Those hard-hit Oregon counties that have been slicing into the bone because of loss of federal timber funds – some of these places even harder-hit with the recent storms – may have a little hope.

Congressional leadership has worked out a deal for continuing funding of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, a package worth $1.8 billion, of which a big chunk – close to half – would go to Oregon. To some of the currently neediest parts of Oregon.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who worked on it, said, “Today’s announcement will mean nearly $740 million for Oregon schools, public safety, roads, and other essential county services. More importantly, this deal gets these counties off of the fiscal roller-coaster and back to stable funding so that they can focus on the real work of planning for the future.”

Sounds good, if it materializes. There’s also word that the bill may be vetoed by President Bush.

Of some note as an indicator, this (self-selecting, to be sure) online poll in the Coeur d’Alene Press. It could be worth consideration as policymakers in the region consider what the traffic will bear in tax and bond proposals.

The question: “If the election were today, would you support a $14 million bond issue for a convention and events center at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds?”

As of a check early this afternoon, 1,080 people had voted, and 73.9% of them were opposed. Bond proposals take a 2/3 favorable vote to pass.

Five months ago we quoted a stock site called Seeking Alpha as suggesting this: “A company with Micron’s assets, potential, and joint ventures could definitely be a very attractive takeover target for private equity. A leveraged buyout may not be too far off in the distance.” And we indicated we thought the site was correct: Micron would be an attractive takeover target.

In today’s Idaho Statesman: “Speculation is again swirling that Micron Technology could be bought by a private equity firm. A surge in contracts to buy Micron call options late Thursday and Friday led some analysts to speculate that private equity firms were again looking at the Boise-based semiconductor company.”

Keep watch.

Something about the web – maybe the solitary nature of posting to it – seems to suggest the idea of private communication. It isn’t. It’s more public and out there in the world than any newspaper or television station, no matter that you may not have intended it that way. That’s a lesson for myspace teenagers and facebook college students. Not to mention politicians.

Many commenters on political sites, this one included, regularly use pseudonyms. (This site, like many, prefers real names but allows pseudonyms.) Commenters probably think this means they’re anonymous; but not always. The lesson being, don’t post what you aren’t comfortable standing behind.

Story in point is recounted on David Postman’s blog. It stems from a discussion on Sound Politics, where blogger Stefan Sharkansky was writing about the rules concerning petition signature gathering for initiatives. (The details are another issue.) Comments to his post included at least three snarky takes from “PDC expert,” saying “Stefan – your ignorance is stunning,” “[Tim] Eyman is a liar and the sheep on this blog will believe any lie he tells them,” and so forth.

Which might have been that, except that Sharkansky decided to track down the commenter. Using the comment’s home IP address, and traced it to the city of Kent. An information request tracked it directly back to state Representative Geoffrey Simpson, D-Covington, who acknowledged the comments were his.

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Times are moving on, as the latest newspaper in the Tri-Cities – and it does qualify as a newspaper, as a print edition is available – is underway primarily as a (daily) on-line publication. Its editor and publisher, Ken Harvey, argues that “We don’t ever anticipate becoming daily in print because we believe technology will soon do away with most printed publications.”

The local blog McCranium wonders, reasonably, if that doesn’t make it mainly a blog with a newspaper attached. And it makes the point that this newspaper arrives with a clear ideological pitch, which it does.

The Tri-City Citizen describes itself as “a locally owned weekly printed (40,000 copies per edition) and daily online newspaper reflecting a ‘progressively-conservative and family oriented’ perspective on our local community.” More simply, and put in the current usual usage, it’s a conservative paper (a quick look through home page headlines should make the point). The Herald is semi-centrist in its editorial stances, probably to the right of most fellow McClatchy papers, but well to the left of where it was when locally owned years ago, and probably left as well of many Tri-Citians.

The Citizen is also an outgrowth of the recent Tri-City Republic paper: “Many of the Citizen’s staff members had tried to provide such an alternative as members of the Tri-Cities Republic staff. Harvey says that, when it became clear the Republic lacked the financial support and business acumen needed to effectively compete with the Herald, most of the staff resigned and formed the team that has launched the new Tri-City Citizen. The Republic has since announced that it is ceasing publication.”

We’re skeptical of the business model, having seen so many other web efforts fail to pencil out. But we’ll keep a watch.

Here in the Northwest, early indications are that this region will mirror many of the early returns elsewhere in this country this evening: Strong results for Democrats, intermixed with some close losses.

We’ll be reporting back shortly, but a few early indications jump out.

In Oregon, the early results give Democrat Ted Kulongoski 56% of the vote. A whole lot of the rural part of the state has yet to emerge, and this reflects a big chunk of Lane county (Eugene area); still, he’s in a good place at this point.

Among legislative races, we’ve heard of one result that will upend some expectations (including today’s Punditology results) – in Oregon House District 24, Democrat Sal Perlata looks poised to defeat Rebublican incumbent Donna Nelson.

Some early indications: Most of the ballot issues (including the spending and term limits issues) show signs of failing. Unclear yet as to the number of Democratic seats in the Oregon House.

No immediate surprises in Washington, with a lead in the Senate race by Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell. Not enough information on the critical 5th and 8th district races to say much at this point.

And results in Idaho are too preliminary as well for substantial judgement.

Back soon with more.

Well this is taking its time. At two hours past polls closed, just 117 of 917 precincts are in, and most of those are from eastern Idaho. Not a lot to work with yet in the premier race, the Republican nomination for the 1st congressional district.

Based on early results, the big gubernatorial primary win by C.L. “Butch” Otter looks about on track, at 69% (wouldn’t be surprised to see it bump a little higher as the night goes on). On the Democratic side for lieutenant governor, former congressman Larry La Rocco appears to be piling up a substantial win over Dan Romero – there had been some question about that. The early numbers also seem to suggest a win by Tom Luna for a second Republican nomination for superintendent of public instruction, and – a surprise if it holds, which it may not – a lead by Jana Jones over state Senator Bert Marley on the Democratic side.

And in the 1st? Bill Sali, Keith Johnson and Sheila Sorensen bunched together at the top, with Sali in a narrow lead. Will it hold? The next couple of hours ought to tell the story . . . if the pace picks up . . .

You see the expansion notices in Meridian or Post Falls, but they don’t spread evenly. Rupert today joined the list of rural places taking a hit, as Kraft Foods said it would close its processing plant there, taking 140 jobs with it, early in 2007. The plant produces cheese products.

Are there any takeaway lessons for local people, like those in Rupert, or elsewhere in Idaho or the Northwest? Well, yes, if you look closely at Kraft and its business environment.

Not, that is, at Rupert or Idaho – local conditions in that city and state appear to be irrelevant to the closure. (Not that the closure will be irrelevant to the city and state – it will put some hurt on Rupert.) Kraft was quoted as saying the closure had nothing to do with local productivity – and there’s no reason to assume otherwise – but rather is part of a series of consolidation of its processing facilities. Certainly the corporation is doing some restructuring – late last month it announced it was outsourcing most of its communications and database work.

An internal squeeze seems to be on, and in that connection you might consider this from an on-line piece basically about Wal-Mart: “In fiscal 2005, Wal-Mart saw sales grow 9.5% while inventories climbed 9.3%. Wal-Mart was able to wring out such good results by putting much of the onus on suppliers such as Procter & Gamble Co. , Kraft Foods Inc. and Estee Lauder Cos.”

Message to community economic development entities: When considering which manufacturers or base-level industries to attract to your community, or considering the mix you already have, ask who that business sells to. From that, you may be able to better determine if that business has a long or possibly short life span in your community.

The Portland State University Population Research Center reports just out figure Oregon has added about 50,000 people between the summer of 2004 and the summer of 2005, and about 200,000 people since the 2000 census.

Sounds about right, as do the estimates of where in the state, exactly, these people have been going. The standout really is Washington County, which is estimated to have added more than 9,000 people just in that recent year, and nearly 45,000 since the 2000 census (meaning, practically, at least 50,000 from then to now – about a quarter of all growth in the state). That’s a big boost in size, even if – proportionately – Deschutes County (Bend ) did about as well or better. The other Portland-area suburban county, Clackamas, also grew but more slowly.

Portland continues to grow, adding about 5,000 people in just the recent year to reach 555,560. Salem pushes a little further ahead of Eugene; the cities are still close in population but no longer virtually tied. And Gresham is edging close to the 100,000 mark.

Had wondered whether the talk about Hillsboro Republican Representative Derrick Kitts running for Congress against Democratic incumbent David Wu, was so much smoke.

It’s more than that: Kitts is in the race. He faces an uphill run.

Just a quick heads-up on a fine summary of the development of Montana politics in the last few years – through the lens of electric power deregulation, which that state, about a decade ago, embraced.

The results have been calamitous, but are still defended in some quarters. Mike Dennison’s column for the Billings Gazette spells it out.

Sounds good enough in theory: An initiative aimed at imposing strict limits on government spending. (It seems to make more structural sense, at least, than initiatives aimed at cutting taxes.) Should work, shouldn’t it?

The idea, called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights – TABOR, in shorthand – has circuled around the Northwest for some years, and in Oregon and Idaho in particular have gotten substantial pushes from fiscal conservatives. They’ve failed to gain implementing traction in part because of warnings about what’s been happening in the one state to pass and implement TABOR: Colorado.

In that state, services have been strapped and fees have risen to the breaking point. That assessment might be taken as the wailing of government burteaucrats except for what happened Tuesday: Statewide voters decided, 52%-48%, to in effect – for a five-year stretch – throw out TABOR restrictions and increase state budgets, and their own taxes. That action had been endorsed by the conservative Republican governor, Bill Owers, who said that TABOR restrictions had put the state in an untemable position.

The margin was not overwhelming. But consider the difficulty these days in getting a populace to vote for higher taxes, and you may reflect on how remarkable it was.

Or maybe not so remarkable. Could it be that the years of tax cut rhetoric are starting to wear thin? More clues on that coming next week. In California, recent polls are showing a probable big loss for Governor Arnold Schwartengger’s state spending limit proposal. And of much interest, look to Washington as the voters there on the I-912 transporation funding plan.

Yes, this is still ridenbaugh.com, still the online presence of Ridenbaugh Press … but it has just undergone something of a transofmration.

We think it’ll open the door to several new projects, and it certainly means you can become a lot more involved.

The short story is that we’ve converted from an HTML site to a true blog, a database-driven site. We selected the WordPress software in making the transformation (which also has to do with a change of web hosts – the combination of the two has slowed the number of posts over the last week.

Expect that to change. The site as now developed – and as it will be tweaked in the weeks and months ahead – will allow for easier and faster posting.

And the old site? Well, much of the more recent material will be reposted right here. Beyond that, and going along beside it, is the old site, still intact for a while at least (maybe quite a while). You can access it if you like at www.ridenbaugh.com/index2.htm.

Let us know what you think, and how we can together explore public affairs in the Northwest more deeply.