Posts published in “Oregon column”

The Trump administration’s take on monopolies, mega-mergers and related activity, among the most important economic actions available to a government, often has been buried under many of the other national headlines in the last year and a half.

But the Oregon attorney general’s office — with counterparts in other states — may be about to launch a significant effort in the area.

The general purpose of anti-trust laws has been “to protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, making sure there are strong incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, keep prices down, and keep quality up.” The laws have often fallen far behind the times, especially in times of rapid technology change, and often leave out concerns other than consumer prices.

Anti-trust enforcement in this country was kick-started here when Congress passed the Sherman Act in 1890, but less known is that some states were working on it even earlier, and Congress voted partly in reaction to them.

Nationally, anti-trust action has trended ever weaker over the last century, and as one analysis from a large law firm working in anti-trust noted, “the transition to the second Trump administration has ushered in a much more favorable antitrust enforcement climate for M&A [mergers and acquisitions].” Friends and allies of the administration appear to get concierge service rather than tough skepticism.

But the feds aren’t the only anti-trust game around.

Most states have anti-trust laws on their books as well, some preceding federal laws and sometimes mirroring them, and many states have been active in enforcing them. That’s not a far reach, either; even the Federal Trade Commission (one of the major national anti-trust enforcers, at least in theory) says on its website, “most states have antitrust laws that are enforced by state attorneys general or private plaintiffs. Many of these statutes are based on the federal antitrust laws.”

In recent years, states increasingly have been banding together to bring major anti-trust actions. Earlier this year, eight attorneys general (led by California’s but including Oregon’s) moved to stop the planned merger of Nexstar Media Group and the broadcast company Tegna,which owns KGW-TV; that fight is ongoing.

In May, five states (again including Oregon) went to court with an attempt to expand their ability to undertake more kinds of anti-trust action.

Oregon was also among the parties in the legal battle against the Kroger-Albertsons grocery merger, which ultimately fell apart. It also was a player in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster case.

Nearly all states have anti-trust law in place; Oregon’s is the simply-named Oregon Anti-Trust Law (in chapter 646 of title 50). One review of state anti-trust laws notes that while it includes provisions against cartels and conspiracy, single-firm conduct and price discrimination, it doesn’t include provisions other states have concerning monopsony (where a single major buyer effectively controls the market), buyer power or interlocking directorates.

The whole area of anti-trust law has been busy enough that the Oregon State Bar has an Antitrust and Trade Regulation Section for members.

Don’t be surprised if a few expansions in Oregon’s anti-trust are proposed in an upcoming session of the legislature.

Legal activity seems about ready to expand. On June 17, Attorney General Dan Rayfield asked the Oregon Legislature’s Emergency Board for permission to hire 16 staffers — five attorneys and 11 other support staff — to triple the capacity of the already-existing Antitrust Division.

That speaks to something more ambitious than the state has seen so far. You can get a sense of that from the source of the funding for the new jobs: Not from state tax funds but from money recovered from losers in anti-trust cases.

In his statement after the funding approval, Rayfield seemed to indicate what he has in mind:.“Grocery bills are skyrocketing, there are fewer choices for things like cable and internet service, and things like tickets to concerts and movies are increasingly out of reach. A big part of the reason is that corporations are being allowed to consolidate unchecked – with no federal oversight. Oregon and other states are now the last line of defense to protect working families and that’s what drove the urgency behind today’s action.”

As a matter of politics, such a mindset is aimed directly at the barely affordable cost of living so many Oregonians experience. The Democratic argument writes itself: The Trump administration won’t do anything meaningful about prices, so we will.

Expect to hear more about this in the months ahead.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Not everything in the newly-released report of the Governor’s Prosperity Council is uncontroversial, or should be, or points specifically to major systemic problems that limit Oregon’s economic growth.

But some do. Two general proposals especially, which may at first sound almost like anodyne boilerplate, seem on reflection like matters of real significance and specific relevance to the way Oregon works, or doesn’t.

And in theory at least, both ought not to be non-controversial because they touch on matters of simple competence and fairness.

Gov. Tina Kotek formed the 15-member council, which includes a number of business leaders around the state, in January to “recommend actionable steps to accelerate Oregon’s economy, create good paying jobs, and recruit and grow Oregon’s businesses.

It didn’t stint on recommendations: The report runs 452 pages. Some of its ideas are very specific, such as those concerning taxes and spending, and some still seem a little more vague, even if numbers are attached (such as a recommendation to reduce regulations by a set percentage, without more specificity on which regulations exactly should be dropped).

But at least two ideas have deeper implications for the way things are or should be done in Oregon.

The topline for the first: ”The state should transform Business Oregon [a state economic development organization] into the Oregon Commerce Authority, governed by a board of business and innovation leaders and the Governor …”

Which sounds like: “Great, let’s set up a committee and slap a new name on it.”

Except that’s not what the report was getting at. (The new name would be beside the point.) There’s an underlying problem in Oregon’s economic development system this proposal is designed to address:

“More than 850 organizations make up Oregon’s economic development system, all broadly focused on business growth and job creation. However, consistent collaboration around shared priorities is the exception, not the norm. For businesses of all sizes, this fragmentation can make it difficult to identify a clear entry point, navigate available programs, or receive coordinated support.”

The simple number of 850 economic development organizations in Oregon suggests the issue: Clearly the problem doesn’t involve inadequate resources or effort, but rather the lack of a unified effort. If Oregon’s economic development efforts are that fractured, that incoherent, there should be little argument the system presents a real handicap to economic growth.

The point of the Authority would be to place someone in actual charge, someone setting a consistent approach and message and harnessing the grab-bag of small pieces into a larger, comprehensive effort.

It went on: “The Authority should establish measurable statewide economic development goals and maintain a public-facing dashboard tracking key metrics such as business growth, job creation, project timelines, regional investment, customer response times, and economic competitiveness outcomes to improve transparency and accountability …”

Simple provision of coordination and competence could help quite a bit. It’s not that all those people working in economic development aren’t capable; lots of them surely are. But if they’re not working together, the state isn’t going to get traction from them.

The argument for the second point may be a little less clear cut for some people, but the underlying principle should not be: Justice delayed is justice denied.

This relates to the state’s overall system — not so much its content, but its process — of regulation. The Council said that people commenting on it around the state said much of the statewide regulatory system is “fragmented, lengthy, inconsistent, and costly.”

That assessment probably wouldn’t draw a serious argument broadly around the state, and across a large number of agencies, and it would apply to individuals and non-profits as well, and really almost anyone other than people trying to use the flaws in the cumbersome system to achieve a result not through merit but through wearing down the opposition.

Those too-frequent realities of the system build distrust generally in government systems, and ought to be something advocates of government action would want to address as well.

The proposed solutions involve setting action deadlines and even penalties for unnecessary delays: “The process should prevent projects from being delayed indefinitely and should include accountability measures such as public reporting and partial fee refunds when deadlines are missed.”

The idea is for greater efficiency and timeliness in addressing regulatory issues, not merely as an aspiration but backed up with legal teeth and top-level enforcement. A more rigorous system surely would provide economic benefits, but the positive implications would ripple beyond that.

These are things a governor and Legislature should be able easily to do. They seem clear and obvious enough, and the benefits seem direct enough if the rules are strong enough and they are enforced from the top down.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Oregon and the Northwest generally have gotten off light so far this year when it comes to wildfires. That can change and probably will, because wildfires tend to take a worsening turn in the month or so ahead.

But starting this year, we may have some new tools for planning for their arrival.

As of June 25, the National Interagency Fire Center has reported a total 35,118 fires nationwide burning 2.9 million acres — both numbers considerably higher for this point in the year than any year in the last decade and well above the average this century. The northwest, with its fire-friendly weather and other conditions this year, is unlikely to escape for much longer.

In fact, the Oregon Department of Forestry said June 15 that all of its forestry districts are now considered to be in fire season. Fire Protection Division Chief Michael Curran said that “Looking at the current conditions and projections for the summer, ODF is prepared to have another busy fire season.”

Apart from the usual preparation efforts of assembling firefighters, equipment and supplies, is there anything Oregon can do to get ready?

Might this, in part, be a job for artificial intelligence?

An April 10 report from Oregon State University and the Nature Conservancy offers what amount to predictive tools about wildfire probabilities, including some factors wildfire analysts may have missed in the past.

Their model breaks wildfire risk into three groups of factors. One of them, wildfire hazard, includes the probability and intensity of burns, and researchers over the years ordinarily have considered them. Relative dryness, availability of burnable material, climate changes and other environmental considerations are all readily reduced to numbers.

But the new study also includes two more major areas: Infrastructure vulnerability (structural and neighborhood characteristics and defensible space) and social vulnerability (demographics, socioeconomics and types of housing and transportation), both of which seem a little less obvious.

The ability of an area to resist major fires can be broken down into specific physical factors (access to water, materials to block fire, easily burnable buildings or other materials). And detailed information about those factors can be developed at a hyperlocal level using Census and other other data.

In other words, the relative fire risk of the places we live based on elements ranging from building materials to how development is concentrated or scattered can be reduced to a specific number — and implicitly, more factors besides those. The study found large degrees of social vulnerability around the Cascade and Coastal ranges and across much of eastern Oregon, though the most vulnerable tracts were widely scattered.

The writers made the point that they weren’t trying to establish specific cause-and-effect relationships between fires and community statistics, but simply that certain of these things tended to go together. From that, over time, researchers could start to focus in on risk factors.

In the new study, all these things were developed for about 400 communities in Oregon and Washington.

For example, co-author Chris Dunn from the OSU College of Forestry said, “Warm Springs and Goldendale have slightly lower wildfire exposure than some nearby, better-resourced communities like Bend and Leavenworth, but they experience greater social vulnerability and therefore are likely to experience greater impacts if a fire occurred. By blending a mix of factors, our assessment method is a path toward more equitable investments in community wildfire risk reduction.”

The manipulation of vast amounts of information and assessment of new patterns and sets of probabilities is very much in the wheelhouse of AI, artificial intelligence. Its use in wildfire analysis has not been central yet, but could become more so.

For example: An extensive September 2025 academic study based in Switzerland titled AI for Wildfire Management: From Prediction to Detection, Simulation, and Impact Analysis looked into the uses even at that point, and existing limits, for AI in fire prediction and planning for containment.

It said “the main domains of wildfire management where AI has been applied — susceptibility mapping, prediction, detection, simulation, and impact assessment — and highlight critical limitations that hinder practical adoption. These include challenges with dataset imbalance and accessibility, the inadequacy of commonly used metrics, the choice of prediction formats, and the computational costs of large-scale models, all of which reduce model trustworthiness and applicability.”

Some of these constraints could be eased as the technology progresses.

Whether the OSU and Nature Conservancy used AI in developing their reports didn’t seem entirely clear, but going forward AI looks like exactly the sort of tool that might be useful in working our areas of risk from wildfire.

Oregon may need all the help it can get.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Visit Hood River, as so many people do, and you’ll see on the front windows of many downtown businesses a sign saying: “We are immigrants,” and sometimes next to them signs saying, “No trespassing — no federal agents — agents lacking judicial warrants will be turned away.”

Many took care to advertise an April 23 community town hall about the “impacts of ICE actions in our communities.”

Politically and socially, Hood River closely resembles pieces of central Portland or Corvallis.

Travel about 20 miles down the highway to the other major Columbia Gorge community, The Dalles, and you’d have to search hard to find any such signs about immigration or other public policy. I couldn’t find one.

These two communities theoretically ought to be twins.  The Dalles has a formal population about twice as large as Hood River, but the cities’ urbanized areas feel comparable in size. Both rely on their Columbia River location for strong tourism sectors, while each still depends considerably on agriculture. Both cities exude some prosperity (a little more obviously, maybe, in the case of Hood River). Even the cities’ road plans, and mix of commercial, industrial and residential areas are laid out similarly.

And yet to walk around these two cities is to get an entirely different feel. Hood River is packed solid on weekends — parking is hard to find — its popularity as a tourist destination spot (sporting activities, notably windsurfing, are a major draw). The Dalles draws tourists but seems more reliant on traditional resource businesses and its massive new data centers, a subject of some local controversy.

But the politics of the area is clear and reflects the overall feel of the communities. Hood River city, and the county around it, is strongly Democratic, while The Dalles area leans very slightly Republican and Wasco County around it mostly is strongly so.

The reasons for this, and the impact of recent economic developments, suggest a small but clear current movement toward Democrats, which may have an effect on one of the handful of closely contested Oregon legislative seats.

The Gorge, or at least the Oregon side of it, has been politically fluid over the decades. In the half-century up to 1988, you could argue that Wasco was more Democratic than Hood River; certainly it voted more often for Democrats for president. Since then — around the time Oregon became a consistent Democratic vote on the presidential level — Hood River has become clearly bluer, and Wasco more purplish.

Hood River County overall in 2024 voted 65.8% Democratic for president (well short of Multnomah but close to the margins in Washington and Benton), most strongly in Hood River city (four of those precincts went Democratic by more than 70%), but generally county-wide as well.

Wasco County barely voted Republican for president, 51.1%, and that close split reflected a wide range of views around the county’s 12 precincts. Four precincts in and just to the west of The Dalles voted Democratic, two more nearby were closely split, and the remaining rural precincts, with smaller populations, were strong Donald Trump bases.

The one rural precinct which went for Kamala Harris, Rowena-Mosier, lies on the old Highway 30 directly between The Dalles and Hood River. Many of the residences there are relatively new, suggesting that some of the same population moves and cultures that have influenced Hood River and to a lesser degree The Dalles had an effect in between them as well.

These geographic and voting pattern details matter when it comes to one of the region’s most closely-fought legislative seats.

In the decade before the 2022 election, all of Hood River County (along with mostly Republican slices of Multnomah and Clackamas) was located in the 52nd House District, and all of Wasco County (along with several other north-central Oregon counties, generally strongly Republican) in the 57th District.

The 2021 redistricting nudged the 57th District toward the southeast, expelling the precincts around The Dalles. Those are in the redistricted 52nd District, which was already closely split between the parties and lost some marginally Democratic territory in the Portland metro area.

This put the balance in this swing district in the new territory of The Dalles. In the 2022 election Republican Jeff Helfrich won three of the four counties in the 52nd District but lost Hood River overwhelmingly, for a narrow district-wide win of 52.5%. In 2024, he won again but by even less, 51.8%; the Wasco County precincts edged a little more Democratic that year.

This year, Helfrich is running instead for the Senate in the 26th District, where Republican margins are a little stronger. The two major candidates to replace him in the House are Republican Scott Hege and Democrat Hank Sanders, both winners of contested primaries.

Not much of a demographic change would be needed in this district to create an almost perfectly even playing field. This could turn out to be one of the last legislative seats in Oregon decided after election day in November.

 

What Oregon voters are thinking right now can sometimes be derived from the top-level election results.

But those opinions are often subject to misinterpretation, another way of saying: Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions. Results from lower-level sections of the ballotts can be as useful. Dozens of local ballot issues were on the May primary election ballot (the secretary of state’s office has a convenient rundown of them on its website), in which voters got to speak directly on a range of subjects.

As an expression of attitude, the massive statewide turndown of the state transportation funding plan — for example — isn’t all Oregon voters had to say on the subjects of taxes, public services and attitudes toward government.

Consider the high-profile indicator question cutting across a bunch of issues and ideologies: Whether people (or how many of them) in Oregon would like to break off and join more conservative and Republican Idaho instead.

Over the last decade or so, a long string of eastern Oregon counties passed ballot issues in favor of Greater Idaho. These ballot issues tended variously either to discuss the split or actually try to push the local jurisdiction to leave Oregon and join the state of Idaho, which politically was closer to their preferences.

For many reasons, this never has been within the range of the realistic, but it does serve as a measure of dissatisfaction. Douglas and Josephine counties voters, who live a very long distance from Boise, have flatly rejected the idea, but most eastern Oregon counties have approved it.

Wallowa County, which borders Idaho, in 2020 turned thumbs down by a margin of 41 votes, but then in 2023 by seven votes approved it.  This year it was back on the ballot in the form of a measure aimed at eliminating the requirement that county commissioners engage in Greater Idaho discussions. This time the result was not close at all: 60.7% of the voters favored calling off the whole idea.

Is the greater Idaho bubble leaking air? There’s now some concrete reason to think so.

Another recent political trend, in many places nationally at least, has been diminished support for educational and cultural funding, but Portland voters seem to run in the other direction. Multnomah County’s Measure 26-261, which sought to renew a 2021 levy backing the Oregon Historical Society (based in downtown Portland), passed overwhelmingly, with 62.6% of the vote. Eugene voters acted similarly on a library ballot measure.

Okay, that’s Portland and Eugene (and Veneta and Scappoose). But over in Baker County, library district patrons opted with a 70.3% vote, to renew a five-year local option tax to benefit the library.

A bigger deal happened in Grant County, where 58.6% of the voters chose (Measure 12-97) to create a new Grant County library district, along with taxing authority for it. The library had been run out of county government, and county officials had talked about zeroing-out the library budget due to a budget deficit. The Oregon Arts Watch group noted, “With the tax district generating stable, dedicated funding for the library, advocates hope the library will be able to be open more hours and that programs cut in the past will be reinstated, including youth programs, community outreach, and a bookmobile.”

Funding for law enforcement, too, got some help in places where that hasn’t always been a given.

True, Clackamas County voters decisively (with more than 60% in opposition) rejected Measure 3-633, a proposed five-year local option levy to provide funding for the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office released a statement saying, “Without this dedicated funding source, the level of Sheriff’s Office services our community has come to rely on will change significantly. Patrol staffing, jail operations, investigations, and other critical public safety services will all be impacted. And Sutherlin city voters did opt to repeal a public safety fee.

But beyond that, law enforcement did well around the state. North Bend voters by 49 votes favored (in Measure 6-228) a police safety property tax increase. At Port Orford, 58.7% of voters decide to establish a clear five-year property tax levy to replace a more complicated system involving a monthly “public safety fee.” Voters turned down a five-year fire safety levy in Vernonia but passed one in Warrenton (61.0% favorable).

The message is, don’t judge the intent of voters in a whole state by a single vote. There’s actually more sophistication than such an approach would suggest.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

A couple of decades ago, the comedian Chris Rock led a TV series called “Everybody Hates Chris,” its name a spin on “Everybody Loves Raymond”.

Not to pile on too much, but did Oregon just see the “Everybody Hates ODOT” election?

The context is that practically everyone in the state seemed to expect the transportation tax and fee law passed last year by the legislature to be given the boot by the voters; the only question was how strong that vote would be.

It turned out to be overwhelming: as of mid-evening on Tuesday, 83.1% of Oregon voters opted to throw out the taxes and fees (which already were on hold pending the election).

And it was as across-the-board a decision as you could imagine. No county voted for the package, and none even came close. You could note that the three counties with the highest pro-transportation tax votes were all Democratic places: Benton, Hood River and Multnomah. But look at the percentages in favor even there: 29.3%. 28.1%, and 25% respectively.

In Harney, Lake, Morrow and Sherman counties, the tax plan couldn’t even crack 4% favorable, and most of eastern Oregon, and many other counties, didn’t generate a lot more support.

The package was passed originally as a cobbled-together effort to save basic services provided by the Oregon Department of Transportation. You have to imagine this kind of a mass repudiation making a big impact around its state offices in the weeks to come. Or at least it should.

There’s another side effect almost as worthy of note, though: The part of this political equation that didn’t translate into everybody loving someone else, at least not as much as some people might have thought.

The candidate in question is Ed Diehl, a state legislator from Stayton running for the Republican nomination for governor. Last fall, before he got into the gubernatorial race, he led an effort to put a referendum about the newly-passed transportation revenue plan on the statewide ballot. That effort not only worked but succeeded spectacularly: Within just a few weeks a quarter-million petition signatures were delivered, and the momentum to kill the transportation plan was massive and building.

That kind of success apparently got Diehl looking toward statewide horizons, and he filed for governor. His connection to the referendum was front and center, and his signs made sure to identify him as Ed “No Tax” Diehl. That labeling may have given him a slightly more focused identity than any of the other Republican candidates had, though most if not all of them were on his side in the issue.

To be fair, Diehl did a fair job campaigning and spoke with some depth about other subjects as well. But his identification with the referendum was so strong that it’s hard to imagine he would have been running were it not on the ballot.

So the question was, could it be enough to lift him to the Republican nomination?

You probably can’t say it didn’t help.

As of mid-Tuesday evening, Diehl was at 32.2% of the vote in a 14-candidate field, well behind expected front-runner Christine Drazan (the party’s 2022 nominee for the job) with 42.8% and well ahead of Chris Dudley, who had 15.6% (he was the nominee in 2010). No one else cracked  5%.

Drazan’s win was widespread, taking all but the seven counties Diehl won (Polk, Marion, Linn, Crook, Grant, Harney and Wallowa). Marion and Linn were home turf for Diehl, and the referendum had especially lopsided results in the others.

Put another way, Diehl likely did benefit a little from the association with the referendum, but probably not all that much.

Let’s shift the focus a little now toward November. The big transportation plan pushed by Democratic Governor Tina Kotek now has been dramatically rejected; apparently in anticipation of that, she already has started a process toward planning what to do next.

Will the rejected transportation plan be front and center in the Kotek-Drazan rematch?

Likely, it will be a factor, but its ability to carry its impact into other races may be limited. The governor’s race no doubt will feature talk about transportation funding, and Drazan will quite reasonably talk about the politics and policy of Measure 120. But Kotek likely will come back with other options, and by November the issue may be reframed.

Fury doesn’t seem to be all that transferable. Especially once it’s been given expression and, possibly, has blown itself out.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.