Cascade CounterPoint

Full Text: It seems everywhere you look, “clean energy” is in the news. Portland just handed out nearly $120 million to local nonprofits who promise to provide clean energy technologies. Congress is expected to pass the slimmed down version of President Biden’s Build Back Better program, with more than $300 billion going to clean energy.

Much of this spending will be wasted if Oregon’s experience with an almost-unheard-of program is any guide. The program is called “1.5% for Green Energy Technology,” or GET.

Under the program, any government construction or renovation project costing $5 million or more must spend 1.5% of its budget on green energy technologies, such as solar panels.

Cascade Policy Institute reviewed all of the available annual reports from the GET program and found that almost none of the projects pencil out financially.

Portland was forced to spend $90,000 to install solar panels on a fire station, even though the city said the station is “not the best solar site.” The new Multnomah County Courthouse was required to spend $6.6 million on investments that will have a payback period of nearly five centuries.

When the legislature meets next year, one of the first orders of business should be to shut down the GET program. We can never get to a clean energy future if none of the projects make any financial sense.

The full report can be found on Cascade’s website: Solar Panels in a Dark Room.

Full Text: Connecticut’s bus service just pulled its entire fleet of electric buses after one bus burst into uncontrollable flames. While the small risk of an electric bus fire is scary, Portland’s TriMet could face huge financial fires if it continues growing its electric fleet.

The upfront costs to go electric are high, and TriMet has no plans to cover these costs. Until this year, TriMet received one-time federal grants and funds to purchase electric buses. Now, the agency doesn’t know how it will sustain future spending. TriMet can purchase each bus for about $1 million, or almost double the price of a diesel bus.

TriMet operated its first five electric buses on Line 62 and stated that the buses “required a lot of maintenance and experienced a lot of down-time.” TriMet admits there are unanswered questions about how far buses can last without a charge, where on-route chargers will be, and when costly batteries will need replacing.

TriMet’s job is to move passengers, not to invest in brand-new technology with money it doesn’t have. Without proper funding, planning, or a guarantee that the investment will pay off, the right thing for TriMet to do is to pull the plug on its electric bus plans.

Full Text: Things are not going well in the Portland region. The region’s residents, voters, taxpayers, and businesses complain about rising crime, spreading homelessness, increasing traffic congestion, and a general decline in livability. Local officials try to tell us things aren’t that bad and that they’re on top of things.

But they are that bad. Just look at all the emergencies they have declared over the past few years. Portland has declared a housing emergency, several homelessness emergencies, and—just last week—a gun violence emergency. Multnomah County has declared racism to be a public health crisis.

These are all areas that are under the control of local governments. But their emergency declarations demonstrate their inability to keep these crises under control.

Willamette Week reported that just a few years ago, city-declared emergencies were related only to natural disasters. Today, policy failures count as emergencies. Portland and Multnomah County vowed to “end” homelessness 17 years ago, and now it’s worse than ever. Gang violence has been a problem for more than a decade, which is why Portland established the now-disbanded Gang Violence Reduction Team in the first place.

Simply declaring a series of emergencies will do nothing to stop the policy-made crises facing the region. Our local officials need to confront their past failures and change course to enforce public safety and restore the city’s livability. Don’t let these emergencies go to waste.

Full Text:  Have you heard of the Portland Clean Energy Fund? Portlanders voted to pass the program four years ago. It gives funding to nonprofits for all things green—including green energy projects, energy-efficient infrastructure, and jobs in the green energy industry. Program expenses this year amount to about $118 million in tax revenue, or about $425 for every Portland household.

During a hearing last week, a program committee member called the price tag a “drop in the bucket.” But it was clear City Council knew it was a lot of money. This late in the game, they worried when the committee didn’t have adequate accountability measures. The committee co-chair admitted he didn’t know which projects the committee recommended. Commissioner Hardesty asked how they would ensure each grant recipient would use best practices with the money. Mayor Wheeler was adamant that Portlanders deserved more assurance of rigorous vetting and contract oversight.

If the Clean Energy Fund fumbles or the money is squandered, voters and taxpayers will look to their elected City Council for answers. Council can avoid this risk by rejecting this round of proposals until key questions are answered. The best way to ensure accountability is to hold back the money until the accountability arrives. 

Full Text: Two of my kids are young adults working retail. They are eyewitnesses to the decline of what was once The Most Livable City in the Nation.

Over the weekend, my daughter was working her shift, when a man walked into the store and started haranguing her. He accused her of following him through the store. “I was just hanging up clothes,” she told me. When she left on break, he was hanging outside the store and berated her again. He spent most of that afternoon aggressively harassing people up and down Hawthorne Boulevard.

A few days earlier, my son stopped at a fast-food drive-through on his way home. Ahead of him was a pedestrian at the drive-through window. That guy pulled a gun on the cashier. The quick-thinking cashier shut the window, walked away, and called the police who arrived 30 minutes later.

It’s not just my kids. Starbucks recently announced it’s closing two Portland stores out of concerns for employee safety.

I know people like to say, “Keep Portland Weird.” But, weird isn’t working. City leaders think they’re serving some social justice cause by allowing troubled people to harass or threaten teens who are just trying to do their jobs. There’s no justice in wondering if working your retail or fast-food shift might end in getting assaulted or shot.

Portland can be a livable city, but public safety is a key ingredient. We’re missing that ingredient, and it seems City Hall has little interest in bringing it back.

Full Text: Too much, all at once.

Portland’s city charter is long overdue for some rewrites. Few people deny that. Last month, the city’s Charter Review Commission announced its proposal to overhaul the city’s charter, with the reforms going to the voters on the November ballot.

A central part of the reforms is shifting Portland to a “City Manager” form of government. But, the proposed changes do much more than just that. Stuffed into the ballot measure is also a reformation of the City Council into a 12-member body, which would be divided among four new geographic districts. Also new to the charter is the imposition of a ranked-choice voting system to elect commissioners and the mayor.

To be clear, Portland’s government badly needs reforms. The commission system does not seem to be adequately addressing Portlanders’ concerns. Unfortunately, the Charter Review Commission has chosen to jam other tangentially related reforms onto the ballot, forcing Portlanders to either vote for all of the changes, or for none of them. This has raised concerns even from those who support charter reform efforts, such as City Commissioner Mingus Mapps.

Instead, the Commission should have separated these reforms into separate ballot measures. Putting them all together forces Portland’s voters to make an all-or-nothing choice, which may very well result in no meaningful changes being made at all.

Full Text: Last week, an Oregonian story reported that for years, the city’s parks bureau claimed it did not have the money for capital improvements, maintenance, or security in one of its rundown parks. The article noted that the streetlights in the area stopped working and were never fixed, leading to crime in and around a food cart pod in the park.

A few days later, a local TV station reported that a light pole fell down in a Portland park, injuring a boy and his caretaker, sending both of them to the hospital.

These stories highlight a major failure of local government: Portland city hall cannot deliver even the most basic of basic services. If city leaders can’t be bothered to keep the lights on—and keep the light poles upright—how can we expect them to carry out all the big, bold projects they roll out in their breathless press releases?

For years, the city has had a 10-cents-a-gallon gas tax to pay for road safety, including street lights. Two years ago, Portland voters approved a property tax increase for the parks department that brings in $48 million a year. But, somehow the city doesn’t seem to have enough of this money to keep up with the basics.

I get it. Street lights are boring. No one shows up to a light pole ribbon cutting. But when they fail, safety suffers and people get hurt. Good government is about services delivered, and city hall is failing its citizens.

Full Text: Portland City Council is trying its best to bring electric vehicles to the masses. But by mistake, they’re really saying, “Let them eat cake.”

Last year, Oregon passed HB 2180, which requires a fifth of new multi-family residential parking spots to be “Electric Vehicle Ready,” meaning they have the electrical capacity to host EV chargers. Not to be outdone, Portland proposed the “EV Ready Code,” increasing the EV Ready requirement to 50% of spaces.

The kicker is the code doesn’t even require developers to build chargers; they’re only required to build electrical capacity for the chargers. This means tenants will pay more rent for wires in the ground. If a tenant wants a charger installed, they still have to pay big prices through higher rents or add-ons. Total charger installation costs between $7,000 and $10,000 per parking space.

Fewer than 3% of vehicle registrations in Multnomah County are for electric vehicles, so EV expansion has a long way to go. Right now, EVs are too great an extravagance for low-income residents.

The EV Ready Code isn’t exactly a cakewalk to EV expansion. City Council should reject the EV Ready Code and stick to policies that allow residents to afford their homes and their cars.

Full Text: Starting July 1, Portland property owners will have new choices about how residential land can be used.

The Portland City Council unanimously approved a wide array of changes to the city’s restrictive zoning policies, ending zoning laws that limited what types of homes could be constructed.

Specifically, the decision removes a regulation known as single-family zoning, a requirement that says by law, the only type of construction that can occur is single-family housing. The regulation change doesn’t mean new single-family homes can’t be built, but it does mean that property owners and developers may build other types of homes on the property. Property owners may now choose to build denser housing to meet rising demand, which could relieve Portland’s housing shortage and cost of living crisis without resorting to regressive policies like rent control.

Loosening zoning restrictions is one small step toward increasing the supply of housing, but it cannot stop there. The City of Portland should begin planning a moderate expansion of the urban growth boundary alongside allowing denser urban design choices, which would enable Portland developers to meet the high housing demands of today.

Full Text: It’s budget season for local governments in Oregon. Budgets may sound boring. In reality, they are the best demonstration of what politicians truly prioritize. Forget the campaign promises and the press releases. The budget is where the action is.

This year, there is a line item tucked into the City of Portland budget for Prosper Portland to provide money to small businesses that were damaged by vandalism or theft.

Your gut instinct may be to say, “That’s great! Finally, Portland is doing something to help.”

But think about it. This boring budget line item highlights local government dysfunction.

Businesses pay taxes to support the police and the district attorney, who seem to do little to prevent and punish crime. Criminals know this and target those same businesses for vandalism and theft, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. Then, the city uses even more taxpayer dollars to pay for the damage that could have been avoided if the city actually did something to prevent the crime in the first place.

Once the bad guys get wind that the city will cover the losses, they may be encouraged to do even more damage and looting.

Our elected leaders need to get back to the basics by cracking down on crime and enforcing property rights. Arrest the bad guys, prosecute them, and send them to jail. These are not victimless crimes. With this new budget item, all of us become victims.