In February, elected leaders of a small town in Marion County took the extraordinary step of firing its top cop amid a series of troubling allegations.

Gervais Police Chief Mark Chase’s removal has since touched off a feud between the chief’s defenders and officials in the quiet community about 15 miles NE of Salem.

Chase, it turns out, is no stranger to controversy on the job. Leaders in Junction City, about an hour south of Gervais, fired Chase from his role as police chief there in 2016.

On the latest Beat Check, Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Catalina Gaitán talk about small town politics in the age of toxic divides.

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Oregon’s largest corporate employer has been one of the biggest boosters calling for an infusion of taxpayer dollars into U.S. manufacturing of computer chips.

Last week, Intel got its wish: an $8.5 billion check from the federal government. Mike Rogoway, who covers the chip industry for The Oregonian/OregonLive, spoke with business editor Elliot Njus about what this award means for Intel in Oregon and around the world.

He also discussed his reporting on the Oregon Employment Department, which launched long-awaited upgrade to its computer system that handles unemployment claims — but the transition doesn’t seem to have ended difficulties for Oregonians seeking jobless benefits.

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Environmentalists notched what they consider a major win in the 2024 short legislative session. The COAL Act directs the state to drop about $1 billion in coal investments and to cease new investments in companies that mine and burn coal.

Proponents say the legislation aligns the state’s public pension investments with Oregon’s existing climate goals to reduce carbon emissions and transition to 100% clean energy.

Oregon isn’t the only state going this route. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns, which launched over a decade ago on college campuses, now focus on governments, pension funds, faith-based organizations and foundations, among others. To date, about $14 trillion has been divested from fossil fuels globally and commitments to divest topped $40 trillion across the world as of this summer.

Oregon’s coal-divestment legislation is based on a California law adopted in 2015 that led that state’s pension systems – the two largest public funds in the country – to divest from coal. A few other states and cities have also followed suit. Maine became the first state to pledge divesting from fossil fuels. New York City divested $3 billion of its pension funds three years ago and Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco and Pittsburgh are also moving to divest their pension funds. Even Eugene in Oregon has pledged not to invest in fossil fuel companies.

But the movement to divest also has many critics. Some labor unions fear it could threaten hard-earned retirement money. And the issue has become highly politicized, with over a dozen Republican states passing or introducing model bills that ban them from doing business with financial groups that divest from fossil fuels.

Divestment is even controversial in California, where a bill to divest the state’s pension systems from all fossil fuels was shelved again during last year’s legislative session.

On the Beat Check podcast, the chief sponsor of Oregon’s coal divestment legislation, Rep. Khanh Pham, D-Portland, talked about why Oregon’s divestment from coal will help the state reach its climate goals, how it compares with other fossil fuel divestment campaigns and what individual investors can do to divest and align their own money with their environmental values.

Pham also spoke about what the state should invest in and how programs like Portland’s Clean Energy Fund – which she helped create – and the statewide Climate Protection Program’s Community Climate Investments can help low-income communities take part in the clean energy transition and better adapt to the changing climate.

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A lack of funding and the passage of Measure 110 dealt a double whammy to Oregon drug courts. Even as fentanyl became a scourge, one of the best tools to help addicts largely faded away.

Programs in Deschutes, Benton, Polk and Multnomah counties shut down in recent months or years and others have been hit with funding problems. But in this short legislative session, the Oregon Legislature voted to increase funding to $37 million this two-year budget cycle, an increase of almost 50%.

Legislators also recriminalized drug possession, voting to creates a new misdemeanor for people caught with small amounts of illicit drugs. That might send more people into drug courts tailored to lesser offenders.

Reporter Aimee Green took a deep dive into the history of drug courts in Oregon, how they work and how people have benefited from them. She talked to policymakers, recovering addicts and judges.

Green joined Editor Therese Bottomly to talk about her article (Bottomly’s sister is a Multnomah County judge).

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Utility customers in Oregon have seen steep rate increases in the past two years – and more are in the works. What gives?

Portland General Electric customers saw their bills go up by 18% in January, in addition to a 14.8% rate increase in 2023. Pacific Power customers saw bills increase by 21% at the start of 2023 and by another 12% in January.

Pacific Power just filed another rate increase proposal in Oregon seeking a 17% average increase. Idaho Power is also seeking to raise rates by nearly 27% for its eastern Oregon customers.

And it’s not just electric utility customers who are feeling the pinch. NW Natural gas rates have gone up by over 32% since September 2022.

Bob Jenks is executive director of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a nonprofit organization created via a 1984 ballot measure to advocate for all state utility customers. On Beat Check, Jenks talked about why those rates are climbing so steeply, what the future of utility rates is and how climate change and our transition to clean energy and an all-electric future are affecting utilities.

Jenks also spoke about flaws in utility regulations and how his organization is working on reforming them.

He encouraged lower income customers to apply for the income-qualified utility bill discount programs, but said those programs aren’t a panacea to solving the issue of energy affordability. PGE has just expanded its bill discount program to provide up to a 60% monthly energy discount to customers who qualify. Pacific Power has a similar program as does NW Natural.

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There is trouble at one of the most beloved natural attractions in Oregon and all of the Pacific Northwest.Busted buildings. Hazardous spills. Injuries and allegations of sexual assault.

Years of mismanagement by Crater Lake Hospitality, a subsidiary of Aramark, the corporate behemoth hired by the National Park Service in 2018 to operate concessions at Crater Lake National Park, has endangered the park’s employees, visitors and pristine natural environment, a new investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.

On the latest Beat Check, Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Jamie Hale discuss those findings.

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It’s hard to escape the fentanyl problem in Oregon. The use of fentanyl is evident on the streets of Portland and provides added fuel to Oregon’s homelessness crisis. The decriminalization of the drug and others is at the heart of a debate in the Oregon Legislature over Measure 110.

The Oregonian/OregonLive recently published two in-depth articles that came at the fentanyl crisis through vastly different lenses. Education reporter Julia Silverman profiled a mother’s attempt to see help for her teenage son, who had suffered three overdoses before he died on fentanyl poisoning. Oregon’s medical autonomy laws prevented her from forcing him in to treatment.

Zane Sparling headed out to Ontario, where the rural town was confronting an addiction and homelessness crisis exacerbated by Oregon’s more lenient laws on drug use than neighboring Idaho’s. The small city was seeing many of the same problems as Oregon’s largest, Portland, hundreds of miles away.

Editor Therese Bottomly speaks with Silverman and Sparling about their reporting and possible solutions.

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The Oregon Legislature’s 2024 session is underway, and even though lawmakers’ work is constitutionally limited to just 35 days, they plan to take on some of the state’s biggest issues.

On this week’s episode of Beat Check with The Oregonian, state government reporter Carlos Fuentes runs down lawmakers’ top priorities and how a state Supreme Court ruling could affect the dynamic in Salem.

Plus, public safety reporter Noelle Crombie on lawmakers’ proposals to roll back parts of Measure 110, the drug decriminalization law approved by voters in 2020. (Crombie recently appeared on Beat Check to discuss Measure 110 and policymakers’ trip to Portugal, whose drug laws in part inspired the Oregon measure.)

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In January, the Portland metro area was encased in a week-long ice, snow and wind storm that shut down the region. The storm toppled hundreds of massive trees, which in turn crushed cars, felled power poles and lines and split people’s homes in half.

The devastation left many people traumatized and anxious – and reexamining their relationships with trees and with the natural world, said Dr. Thomas Joseph Doherty, a Portland-based psychologist who focuses on helping clients overcome anxieties linked with climate change. On today’s Beat Check podcast, Doherty talked about the mental health impacts and emotional burden of the storm and of climate-related extreme weather events.

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Oregon has long been awash in cash when it comes to state elections and political races.

One big reason?

It’s among just a small handful of states that do not limit how much money candidates can accept from individuals, political groups, corporations, unions or any other entity.

But that could change this year, as Oregon voters will likely face a pair of similar-looking — yet markedly different — ballot measures, each of which would limit how much individuals and groups can donate to candidates.

On the latest Beat Check, Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Carlos Fuentes, dig into these dueling proposals.

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