to do, and we can’t let up until everyone in Oregon has a safe place to sleep at night,” Kotek said.
That same day, Oregon’s labor commissioner sent a signal to the people sleeping outside in a county with one of the state’s highest levels of unsheltered homelessness: Housing them doesn’t matter.
At least, it doesn’t matter as much as pleasing the trade unions that contributed heavily to Labor Commissioner Christina Stephenson’s election in 2022.
One of Stephenson’s jobs as commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries is to determine whether state-subsidized housing developments must pay prevailing wages to the construction workers who build the projects.
Paying workers higher wages is desirable, and trade union representatives make a compelling case for it, but paying union wages is also more expensive—10% to 20%, studies show. That means less housing gets built and the humanitarian crisis continues.
Last week, Stephenson’s agency rejected an appeal for reconsideration from developers of the proposed Copeland Commons project in Astoria.In a nine-page letter seeking reconsideration of BOLI’s initial Jan. 13 decision that the Astoria project must pay prevailing wages, the developers explained why their project met state requirements for exemptions from prevailing wage laws.
“The proposed Copeland Project is an apartment building of four stories, with no commercial space, that will be privately owned and predominantly serves occupants whose incomes are no more than 60% of area median income,” Innovative Housing Inc. wrote to BOLI on May 21. The developer explained that the bureau’s earlier determination that the building was five stories tall was incorrect, as was the agency’s determination that the conversion of a vacant property originally built as a hotel didn’t qualify as “residential construction.”
Innovative Housing noted it had done six similar conversions of historic buildings in Oregon—and BOLI had exempted each of those projects from prevailing wages.
But on Oct. 14, the bureau rejected the request for reconsideration and ordered that the project pay prevailing wage—which Innovative Housing says will add at least $2 million to the cost of the $20 million project.
Bill Van Nostran, a retired pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Astoria who first conceived of converting the empty building into housing, reacted with a mixture of sadness and frustration.
“I’m heartbroken that BOLI is taking such a hard line,” Van Nostran says. “I still believe that our project qualifies for an affordable housing exemption from prevailing wages under the law.”
Starting in 2018, a group of volunteers led by Van Nostran has tried to help alleviate the housing shortage in Clatsop County, which, according to Portland State University research, has a rate of unsheltered homelessness five times that of Multnomah County.
Data shows the reason Oregon has one of the nation’s highest rates of homelessness. Put simply, Oregon’s population has grown faster than its housing supply for two decades.
Some officials believe maximizing the creation of new housing should take precedence over union wages. State Sen. Dick Anderson (R-Lincoln City), vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development, is one of them. Anderson has pushed his colleagues—without success so far—to use the discretion he says the law allows to exempt more affordable housing projects from prevailing wages.
“Affordable housing is the No. 1 concern for Oregonians and a true crisis for many people,” Anderson tells OJP. “It is really sad our own government agencies are one of the biggest road blocks to solving it. BOLI has time and time again proven they care more about appeasing labor unions than making good decisions.”
Bureau spokeswoman Rachel Mann pushed back on that criticism.
“We don’t believe that paying North Coast families a community standard wage and requiring that we have apprentices on the publicly funded job sites to get the training they need to better themselves and their families is a bad thing,” Mann says. “If lawmakers disagree, they have the power to change the law. BOLI does not.”
One third of Oregonians can’t afford a $400 emergency
KPTV
As housing and utility costs continue to climb, one third of Oregonians couldn’t afford a $400 emergency expense without borrowing money or going into debt, according to a survey by Oregon Consumer Justice.
This goes for people living in both rural and urban areas of Oregon, according to the statewide survey.
One young woman from Jackson County described her situation bluntly:
“I don’t think many people even have savings right now let alone an emergency fund. I know my family would be completely at a loss if we had an emergency expense come up. We can[‘t] get any loans because of bad credit and we can[‘t] afford to pull any more credit cards. I think more than not people are in the same boat as us.”
Woman, age 18-29, Jackson County, White
Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Later, Oregonians Disproportionately Suffer from Mental Illness
Willamette Week | By Kushboo Rathore
No other state in the country has a higher prevalence of mental illness. At the same time, access to care in Oregon is improving.
Oregon AG asks for dismissal of Marion County lawsuit on sanctuary, public records laws
Statesman Journal | By Isabel Funk
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Marion County seeking clarity on what it said were contradictions between state sanctuary laws, state public records laws and federal law.
Officials at the heart of Oregon’s data center scandal had a tangle of conflicting roles
The Oregonian | By Mike Rogoway
The directors of a tiny Northeast Oregon nonprofit called Inland Development Corp. voted in 2017 to cut a $145,000 check to another nonprofit, Morrow Development Corp., where state Rep. Greg Smith moonlighted as a contract employee.
Immediately afterward, Inland named Smith and two others to its board of directors. They replaced three board members who resigned at that meeting.
Then, later that month, Smith and the rest of Inland’s board met again to entertain an offer to buy the nonprofit’s most valuable asset, a fiber-optic provider called Windwave Communications. It was enjoying a booming business serving Amazon data centers near the small city of Boardman.
The directors of a tiny Northeast Oregon nonprofit called Inland Development Corp. voted in 2017 to cut a $145,000 check to another nonprofit, Morrow Development Corp., where state Rep. Greg Smith moonlighted as a contract employee.
Immediately afterward, Inland named Smith and two others to its board of directors. They replaced three board members who resigned at that meeting.
Then, later that month, Smith and the rest of Inland’s board met again to entertain an offer to buy the nonprofit’s most valuable asset, a fiber-optic provider called Windwave Communications. It was enjoying a booming business serving Amazon data centers near the small city of Boardman.
2026 ELECTION
Salem mayor leads effort to expand local ability to sweep homeless encampments
Oregon Capital Chronicle | By Abbey McDonald
Salem Mayor Julie Hoy has joined a coalition of the state’s largest employers seeking to make it easier for cities and counties to remove homeless people and their belongings from public spaces.
Hoy and two other chief petitioners filed an initiative Oct. 15 with the Oregon Secretary of State’s office titled “The Local Control & Safety Act.”
Feeling ‘betrayed,’ Astoria resident announces bid for Oregon’s North Coast House seat
Oregon Capital Chronicle | By Mia Maldonado
After the state representative he voted for in 2024 switched political parties, Astoria resident Christian Honl decided to enter the race himself as a Republican.
TRUMP ADMIN. VS OREGON
Portland City Councilor urges National Guard members to defy orders
KPTV | By Makenna Marks
Portland City Councilor Mitch Green has spoken out against Trump’s orders to deploy the guard to Portland.
Green told CNN that he’s encouraging guard members to question the president’s orders.
WATCH: Sen. Merkley holds Senate floor overnight in ongoing speech to protest 'Trump's growing authoritarianism'
KGW | By John Tanet
Oregon's U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley is holding a marathon speech to protest what his office calls "the Trump Administration’s tightening authoritarian grip on the country."
The Democratic senator's speech started at 6:21 p.m. Tuesday night has been going for 15 hours and counting. All other Senate business will be on hold while Sen. Merkley speaks, delaying talks on the ongoing government shutdown.
Residents report health impacts as tear gas use continues near Portland ICE facility
KATU | By Jennifer Singh
As protests continue outside of the ICE facility in South Portland, area residents and local leaders are pleading for federal agents to stop using chemical weapons.
HOMELESSNESS
‘Wasteful investments’: Friends of Portland Street Response denounces camping citations
KOIN 6 | By Jashayla Pettigrew
Portland’s decision to resume enforcing a ban against homeless camping is a “wasteful” investment, according to a local advocacy group.
Friends of Portland Street Response, which backs the unarmed team of people who respond to behavioral health crises throughout the city, condemned the upcoming enforcement changes in an email titled “PSR is Not Law Enforcement or a Taxi Service” on Sunday.
EDUCATION
Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Alleges PPS’s Staffing Formula Is Racially Discriminatory
Willamette Week | By Joanna Hou
A Glencoe Elementary School parent filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging that Portland Public Schools has engaged in race-based discrimination by using a staffing formula that partly prioritizes more full-time employees for schools with higher percentages of students who are Black, Hispanic, Native American or Pacific Islander.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland by a legal team that includes a former state lawmaker, represents a significant challenge to what the school district calls “equity funding”: a formula that considers poverty and which races have been historically underserved by the district when assigning additional staff. (Race is a small fraction of the overall formula.)
TRANSPORTATION
New Burnside Bridge construction delayed indefinitely; county blames federal uncertainty
KGW | By Anthony Macuk
Construction on the planned Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge has been pushed back for a second time this year, with Multnomah County again blaming ongoing federal uncertainty. The county moved the start date from 2027 to 2028 back in March, and announced on Monday that the project has now been pushed out past 2028 and a new date has not been determined.
NATURAL RESOURCES & WILDFIRE
PacifiCorp reaches $125M settlement with Oregon wineries, vineyards over wildfire smoke damage to crops
The Oregonian | By Gosia Wozniacka
Electricity provider PacifiCorp has agreed to pay $125 million to dozens of Oregon wineries and vineyards who sued the utility over the deadly Labor Day 2020 wildfires, alleging the smoke and soot had damaged their grapes and reduced their harvest and sales.
Less acreage burned in Oregon’s 2025 wildfire season, but more ignited by humans
Oregon Capital Chronicle | By Alex Baumhardt
Fewer acres burned in 2025 compared to last year, but more structures burned and humans started the bulk of fires.
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