Posts published in “Oregon”

Oregon’s public defender problems have been getting much better and much worse at the same time.

Finding a solution that makes sense doesn’t involve doing what most people have long argued: spending more money on legal services. The answer lies in how the money is managed and spent, and how the workload is organized.

In all, it resembles any of several serious Oregon problems – drug abuse and homelessness among them – where the willingness to do the right thing, and the ability to pay for it, are not the bottleneck. The problem lies in smartly managing the problem-solving.

The problems with the public defense of people charged with a crime who cannot afford an attorney but have the right to one is not new, and legislators and the state executive branch actively have been working on it for years.

The Oregon Legislature has responded. The Oregon Public Defense Commission, which is assigned to manage and deliver public attorneys for at-need defendants, has been given a massive infusion of new money, its budget more than doubling in the past seven years.

The larger picture in defense caseloads looks better than even a couple of years ago. In January 2022, the American Bar Association produced a report called The Oregon Project: An Analysis of the Oregon Public Defense System and Attorney Workloads Standards, which found that Oregon had fewer than a third of the attorneys, or more exactly attorney work-hours, needed to meet the the demand and  and ought to have the full-time equivalent of about 1,300 more attorneys.

Since then, other states have studied exactly how much attorney time is needed in public defense, and when variations in the types of cases are factored in – a simple misdemeanor versus a knot of complex felonies, for example – it turns out Oregon’s need is far smaller than estimated by the bar association. Those studies indicate it needs about 600 attorneys.

But the problem is more complicated than that.

There’s been more focus on providing counsel for in-custody defendants, but the problem seems to have worsened among the larger group of out-of-custody defendants, with the lack of counsel problem worsening overall.

Their ranks have swelled after a federal judge last October ordered that any inmate not assigned an attorney within a week had to be released from county jails. (The legal debate about the judge’s action is ongoing.)

On top of that, the average time an out-of-custody felony defendant now is without counsel is running upward of 100 days.

This has been happening even at a time when the numbers of Oregon crimes, notably property crime, have been trending downward.

Under terms of the state-attorney contracts awarded in June 2022, the defense attorneys are limited in the number of cases they can accept. By April of 2023, however, many attorneys already had hit those ceilings and could not take on new clients as new defendants entered the system. In Multnomah County, private lawyers overall reported hitting 122% of the maximum caseload in recent months. So in the spring of 2023, the state throttled back the number of cases defense attorneys could take.

There have also been serious problems with billing by the commission. The amount of time elapsed for payment to attorneys has grown from just over a week in 2016 to more than 45 days this year – a situation bound to become unacceptable to many attorneys and other contractors, such as private investigators.

More flexible rules for attorney contracting could help, along with a sharper focus on problem-solving and less on rule-making. But there’s a larger systemic block getting in the way of solving many state problems that both agency directors and the governor, and the Legislature, should start to consider more broadly.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

On May 21, Oregon’s Democratic-registered voters made their choice for their nominee for president. It was not close: 87% of them – about 362,500 voters – weighed in for the incumbent, President Joe Biden.

Oregon has been Biden country for some time. In the 2020 election, Biden won Oregon’s vote by 16 percentage points, well above his national average.

In all, Oregon will have 78 delegates at the 2024 national convention, 12 of which are “superdelegates” who can vote as they choose but cannot vote during the first round and will only cast votes if a candidate doesn’t receive majority support in the first round. The other 66 were chosen based on the primary election results, and Biden has been slated to receive the votes of all of them. State law requires delegates to sign a pledge to continue supporting their candidate through the first two rounds of balloting unless the candidate releases them from that pledge or receives less than 35% of the nominating votes.

Now that Biden is no longer running for president, and has thrown his backing to Vice President Kamala Harris, he has effectively released them to do as they will.

In a strict sense, the delegates, including Oregon’s, have the power. No longer bound to vote for Biden, they can choose to support at the convention anyone they like.

The old political adage in presidential politics was that Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Will Oregon’s Democrats turn that on its head this year?

Probably. Delegates around the country could react in different ways, but there’s reason to think Oregon’s delegates are likely – barring any new unforeseen developments – to join the Harris campaign.

In many states, Democrats are scattered, geographically and organizationally. In Oregon, they’re relatively organized, reflecting the organized labor structure that has helped them to so many wins. In some states, many delegates may be atomized, with little outreach from other nearby party members. In Oregon, that’s less likely to happen.

And what have the leaders been saying?

Some had not yet weighed in on the nomination question in the hours after Biden announced he was withdrawing. They confined themselves to praise for his leadership. Like other state party organizations, Oregon’s is  supposed to avoid weighing in on candidates for a nomination until the question is settled.

But by Monday, many of Democratic leaders in Oregon, who are also superdelegates, had voiced support for Harris. The big name is Sen. Ron Wyden, probably Oregon’s leading Democrat, who declared, “I’m all in to support Vice President Harris with all my energy.” Oregon’s other senator, Jeff Merkley, also voiced support for Harris as did Oregon’s Democratic House members, Reps. Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici, Val Hoyle, and Andrea Salinas.

Gov. Tina Kotek, another superdelegate, also backed Harris on Monday, releasing a statement through her campaign that said she was “proud” to endorse the vice president.

“She’s tough, she’s smart and she’s ready to unite the country. Kamala Harris should be our next president,” Kotek said.

Some individual party officials expressed support for Harris as well. At least one convention delegate from Oregon, Kevin Stine of Medford, said he would vote for Harris.

Matt Keating, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Oregon who is also a member of the Eugene City Council, signed a letter including scores of names of Democratic officials around the county, declaring support for Harris.

Many delegates and party officials have not made a formal or public statement so far, but when they do, those who have are likely to play a visible role in the discussions and possibly help set its course. Some states – Tennessee and South Carolina are two – already have held Democratic delegate meet-ups, either in person or virtually, to discuss options, and Oregon could and probably will do something similar.

The Harris campaign has a solid beachhead in Oregon’s Democratic organization, and it probably will grow swiftly over the next week or two. There’s been no apparent pushback either from other prospective candidates or even from the alternative suggestion of arranging a competitive battle – a gladiatorial “thunderdome” approach.

Oregon’s role in deciding the nomination is not among the largest – bigger states have many more delegates – but it could be on the front end of deciding on a nominee. That might make Oregon a more important state in the Democratic presidential nominating process than anyone would have thought early this year, or even when the party’s primary voters were casting their ballots.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Two big slices of news about Oregon newspapers fell shortly after Memorial Day, sending shock waves across the state.

One was the sale of one of the largest Oregon newspaper groups, Portland-based Pamplin Media, and the other was the announcement of major cutbacks in another, EO Media Group, which owns the Bend Bulletin and other newspapers. Both show the immediate urgency for finding a way to rescue community news in Oregon – sooner, not later. Among other things, the Oregon Legislature urgently needs to take up the subject in its next session.

Consider where Oregon newspapers were just 12 years ago, when Steve Bagwell of the McMinnville News-Register and I co-wrote a book, called “New Editions,” about the recent history and prospects for newspapers in the Northwest. We counted 82 paid-subscription, general circulation newspapers, 16 of them dailies, in Portland, Eugene, Salem, Bend, Medford, Albany, Corvallis, Pendleton, Astoria, Ashland, Ontario, Coos Bay, The Dalles, La Grande, Roseburg and Baker City.

Since then an economic hurricane, a perfect storm, swept through the ranks of those newspapers. Many of the dailies which published six or seven days a week now publish three or four days a week if they’re not gone completely. The large business office buildings they occupied nearly all have been sold, along with nearly all newspaper presses, and increasing numbers of newspapers now consist of one or two reporters working out of their homes, with no office support at all. Some Oregon newspapers have been sold to investor groups, and where the papers still are actual print papers, they’re far smaller.

That has largely been the case with Pamplin Media Group, which owned 22 newspapers from Prineville to Forest Grove and Madras to Portland, more than any other owner in the state. Their operations and staff have diminished, But they have continued to publish on regular weekly schedules with reports about their communities.

On June 1, all of those papers were sold to Carpenter Media Group of Natchez, Mississippi, which, until recently, mainly had focused on southern-state newspapers. Pamplin is not its only major recent purchase, even in the Northwest, however. Last year, with backing from two Canadian investment companies, it bought 150 newspapers and other media from Black Press Media of Surrey in British Columbia, and included dozens of Washington state newspapers. Carpenter is now by far the largest newspaper owner in the Northwest.

It appears to be operated by former executives of Boone Newsmedia, which owns dozens of papers in the southern U.S. But other than reports about Carpenter’s many purchases there’s little public information about it – or where the money for all these massive buys is coming from. Carpenter has been buying large papers as well as small, including the dailies in Honolulu, Hawaii and Everett, Washington. What that means for Oregon’s largest collection of newspapers is far from clear.

The development with EO Media Group didn’t involve change of ownership, but it did mark a drastic change of operations.

EO Media Group, named for one of its papers, the East Oregonian of Pendleton, publishes a dozen newspapers in the state, most east of the Cascades. Operated by the Forrester family of Astoria, it has been a rescuer in recent years of community newspapers. In 2019, it bought The (Bend) Bulletin out of bankruptcy and kept it running. When the daily Mail Tribune of Medford shut down, EO started a new paper there, Rogue Valley Times.

EO said on June 3 that it will cut its 185 employees by 28, end print editions at the papers in La Grande, Hermiston, Baker City, John Day and Enterprise, and reduce the number of editions per week at Medford, Bend and Pendleton.

The areas in Oregon that are news deserts – or at least extremely arid regions – are expanding rapidly. And considering the scope of these recent large developments, the collapse of Oregon’s newspapers seems to be picking up speed rather than slowing.

Oregonians need news reports to decide how to vote and participate in their communities, and the businesses that have made that possible are dissolving rapidly. This amounts to a real, immediate crisis for the government and society in Oregon, as it does in many other places.

The answers are far from clear.

The Oregon Legislature did devote some attention to the problem last year with House Bill 2605. The proposal would have prompted a study of the situation but it never had a floor vote. Still, that was a good start. Next year, it ought to mark out serious time and attention to figuring out how to help Oregon citizens keep up with the news around them, so the system of self-governance we have had for generations can continue to function.

Corrections: An earlier version of this article misidentified Boone Newsmedia Inc. and misspelled EO Media Group. It also misstated when the Oregon Legislature considered grants for local media. 

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Oregon’s highest-profile primary elections did not appear to carry strong messages: Voters sporadically showed what they wanted or didn’t.

But there were exceptions. Two examples in particular, both on the county level in Multnomah and Yamhill counties, were notably clear in demanding a change of direction from what had been endorsed before. The message in both was unmistakable: Extremes in experiments and ideological projects are unwelcome, and what’s wanted is a government that works.

The race for Multnomah County district attorney concerned maybe the most embattled political figure in Oregon so far this decade: Mike Schmidt.

Schmidt had prosecutor and policy experience when he was elected Multnomah DA in 2020 in a landslide. He ran clearly as one of several “reform” big-city prosecutors around the country. On election night that year, he said: “The message from Multnomah County voters was loud and clear: They are ready for major reform in our criminal justice system.”

Problems multiplied fast even before he started and by the time his predecessor resigned. That was the summer of George Floyd demonstrations in Portland, of long-running rioting and vandalism, and in the months to come of increased homelessness and open drug usage in the wake of passage of Initiative 110. Schmidt’s professed approach, moving away from harsh enforcement, became much less popular. Several eventual statements from Schmidt calling for a crackdown on violence and vandalism didn’t land well.

His standing was damaged, too, by accusations of weak management. But the core complaint against Schmidt, reflecting widespread polling in Portland over the last four years, is that public safety conditions needed strong improvement, quickly and decisively.

Schmidt’s opponent this year, Nathan Vasquez, who has been a prosecutor for 25 years, ran with the implicit call for a return to something like what Portlanders grew to expect during the three decades it was run by Mike Schrunk, who made gradual reforms along the way but operated in a mostly quiet and non-controversial but professionally effective, and politically popular way.

The law and order message was so clear that it reached the White House. The website Politico reported, “The defeat of a liberal Portland prosecutor at the hands of a tough-on-crime challenger has hardened a view among top White House officials that Democrats need to further distance themselves from their left flank on law-and-order issues.”

Local Republicans may take notice, too, especially of the areas of Multnomah that voted most strongly for Vasquez, on the east side around Gresham but also in parts of the west Portland area.

A comparable message on competence and professionalism, with a very different background, emerged a few miles to the west in Yamhill County, in a race for county commissioner.

The incumbent was Lindsay Berschauer, a media consultant who was elected to the Yamhill County Commission in 2020. With close ties to the county’s effective Republican organization, she won a four-year term and aligned on the commission, generally, with Mary Starrett, a former Constitution Party candidate for governor in 2006.

Berschauer, now chair of the commission, became contentious enough to become the target of a recall attempt just two years later; she won that by about the same percentage she had in 2020, around 52% to 48%. Berschauer did not adopt a cautious approach, however. She faced more controversy, with culture war issues and the commission’s rejection of a proposed rail to trail project that cost the county $2 million.

An editorial in the McMinnville News-Register said this year, “Berschauer seems to relish being a lightning rod. A professional political consultant by trade, primarily in the Portland metro area, she publicly ripped members of the county staff in her first meeting.”

Her main opponent this year, David “Bubba” King, presented himself as an unaligned and nonpartisan contender, in opposition to ideologically driven anger and roiling local government battles. He engaged in efforts to tamp down some of those activities in his home Newberg area, such as in his local school district, and turned his attention to Berschauer late in 2023.

In a three-person primary race, King fell short by only a handful of votes from winning outright, but Bertschauer’s take of the vote dropped to about 44%. She is likely to fall short in the November runoff.

The result was widely seen as a shift on what a majority of Yamhill’s voters are willing to tolerate. The county is well to the right of Multnomah, but the core message from the voters was similar: Pay attention to the county’s work and put ideology to the side.

If there’s any similarity in attitude around the country this fall, that message could be meaningful in the upcoming general elections.

This column appeared originally in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

After all the primary campaign season drama this year, most of the Oregon results tended toward the familiar in both parties.

And most races weren’t even close.

On Tuesday, Oregon had two relatively critical Democratic primary contests, in ways important both locally and nationally that  collected plenty of attention in the state and beyond. Both were resolved sharply, by strong margins that reflected the sensibilities of Oregon’s – and the nation’s – Democratic leadership.

In Oregon’s 3rd House District, seven candidates were competing to replace veteran U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, but the race clearly was going to come down to two: state Rep. Maxine Dexter and former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal. Dexter has been a productive legislator working smoothly with Democratic leadership, while Jayapal was perhaps best known as the sister of a member of Congress from Seattle, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who is one of the most visible and sometimes controversial progressives in the House.

Dexter got the mass of support from contributors and Democratic-leaning organizations, and her lopsided win – about twice the number of votes Jayapal received – looked like a clear demonstration of Democratic organization clout.

In Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, one of the half-dozen top battleground districts nationally this year, the Democratic nominee from two years ago, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, faced state legislator Janelle Bynum, each seeking to take on first-term Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer. McLeod-Skinner only narrowly lost to Chavez-DeRemer last time, and the primary contest was widely described as competitive, with the sole public poll giving Bynum a slight lead.

On election day, Bynum’s lead wasn’t slight at all. In results on Tuesday night, she led McLeod-Skinner in five of the six counties, with only one vote reported in that race in Jefferson County, and that was for McLeod-Skinner. Overall, Bynum led by more than two to one. Some of that probably had to do with negative headlines for McLeod-Skinner in the last few months, and reports that Republican-backed money was supporting her in an effort to elect a weaker candidate in November. But the larger factor may have been a solid weighing-in of the Democratic establishment, from Gov. Tina Kotek on down, on Bynum’s behalf.

If one trend line ran through most of the notable Oregon primary results on Tuesday, it might have been the absence of revolt against the powers that be.

In the top statewide race, for Secretary of State, speculation had run in favor of the well-established Treasurer Tobias Read, who two years ago had experience running for governor. On Tuesday, he drew a stunningly wide lead, winning about 70% of the vote in the Democratic primary over his chief opponent, Democratic state Sen. James Manning. The margin of the Democratic legislator seeking to replace him, state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, against a candidate who had run for the office twice before, Jeff Gudman, was even larger – 77%.

The familiar and the established mostly did well on the Republican side, too. In the 1st Senate District on the southern Oregon coast, a determined effort to take out incumbent Sen. David Brock Smith fell far short as he received twice the vote of the nearest of his three competitors. In the 2nd Senate District in Josephine and parts of Douglas and Jackson counties, Noah Robinson, the son of incumbent Art Robinson, decisively won the nomination for the seat there. And in the 28th Senate District in Klamath County, Diane Linthicum, the wife of Dennis Linthicum, the incumbent and the Republican secretary of state nominee, was winning easily.

The most striking but not surprising result in the whole state may have been in the 12th House District in rural Lane County, where incumbent Rep. Charlie Conrad, a Dexter Republican who split from his party on a vote concerning abortion and gender care, was getting only about a fifth of the vote against Darin Harbick, a challenger opposing him mainly on that issue.

There, as elsewhere, the message seemed to be: Stick with the party line or it may line up against you.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.