Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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Oregon had few surprises in the general election results that changed the political landscape very little. Tracking closely with similar kinds of results in Washington state, the light blue Beaver state stuck with its usual voting patterns, careful to rarely edge over into landslides. In most cases, Portland remained deep blue and most of the eastern counties stayed deep red. Taken as a whole, Oregon remained generally blue, even as much of the country was awash in red-tinged results. The state...
Two big slices of news about Oregon newspapers fell shortly after Memorial Day, sending shock waves across the state. One was the sale of one of the largest Oregon newspaper groups, Portland-based Pamplin Media, and the other was the announcement of major cutbacks in another, EOMedia, which owns the Bend Bulletin and other newspapers. Both show the immediate urgency for finding a way to rescue community news in Oregon – sooner, not later. Among other things, the Oregon Legislature urgently n...
They said it couldn’t be done, They said it couldn’t be done, but Oregon will finally more closely resemble most other states in how it regulates campaign finance. Thanks to a bill passed during the just-wrapped legislative session, contributions to state candidates will no longer be able to stretch to infinity. House Bill 4024, which Gov. Tina Kotek signed, takes effect in 2027. That is cause for celebration. But Oregonians should keep their expectations in line and take personal responsibility...
This year marks a half-century since Oregon Gov. Tom McCall signed into law Senate Bill 100 requiring comprehensive planning, which warned: “uncoordinated use of lands in this state threaten the orderly development, the environment of this state and the health, safety, order, convenience, prosperity, and welfare of the people of this state.” Back then, the concern was about urban sprawl and haphazard development that would scar the state and disrupt traditional farm and timber economies, and...
This year, the state will learn what how the decisions made in 2022 will look like in practice. This is likely to be most obvious in the political and governmental sphere. Oregon elected a new governor and three new members of Congress in November, but that is the beginning of the story, not the end. Starting this month, Oregonians will compare incoming Gov. Tina Kotek with her predecessor, Gov. Kate Brown, and assess her new management of state government (and even much of local government)....
Remember those news stories about the massive campaign contributions on behalf of nonaffiliated Oregon governor candidate Betsy Johnson? For months her campaign treasury outpaced all others; she was the beneficiary of many millions of dollars, including more than $3 million just from Nike co-founder Phil Knight. As this is written on Wednesday morning, the Oregon governor's contest isn't settled yet – Democrat Tina Kotek is barely leading Republican Christine Drazan – but this much we know: Joh...
