Cascade CounterPoint

Full Text: A recent poll by the Portland Business Alliance found that 88% of voters believe their quality of life is getting worse. This is up significantly from 2017, when less than half of voters said the same thing. It’s not hard to understand why; all you need to do is step outside.

Tents and trash line our sidewalks, shootings are rising, and more cars are being stolen.

According to the poll, “voters overwhelmingly support requiring people currently living outside to sleep in shelters or designated camping areas” and 83% of voters support funding to hire and train new police officers. In fact, voters said that homelessness and crime are the top two issues facing our region.

This is the opposite of what elected officials have been doing. The Portland City Council voted to cut $15 million from the police budget in 2020, and most resources for homelessness are being used to place a handful of people “at risk of homelessness” into permanent housing. Perhaps this is why 81% of voters view Portland City Council as ineffective at providing services.

To regain the public’s trust, officials need to take action to solve the problems that voters are most concerned about. This would include shifting funds away from permanent housing to providing more shelter beds and designated camping areas, cleaning up the streets we once enjoyed, and setting the tone that crime is not tolerated in our neighborhoods.

Full Text: January 23-29 is National School Choice Week, a 50-state celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. Every January, tens of thousands of independent events and activities draw attention to the ways school choice brings quality education to millions of students. School Choice Week provides free, practical resources year-round on its website to help families looking for options in their states. Resources specific to Oregon can be found on National School Choice Week’s website at schoolchoiceweek.com.

During the past two years, increasing numbers of parents have “voted with their feet” for school choice. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, 8.7 million children switched from public to private schools nationwide. Between the last two school years, charter school enrollment in Oregon increased 20.8%, and the number of Oregon homeschooled students increased 73%.

Oregon’s education policies should value all options that empower students to learn successfully, and parents should be free to choose the best fit for their children. Oregon can expand educational opportunity in many ways. We could lift the cap on charter school enrollment; let state education funding follow the child, thus funding students rather than systems; and remove regulatory barriers to the GED test, so high schoolers can more easily demonstrate graduation-level proficiency. As education in Oregon moves forward from the pandemic school closures, we can serve all students better through educational choice.

Full Text: Earlier this week, the Michigan Democratic Party’s Facebook account landed in some hot water. A post published to the page mocked parents who say they should have a voice in what public schools teach.

The post went on to say that public schools teach kids what society “needs them to know.” This was the same argument made 100 years ago when Oregon voters banned all private schools in the state.

The measure, sponsored by the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon and the state chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, required all school-age children to attend Oregon public school, and only public school. They argued that an influx of Catholic immigrants had beliefs that were incompatible with American values. They argued that only a public school could teach these kids what society needed them to know.

While the measure was passed by voters, it went down in flames before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1925, the Court unanimously struck down the measure, legalized private schools throughout the country, and famously declared, “the child is not the mere creature of the state.”

Perhaps this should be the first lesson they teach in public schools: The government serves us, not the other way around.

Full Text: With the start of a new year, power customers will see a new charge on their electricity bills.

The Oregon legislature passed HB 2165 at the end of the 2021 session, which requires utilities to collect a monthly charge beginning January 1 for transportation electrification infrastructure. Of the funds collected, at least half must be spent on “underserved communities.”

Everyone will pay to support the 1% who can afford to register an electric vehicle (EV) in Oregon. And while some funds will be spent on underserved communities, the reality is that most EV owners are wealthy Portlanders.

Oregon politicians think they are smarter than the market. Just like with the rise of gasoline-powered cars in the 20th century, the free market will come up with a solution if there is sufficient consumer demand for a product. We certainly didn’t need the government to build gas stations to get people to buy cars. All new technology comes with risks. By funding EV infrastructure with utility rates, that risk now falls on ratepayers.

The state should stop subsidizing the EV industry and instead allow entrepreneurs to invest in EV infrastructure when there is real need for the product.

Full Text: Just after dinner on New Year’s Eve, my oldest son got a text from his friend who was hosting a party that night: “Party’s cancelled … car and wallet stolen.”

While he was at the gym, someone got past the front desk and into the locker room. The thief cut the lock off the locker, grabbed the contents, and used the car keys to steal the car. After that, he tried to use the stolen credit card at a gas station, a liquor store, and a convenience store.

Our friend contacted the Portland police who assigned an officer to the matter. But, it turns out the officer was on vacation and wouldn’t be back until the following Thursday.

In the meantime, our friend went back to the gym, the gas station, the liquor store, and the convenience store and asked to see the footage from the security cameras. No luck. They all said they’d only show the footage to police. The one who was off duty for nearly a week.

In frustration, our young friend muttered, “No one seems to care. No one wants to help.” That’s how many Portland residents feel today. In two years, we’ve gone from “The City That Works” to “We’re All in This Together” to a new era, the YOYO era: “You’re On Your Own.” We need to get back to the city that works.

Full Text: As 2021 is wrapping up, it turns out that this year was much like last year. Let’s hope that 2022 is not a three-peat of the last two years. There does seem to be room for hope.

We’re now at the point that anyone who wants a COVID vaccine can get one. While it seems that almost everyone is going to get Omicron, it also seems to be much more mild. It’s getting more difficult to justify another round of shutdowns and lock-ins.

Nevertheless, given the skittish proclivities of public health experts, I fear that many public schools will return to online instruction. If this happens again, I predict that 2022 will be the year that many families give up on the public school system and demand that state education funding flow to the students themselves.

But there’s more work to be done, and 2022 is the perfect time to do it. We can relax the regulations surrounding getting a GED in Oregon, so students can graduate sooner and avoid the stress of on-again/off-again online learning. We can get rid of our silly Certificate of Need laws that make it impossible to quickly add hospital capacity.

Over the past two years, we learned that our state and local leaders will leave us on our own when we need them the most. If they won’t lead, they need to get rid of the rules that stop us from helping ourselves. Here’s to a new year!

Full Text: Nearly a year after Oregon’s drug decriminalization experiment began, results point to fewer arrests but little interest in addiction services.

In 2020, Oregon voters approved Measure 110 which decriminalizes small amounts of controlled substances, including meth and heroin, and funds drug addiction treatment and recovery services. It came into effect on February 1, 2021.

As predicted, fewer drug arrests were made in 2021. Instead of earning jail time, those found in possession of drugs are charged with a violation and pay a $100 fine. Or, they can avoid the fine altogether by participating in a health assessment over the phone.

As of November, there have been 68 total health assessment screenings. However, 49 callers were not interested in resources and merely underwent the assessment to escape the fine, while only 11 people were connected to some kind of addiction or recovery service.

While M110 is still early in its implementation, this data is telling. What good will pumping millions of dollars into the behavioral health network be if no one’s there seeking help?

What’s missing in this equation is any kind of personal accountability. Many of those who need help won’t seek it out. Drug courts were helpful in this regard because they pushed addicts into treatment which reduced substance use and drug-involved crimes. Officials should consider adding similar “teeth” to this program.

Full Text: If you guessed that Oregonians think homelessness is the most important problem facing the state, you’d be right. That’s no surprise.

What’s surprising is what came in second. It turns out, according to a poll by DHM Research, more than 1-in-6 Oregonians think politicians and government are the biggest problem facing our state. At the beginning of the year, only 2% of Oregonians had such a dim view of government.

That’s a huge turnaround in less than a year. The people we elected to lead our community out of the pandemic are now seen as a bigger problem than the pandemic itself.

Despite sitting on a gusher of tax revenues and federal relief funds, our state and local governments have checked out and left us on our own. Thousands have waited months for unemployment assistance. Schools are shutting down because they can’t handle rowdy students. Residents are cleaning up city parks because the city won’t do it. Businesses are hiring their own private security, because we don’t have enough police.

Remember when they said, “We’re all in this together?” Yeah … that ranks right up there with, “The check is in the mail.”

Fortunately, next year is an election year, up and down the ballot. Perhaps it’s time our elected leaders learn that when they abandon voters, the voters will abandon them. We may be looking at a ballot box revolution.

Full Text: It’s been more than six years since Portland declared a homelessness emergency. For many residents, the crisis will only end when the tarps and tents littering sidewalks, greenspaces, and interstate on-ramps are gone and the individuals on the street get the support they need.

The region’s elected officials would like to claim they are making a difference. But, even the casual observer knows the crisis has gotten worse. Though Multnomah County continues to pursue an expensive “Housing First” strategy, it seems that even its small successes have been inflated.

Last week, the Multnomah County Auditor concluded that the Joint Office of Homeless Services, operated by the county and the City of Portland, overstated the number of individuals it placed into permanent housing by more than 20% over the past two years.

The timing of this news is concerning, as Multnomah County is just beginning to spend its share of a $2.5 billion regional homelessness tax. If residents can’t trust the Joint Office to accurately report data, why should they trust it to effectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes? Comedian Groucho Marx once quipped, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?” Our region needs fudge-free data that matches what we see with our own eyes and shows whether or not costly programs are working to get the unsheltered off the streets.

Full Text: The public school shutdowns have gone too far.

Once reserved only for emergencies and dangerous weather, shutdowns at Oregon public schools have become commonplace for disciplinary reasons, adult staffing shortages, and lesson planning.

In November, Reynolds Middle School canceled in-person learning for three weeks because of fights and disruptive behavior. After two years of online learning, many students are finding it difficult to socialize and learn in person. But the last thing the school district should have done is shut down the school for behavior caused by shutting down the school.

As pointed out by Leslie Bienen in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, this shutdown tells students that poor behavior gets them out of school.

Keeping schools fully open for in-person instruction isn’t a partisan issue. Democrat State Senator Sara Gelser Blouin​ recently tweeted on this topic that “we must unite to demand these kids immediately receive full time in person school.”

Kids have had a difficult two years; why is it OK for school districts to take the easy way out?

Schools should remain open unless a legitimate emergency requires them to close. If they can’t, students and their families should be allowed to take the money the state would have spent on them at their local school and go elsewhere.