Cascade CounterPoint

Full-text: “We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark ... and we’re wearing sunglasses.” That line is from the Blues Brothers movie, but it’s an apt description of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s process to impose tolls on I-5 and I-205 all the way from Wilsonville to the Columbia River.

ODOT is gassed up and ready to go with tolling, but they have no idea where they’re going or what they’ll do once they get there.

They don’t know if they want to reduce congestion or maximize revenues. That’s a big question that can have big effects on how much drivers will pay. In particular, it is well known and widely accepted that tolls designed to raise revenues tend to be higher—sometimes much higher—than the tolls needed to reduce congestion.

They don’t know what they’ll do with the money. But, we do know what they won’t do with the money. They won’t be expanding roadway capacity—they’ve made that very clear.

This week, the transportation agency is taking comments on its tolling plan. Cascade Policy Institute will be telling ODOT to halt its tolling plans, step back, and figure out the problem tolls are supposed to solve and whether tolling will actually solve them.

Congestion pricing can be an effective way to reduce traffic jams, while raising money to build new roads. But, a plan that doesn’t reduce congestion and doesn’t build new roads should be a no-go.

Full Text: ‘Tis the season for holiday wishes. And, toward that end, we at Cascade Policy Institute have some of our own wishes for the New Year.

We hope that someday soon, Oregon high school students who are 15 or 16 years old will be allowed to take the GED exam and graduate early with a diploma. Currently, it’s near impossible for high school students to take the GED. But, Cascade has a bill proposal that will change that and open up new opportunities to graduate early.

We wish that Oregon would join dozens of other states in fostering school choice. It can be as simple as enabling inter-district transfers or lifting the cap on charter school enrollment. It can be as bold as shifting state funding to support students, rather than the system. Just this year, Arizona expanded its school choice scholarship program to include all students. Oregon should follow their lead.

Lastly, a wish for all Oregonians. We hope that your power stays on in the years to come. Our elected leaders and unelected bureaucrats are taking drastic steps to electrify everything, from cars to stoves to furnaces. But, we simply don’t have enough electricity to do it. In this season of reflection, let’s hope that our policymakers take a pause in their march toward forced electrification, so that we can keep our lights on this Christmas and into the future.

Full Text: If the Oregon Department of Transportation has its way, Portland-area freeways won’t be free for much longer. Tolling is coming to Oregon, and it’s coming in about two years.

ODOT’s current plan is to toll all lanes of I-5 and I-205 from just south of Wilsonville to all the way across the Columbia River. If you’re catching a flight at PDX, shopping at Bridgeport Village, or just trying to get to work, tolling is going to drain your bank account.

At a hearing last week, a legislator noted that by serving in the legislature, she would rack up $2,000 a year in tolls. TriMet complains it doesn’t have enough buses to handle all the people it expects will be forced onto public transit. The Metro Council President worries about Interstate traffic being diverted into residential neighborhoods. ODOT estimates more than a quarter of drivers won’t be able to afford the tolls and will need subsidies. Everyone hates tolling, but our politicians are blinded by the dollar signs from tolling revenues. We’re heading for a political pile-up.

It’s not too late to stop this tolling disaster. Tolls only make sense when the money is used to expand road capacity. ODOT’s current plans fail this basic test. When the legislature meets in February, one of its top priorities must be to pass a bill that stops ODOT’s misguided tolling plans.

Full Text: First they banned styrofoam, then last week they banned flavored e-cigarettes, and now they’re taking steps to ban wood-burning fireplaces and your gas-fueled kitchen stoves. Multnomah County is going “ban”-anas with its banning bonanza.

When elected officials can’t do the jobs they were elected to do—like maintain roads and bridges or enforce public safety—they turn to feel-good virtue-signaling laws to give the impression they are “doing something.”

These bans are always born out of a moral panic. Styrofoam is destroying the ozone layer; flavored vapes are hooking our kids; fireplaces and gas stoves are killing us with bad air quality. First, they roll out reports filled with half-truths and quackery. Then, elected officials declare the science is settled, and conclude the only answer is to bring out the bans.

These bans aren’t just an inconvenience. They bring out the full force of the state to inspect our homes and businesses. They encourage neighbors to rat each other out.

A few years ago Multnomah County animal control would send inspectors to walk through neighborhoods looking for unlicensed animals in people’s windows.

A neighbor ratted out another’s Airbnb because they were fighting over whether a tree should be trimmed.

When elected officials go bananas over bans, it brings out the worst in local government and the people who elected them. We need a ban on bans.

Cascade’s Kathryn Hickok talks with Kate Baker Demers about how she became one of New Hampshire’s staunchest advocates for educational choice. Kate, from Children’s Scholarship Fund New Hampshire, shares what she learned scaling up New Hampshire’s groundbreaking parental choice programs and what other states need to know to make school choice laws a success.

Full Text: This year, Arizona became the first state to expand eligibility for its Education Savings Account program to all K-12 children. Parents who choose to opt out of their zoned public schools now can receive 90 percent of the state-level, per-student base funding in an ESA for their child (about $7,000 per student in 2022). The ESA may be used for tuition, homeschooling, tutoring, online education, education therapy, or other services.

It’s time Oregon parents had similar opportunities to match their students with teachers, schools, and resources who will help them learn best. Education Freedom for Oregon, a school choice advocacy group, is making that its goal. The group has received certified ballot titles from the Oregon Attorney General for two separate education ballot measures. One would create an Education Savings Account program for Oregon families. The other would offer statewide public school open enrollment. If enough voter signatures are received, Oregonians may be able to vote on these measures in 2024.

Families increasingly believe one-size-fits-all schools don’t work for all children, and polls show a majority of Oregon voters support school choice. Educational choice programs, like those already operating in other states, would increase students’ opportunities, improve outcomes, and help make schools accountable to the parents and students they serve.

Full Text: This Thanksgiving let’s give thanks to the Pilgrims who discovered the life-saving power of private property.

We know the Pilgrims fled England to find religious freedom. And they found it—in Holland. But they found it hard to make ends meet in Holland and fled for America in search of economic freedom.

When they arrived, the Plymouth settlers arranged themselves the only way they knew how: lands were held in common and crops were shared out by need.

It was a disaster. Governor William Bradford complained the most able-bodied workers objected to being forced to spend their time and energy to feed other men’s families. No one had any incentive to improve a plot of land because the next year someone else might be working it. More than half of the Mayflower settlers died of malnutrition in their first year at Plymouth.

Bradford had a solution. He assigned each household its own plot of land. Families could keep what they produced on their land or trade for things they needed. The following year, Bradford reported, “[T]his had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”

Our Thanksgiving story is one of experiments. First a failed experiment in socialism, then a successful experiment in private property. We should be thankful that success continues today.

Full text: It’s the day after Election Day and the votes are still being tallied. One thing we know for sure: Oregon will have a new governor. Our new governor can make substantial changes on Day One by shaking up the agencies that have overseen our state’s decades-long decline.

We need a new PERS board who understands Oregon’s public employee retirement system is an anchor that is dragging down both the state and local governments. We can’t afford a business-as-usual PERS Board. We need a board that is willing to overhaul the system from within.

Believe it or not, the governor appoints the TriMet board. Public transit ridership is plummeting, and costs are skyrocketing. Nevertheless, the current board continues a light-rail-at-any-cost agenda. We need a new board to face the new reality that public transit is never coming back to where it was pre-pandemic.

We need a new director of the Oregon Health Authority. We need a director who will quickly approve new health care facilities—especially those for mental health, substance abuse, and skilled nursing. We need a new director who will replace the Measure 110 committee with new members who will focus on drug treatment, rather than so-called harm reduction.

We also need a new Superintendent of Public Instruction who will abandon identity politics and focus on improving academic achievement and graduation rates for all students.

Oregon’s governor has enormous power and—as the saying goes—with great power comes great responsibility.

Full text: “What’s the one thing you’d do to fix Oregon?” That’s a tough question, because there’s no single fix for all of Oregon’s problems.

Every single issue the government touches in Oregon is in need of free-market reform.

Despite spending more than the national average, our schools have some of the worst achievement and graduation rates in the country.

Oregon has some of the worst housing affordability in the country because we make it so hard to build new housing.

We have a homelessness crisis because we have some of the highest rates of untreated mental illness and substance abuse.

We have a shortage of hospital beds because state law makes it virtually impossible to build new hospitals or add to existing ones.

We have some of the worst roads in the country because state and local leaders have waged a decades-long war on cars.

We’re facing a 30% chance of widespread power outages because state policy is focused on reducing the state’s carbon footprint at the expense of grid reliability.

Each of these crises affects the day-to-day lives of most Oregonians, and none of them can be solved with one quick fix. We need long-haul, top-to-bottom free-market reforms to bounce back to being the Most Livable Place in the Country. As you’re filling out your ballot this week, cast your vote for the candidates who are willing and able to carry this off.

Full text: This week, Portland City Council is considering five resolutions dealing with homelessness and housing affordability. Mayor Ted Wheeler says these resolutions are a “moon shot” to solve the crisis. Like the original moon shot, the programs span a decade or more and will cost billions of dollars.

More accurately, this is the city’s Apollo 13 moment. “Portland, we have a problem.” It’s an urgent problem that needs a rapid response.

We can’t afford to wait a decade. We can’t rely on Multnomah County, Metro, the state, or the feds to ride to our rescue.

The Apollo 13 astronauts had to get out of their crisis quickly with the tools they had in their capsule. We’ve got to solve our crisis now with the tools we have.

We need to build shelter and sanctioned campsites now—before the worst winter weather sets in. If a natural disaster struck, we’d have FEMA trailers set up within weeks. We need to treat homelessness like the disaster it is.

Portland needs to pull out of the Joint Office of Homelessness and redeploy that $45 million toward building and staffing low-cost shelters and sanctioned campsites.

Once we have sufficient shelter and campsites, we can enforce a camping ban without running afoul of recent court decisions.

We’ll never reach the moon, but we can avoid crashing. No one else is coming to help us.