This week, Cascade’s president, John Charles, testified at Portland Public Schools’ Bond Accountability Committee.

He commended BAC’s work reviewing this year’s $2 billion Portland school bond and agreed with their assessment that building three large high schools when enrollment is declining is a mistake.

He asked BAC to “Speak directly to the taxpayers who will have to pay hundreds of millions in unnecessary construction costs.”

When Portland Public Schools passed the largest bond in state history, to build the nation’s most expensive high schools, the measure required oversight by a citizen committee.

When the BAC reported on the bond, they expressed concern about “building such large schools…given declining enrollment and decreasing birth rates.”

Their advice at the October meeting was ignored, and the Board voted to move ahead with plans to overbuild three high schools by several thousand seats.

In a not-so-distant fiscal crisis, journalists will ask the school board, “What did you know and when did you know it?”

They’ll be forced to admit they ignored the warnings of oversight committees and citizen research groups like Cascade. PPS board members have breached their fiduciary duty and act as though there will be no consequences. Dear BAC – please tell the taxpayers.

Read the full commentary at ⁠Dear PPS Bond Committee: Please Tell the Taxpayers - Cascade Policy Institute⁠

The Portland Bureau of Transportation--or PBOT--is spending tens of millions to convert miles of a four-lane state highway, known as 82nd avenue, into a two-lane neighborhood street and busway.

TriMet is headed for a contentious decision November 7th to put 82nd Ave on a major “Road Diet,” cut motorist capacity in half, and replace car lanes with BAT lanes for bikes and transit.

It all started three years ago when ODOT transferred the Portland section of 82nd to PBOT, who began spending millions on a scheme to “build a better 82nd avenue.”

PBOT’s overarching vision—for 82nd and others—means converting state highways to busways by reducing lanes, adding barriers, punishing motorists with gridlock, and calling it progress.

It’s part of Portland’s “Transportation System Plan” that envisions walking, bicycling, transit, and shared vehicles for 70 percent of Portland. Their “strategy for people movement” literally does not include personal vehicles.

When Metro, PBOT, and TriMet meet--a rabble of bike activists, lawyers, and Democratic Socialists plan to make a showing and demand more miles of dedicated BAT lanes for buses and bikes on state highways.

Oregon motorists make up 90 percent of 82nd avenue users. They’re busy living their lives—not attending PBOT meetings. This time, when TriMet meets on November 7th – let them hear from you. Submit a public comment and tell them to remove BAT lanes from further consideration.

Last week, Cascade's President, John Charles, emailed a Memo to the Portland Public School Board urging them to consider the Bond Accountability Committee’s concerns about overbuilding high schools. Their report concluded by stating that,

“…the district should not be building such large high schools when there is not the student body to justify it. Given declining enrollment and decreasing birth rates this issue is even more pronounced given the project budget issues."

Willamette Week also cited the statement, raising alarm about the Board’s failure to use demographic and enrollment data in sizing future high schools.

Nonetheless, the PPS Board voted to move ahead as planned while Chairman Wang argued that size reduction is "unfair" and failing to explain how empty buildings will better serve students.

By 2033 Portland will have at least 3,000 empty high school desks. Even now, talks of school consolidation are ongoing. Do Portland taxpayers want to spend $1 billion on expensive and empty classrooms?

On the flip side, Beaverton High School has chosen better, building a high school for 1,500 students with the option to replace a building if enrollment goes up.

PPS should design real high schools for real students and expand later if necessary. By ignoring the Committee’s due diligence and moving ahead with over-sized and over-priced schools, they will accelerate the district’s slide into the fiscal crisis they already face. Portland taxpayers and students will ultimately pay the price.

Read more at www.cascadepolicy.org

The Portland Public Schools Board is considering the purchase of an 80,000 square foot building to house the “Center for Black Student Excellence.”

This triggered a 90-day due diligence review with a final vote in December on whether to purchase the commercial building. While the committee so far has reviewed the building’s merits, they haven’t asked the hard questions.

First is the fact that the One North building will not be used as a school, but as a community center and a hub for organizations who “advance a culture of black excellence.”

However, PPS is a school district whose primary mission is classroom education. They’ve never operated a community center with classroom dollars and buying a commercial building for non-school programming will be hard to justify.

A second question is the legal one. Supreme Court rulings have made it clear that race-based programs in public education violate Civil Rights laws. Is the District Board willing to risk federal revenue for a non-school, race-based program?

While buying the One North building is a bad idea for a tax-supported school district, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Many private organizations serve minority youth with experienced staff and robust programming. The Center would be an imaginative project for them to sponsor.

The Center for Black Student Excellence should be a private venture. One great fit could be the 1803 Fund, established by Rukaiyah Adams, who first cast the vision for the Center five years ago. Ms. Adams could use this opportunity to launch the vision without the legal restrictions and challenges sure to arise for a tax-entity like Portland Public Schools.

Last week KGW news reported that Portland area rents are up 22 percent since pre-pandemic levels. We see it everywhere: so-called “affordable housing” costs have risen so quickly that even though cities and states now spend more money than ever, fewer housing units are being built. In April 2024, the Cascade Policy Institute published a report asking why this is the case. Unfortunately, the state of Oregon has refused to make data available that brings to light why rising costs continue to accelerate.

Fortunately, in the year or so since then, the Montana Department of Commerce provided data on 190 housing projects. Analysis shows that only one-third of increased costs are due to actual construction; the rest is due to the increasing size of housing projects. Large projects require developers to borrow money, which then adds interest expense. In addition, developers have massively increased the amount they spend on buying property for housing.

Developers welcome rising costs because they earn fees from the projects in proportion to the cost of the project. Unfortunately, state housing agencies who hand out “affordable housing subsidies” make little to no effort to ensure these funds are used cost-effectively. This means that affordable housing mainly benefits developers rather than low-income individuals who need it most.

The National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) annually releases a representative study of students’ academic performance. Known as “the Nation’s Report Card,” NAEP scores are an indicator of how much children are learning.

This fall’s report shows only 24 percent of Oregon eighth graders are “at or above proficient” in math, and 27 percent are proficient in reading. Of Oregon fourth graders, 31 percent are proficient in math, 27 percent in reading. These scores are lower than the national average.

This isn’t a surprise. Money spent in the public education bureaucracy has increased for decades, but everyone knows academic achievement has declined. It’s no wonder polls show strong majorities of voters, including poll respondents in Oregon, support “giving parents the right to use tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the school which best serves their needs.”

Oregon public schools can’t meet the needs of all children for reasons that are many and complex. But solutions can be simple, starting with freedom and opportunity. To improve education outcomes, policymakers should make it easier for parents to match their students with public, charter, magnet, online, private, home, or micro schools that best meet their needs and goals. Parents want their children to learn, and they want access to schools that will help them do that effectively. Children deserve no less than a great environment to reach their full potential.

On September 15, the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) released its 2025 Biennial Zero-Emissions Vehicle Report, revealing that Oregon is far behind on its goal of purchasing 250,000 “zero emissions vehicles” (ZEV) by 2025. The report was established in 2019 by SB 1044 to push ZEV adoption.

As of May 2025, 119,850 such vehicles were registered in Oregon, equaling 3.2 percent of the total vehicle fleet. Of those, only 84,636 were true zero-emission vehicles powered entirely by a battery. The remaining 35,214 vehicles were plug-in hybrids, which still rely on gasoline.

These numbers show that we’ve reached 34 percent of Kate Brown’s arbitrary EV Adoption Targets established during her era. Even more ambitious goals were set by ODOE for 2035, stating “at least 90 percent of new cars sold will be zero-emission vehicles.”

Two obvious reasons come to mind for this failed goal. For starters, EVs cost more than traditional vehicles—a good deal more. For medium– and heavy-duty vehicles the purchase price can be double or triple the price of a diesel or gasoline powered vehicle. In practical terms, finding or installing a charging station can be difficult or expensive, making long-distance trips a challenge to plan.

Few people will notice this policy failure because few really care about electric vehicles. The ZEV report is just one example of political elites telling us what to do and then being ignored.

Will the Oregon Department of Energy learn from their failure and leave us alone? No. That’s why they work for the government. But if you like your car, gas powered or hybrid, just keep it. Bureaucrats can’t make you buy something you don’t want and can’t afford.

The Portland Public School board is set to approve the sale for the “One North Building” as a home for the “Center for Black Student Excellence.”

The District is prepared to spend $16 million from the 2020 construction bond. Yet, they’ve never explained how the Center will operate or who it will serve. The name of the Center implies it will serve Black students, but the staff report claims it will be open to everyone. If true, it should be called the Center for Student Excellence.

PPS serves about 44-thousand students over 150 square miles, so how will those students travel to the Center before or after school? The building has 10 parking spaces and isn’t zoned for buses.

The staff report also states “student use will be limited.” If so, why purchase a new building with new operating costs? The district already has too many schools while enrollment is in decline.

Learning takes place everywhere in the district. Spending millions on a new building is unlikely to have a real effect on academic achievement.

Perhaps while evaluating the building, the Board can re-evaluate the Center’s vision with a goal to bring student excellence into every school and tailoring experiences to students from different ethnic backgrounds. Maybe investing in Centers for Student Excellence wouldn’t require a new building at all.

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregating school children by race was unconstitutional. As a result, districts across America spent the rest of the century integrating schools.

In Portland, though, segregation is back in vogue. A group called Albina Vision Trust began promoting the idea of a Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE) in the summer of 2020 and persuaded the Portland Public School Board (PPS) to set aside $60 million for that concept in its $1 billion construction bond that voters approved a few months later.

Five years later, none of the $60 million has been spent because advocates have never been able to explain how one single building would advance Black excellence in a district serving more than 40,000 students spread over 152 square miles. A recent Oregonian editorial asked the same question, asking “how this center will finally help the district advance student achievement.”

Nonetheless, the PPS Board has announced a plan to buy a new building in North Portland for the CBSE. No details are available, but the purchase will be discussed by the Board at its next meeting on September 9.

In the famous 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. School Board of Topeka, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for a unanimous Court that, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”

But PPS no longer cares about equality. The new goal is “equity.” Just don’t ask them to explain it.

The Oregon Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation Funding will consider legislation this week called “LC 2” as they head into a special session to address transportation funding.

The Governor’s Transportation Budget Framework defines the problem as an ODOT “budget gap” that needs to be addressed with a “funding solution.” She says that the cause is a lack of revenue for ODOT, oft repeated by legislators, lobbyists, and journalists who describe the problem as “declining revenue,” or a “dwindling gas tax.” These statements are simply not supported by ODOT’s financials showing that net revenue grew by 30 percent since 2018 and reached record highs in 2024.

A spending problem, not a funding problem, is the reason ODOT is about to eliminate 900 positions. The real problem is two-pronged: first, too many statutory restrictions on existing revenue; and too much debt service on $4 billion in highway bonds, which have grown at a much faster rate than ODOT’s revenue.

In reviewing LC2, Cascade offered the Committee two suggestions. First, amend LC 2 to free up gas tax funds for services Oregonians need and have already paid for. Next, pay off these highway bonds with lottery revenues. This would increase ODOT’s available gas tax revenue by more than 50 percent without a tax increase.

Governor Tina Kotek has called a special session of the legislature to secure more funding for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). She wants to raise gas taxes by six cents per gallon, double vehicle registration fees, and increase titling fees.

The governor claims that ODOT revenue has been declining due to improved fuel economy of cars, but comprehensive annual reports online show the opposite, as does the Legislative Revenue Office presentation. In 2024 gas tax revenue hit an all-time high of $652 million, as nearly did registration and titling fees ($550 million) and weight and mile fees ($455 million). Total ODOT revenue increased by 30 percent between 2018 and 2024 while debt service increased 41 percent and is growing. The debt is not scheduled to be retired until 2049.

It’s not a revenue problem; it’s a spending problem.

First, since 2001, as part of the Oregon Transportation Investment Act bond program (OTIA), the legislature has forced ODOT to spend most new gas tax monies on construction projects while ignoring highway maintenance. Thus, while gas tax revenue has increased, the amount going to operations has decreased.

Secondly, the legislature voted to sell nearly $4 billion in bonds backed by gas tax revenues. As a result, ODOT paid $358 million out of the gas tax revenues toward debt service last year compared to only $70 million in 2007.

To paraphrase Warren Buffett, debt service is the tapeworm eating 55 percent of ODOT’s gas tax money.

When legislators meet on August 29th, they should repeal gas tax restrictions put in place by OTIA Programs I, II and III. They should also pay down ODOT’s remaining bond debt of $3.9 billion with lottery funds. This would free up gas tax revenue to be spent on road maintenance and set a course correction ODOT and the people of Oregon need.  

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has a $350 million deficit. Governor Tina Kotek has said that if this funding is not secured, she will lay off about 500 ODOT employees.

During the regular legislative session that ended in June, Democrats (who hold a supermajority in both the House and the Senate) could not reach a consensus on a transportation funding bill (HB 2025). Sidelining and ignoring Republicans further ensured that the bill would not pass.

To deal with the budget shortfall, the Governor has called for a special session for Friday, August 29. Her goal is to raise the gas tax by six cents ($.06), increase vehicle registration fees by $42, and raise title fees by $139.

House Minority Leader Christine Drazen has proposed an alternative. Instead of raising taxes and fees on Oregon motorists, the legislature could use emergency funds from the Legislative Emergency Board. Hundreds of millions of dollars are set aside every legislative session for use in an emergency. Using emergency funds would not raise the gas tax and could fund ODOT until the 2026 session when a working solution can be found.

Oregon currently has the fourth-highest gas prices in the nation. Raising the gas tax should not be an option. Legislators should find a way to fund important transportation maintenance services without punishing Oregonians at the pump.

Governor Tina Kotek has long expressed support for wind power. In 2024, the Biden administration approved 195,000acres off the southern Oregon coast for wind farm construction (Wind Energy Areas) as part of its push to grow offshore wind power capacity, which gave her the means to enact this vision. However, widespread opposition from residents, including fishermen, tribal nations, and local politicians, expressed concern over the harm it would bring to the ecosystem and local industry.

When these wind farms started to look like a possibility, Kotek asked Biden to halt the project for further research into the potential effects of offshore wind farms on the localcommunity. By requesting the delay, she could torpedo the plan without appearing to backpedal on her previous platform.

However, Kotek was recently tossed a lifeline from an unexpected source. The Trump administration’s Bureau ofOcean Energy Management, or BOEM, has rescinded all wind power plans for the southern Oregon coast, to the relief of communities in those areas. This new Kotek and Trump alliance has handed the governor the pause on offshore wind she likely wanted. Don’t hold your breath, however, waiting for the Governor to send Trump a thank-you note.

On July 31st, the seven Metro councilors will vote to borrow $88.5 million to help pay for five transit projects that include “road diets” in and around Portland. Once approved, Metro will have to repay the loan until 2039.

To obtain the $88.5 million now, Metro will pay $140 million in principal and interest over the next 14 years. That’s nearly $50 million lost to debt service, money the agency can’t spend on capital investments or region-wide programs.

Which projects are so urgent that Metro councilors are willing to lose $50 million? One is a 0.65-mile streetcar extension on NW 23rd Avenue, Portland, a route already served by buses. Most of the budget for that project would actually go to purchase a new fleet of streetcars to be used elsewhere.

Another project shrinks 82nd Avenue from a four-lane highway to two lanes for cars, and restricts the outer lanes to TriMet buses for up to seven miles.

A third project is a new Burnside Bridge, with fewer lanes than it currently has, while keeping the bus-only lane. This leaves only one eastbound lane for 45,000 people who use the bridge daily. As it is, the bridge consistently backs up for blocks during rush hour. Taking away a lane for traffic will make congestion much worse on Burnside.

If you don’t agree with these proposed road diets and mounting debt service, let your Metro councilor know at this week’s council meeting on July 31st at 10:30.

The new “Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge” lane designs, backed with funding by the Metro Council, are intended to force Portlanders out of their cars. Metro will be meeting on July 31st to vote on and pass the Step 1A.1 Regional Flexible Funds Allocation bond, which includes the Burnside Bridge among other “road diet” projects.

The current Burnside Bridge serves approximately 58,000 people daily and features five lanes of travel, comprising two westbound lanes, two eastbound lanes, and an eastbound bus-only lane. In the design for the new bridge, they plan to remove an eastbound car lane. This reduces a five-lane bridge with four lanes for cars, with a four-lane bridge with three lanes for cars.

While Metro’s stated goal is to promote “multimodal transportation,” they plan to achieve it at the expense of nearly four out of every five people using the bridge. If 100 people were crossing the bridge, 78 would be stuck in a bottleneck after a long day of work. Another 12 people would ride the bus, 7 would bike, and 3 would walk. Why should 78 people have to sit in traffic so that 12 people can get ahead on a bus?

Metro should reject funding for the Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge until the lanes have been redrawn, and designs changed to make room for four out of every five bridge users.

TriMet has a new “road diet” planned for Portland, this time on 82nd Avenue. Working with Metro, TriMet is proposing a transit corridor entirely dedicated to buses. They plan to dedicate bus-only lanes, up and down both sides of the street, shrinking 82nd from a four-lane avenue down to a two-lane road for up to seven miles—from Clackamas Town Center to Portland’s Cully neighborhood.

The project claims that bus-only lanes are only one of the options as part of ongoing conversations, but the most recent Metro mockup on the future of 82nd Avenue prominently prioritizes “BAT lanes” (Business Access and Transit lanes) as the locally preferred alternative (LPA).

By cutting car lanes in half, the bus-only lanes will increase congestion substantially. According to TriMet’s own estimates, adding these lanes would cause up to 25 percent of drivers to divert from their routes to avoid traffic. Those diversions will put more stress on residential streets and neighborhoods, requiring additional safety features and maintenance. In the same document, TriMet states these new bus-only lanes will save transit riders three or four minutes at most. That’s with seven straight miles of bus lanes.

The purpose of 82nd Avenue—also known as Highway 213—is to move as many people and vehicles as possible from point A to point B. What moves more people: a lane that allows both cars and buses, or a lane that only allows buses?

Metro Council is scheduled to consider bond funding for 82nd avenue and four other projects on July 31. Metro should eliminate bus-only “BAT lanes” from any further consideration as part of the 82nd Avenue Transit Project.

With the passage of House Bill 2089 in late June, Oregon has ended the practice of “home equity theft,” by bringing state law into compliance with the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2023 Tyler ruling. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Minnesota grandmother, Geraldine Tyler, who lost her condo when she failed to pay the property taxes. Ms. Tyler argued that her county violated the Constitution’s Takings Clause when it kept a $25,000 surplus after her property was foreclosed and sold to pay the taxes.

Oregon has been one of nine states whose tax foreclosure laws allowed such “home equity theft.” The key requirement of the unanimous ruling in Tyler v. Hennepin County⁠ says governments must create a system to return surplus equity to owners after property taxes, fees, and interest are paid on foreclosed property. After the Tyler decision, it became clear Oregon’s law needed revision.

Cascade Policy Institute worked with Pacific Legal Foundation (who represented Ms. Tyler) and other stakeholders to bring Oregon law into compliance with Tyler. House Bill 2089 provides a process to ensure that counties retain what they are owed in back taxes, and no more, giving the original owner claim to any surplus value.

The Tyler ruling was a big victory for property rights, effectively ending the practice of government “home equity theft” by ruling it unconstitutional. HB 2089 ends home equity theft in Oregon, too.

The Oregon legislature ended on June 27 without addressing the deterioration of Oregon’s road system. This turned out to be a stunning defeat for the Democratic majority on House Bill 2025-B, also known as the Transportation Reinvestment Package (TRIP).

For more than a year, Democrats held several hearings promising to address the problem with a “transportation package” of reforms. They never introduced their proposal, however, until June 9, less than three weeks before the close of the legislative session. The $12 billion (official revenue impact) transportation funding proposal included a dozen new taxes and fees on everything from personal income to car tires. Not only did every Republican legislator oppose it, but key Democrats did as well. The bill never had a chance.

As time ran out, Democrats introduced a different bill HB3402, generating even more opposition. Before the legislature adjourned, not a single floor vote had been taken on the transportation package.

If Democrats want to solve the transportation finance problem, they should return to the user-pay system which has served the state well for decades. In a user-pay philosophy, transportation users pay a fee in proportion to the cost they impose on the system. If it is fair to all users, they will find political support. Voters aren’t interested in unfair and heavy-handed new transportation taxes.

New Hampshire has removed the income cap for families applying to its Education Freedom Account program, making it the first state in New England to offer school choice to all K-12 children. Governor Kelly Ayotte signed the program expansion into law on June 10. Previously, first-time applicants had to have incomes below 350% of the federal poverty level to qualify.

Total program enrollment will be limited to 10,000 students in the first year of the program’s expansion. If more students apply than there are spaces available, the program will prioritize current participants and their siblings, students with special needs, and low-income students.

New Hampshire’s four-year-old EFA program is one of the most family-empowering school choice laws in the country. EFAs can be used for a wide variety of approved education expenses. Each child’s EFA is funded by the state’s “per-pupil adequate education grant amount,” plus any additional aid that would have been allocated in a public school (for example, if the student qualified for free- or reduced-price lunch or special-needs funding or was an English-language learner). The state contracts with the nonprofit Children’s Scholarship Fund New Hampshire to administer the program.

New Hampshire follows Tennessee, Idaho, Wyoming, and Texas in expanding educational opportunities available to their children this year. It’s time Oregon gave the same chances to students here, too.

Last week, Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong announced her plan to end Jefferson High School’s “dual-enrollment policy”—which allows families in its boundaries to choose between Jefferson or nearby Grant, Roosevelt, or McDaniel high schools instead. Translation? No more school choice for families in North Portland, choices they have enjoyed since 2011. As Willamette Week’s reporter put it directly, “PPS Considers Requiring Students in Jefferson Catchment to Attend the School.”

It seems, now that Jefferson has a half-billion dollars to build a “world-class school” with capacity for 1,700 students, fewer than 400 students will cut the ribbon on opening day, according to Portland State University’s Population Research Center Enrollment Forecast for 2033-34.

Ms. Armstrong’s May 29 Memo proposes tackling the problem by ending these options for nearly 2,000 students who currently attend neighboring high schools. The School Board will study and decide on this required attendance at Jefferson by the fall of 2026.

Until now, Jefferson area families have enjoyed the most progressive policy in the city regarding school choice. Now that the $2 billion school bond has passed, they are proposing to take that choice away. This strategy is backwards, and it is bound to fail. A better option would be to research opportunities to expand school assignments throughout the district and let parents sort out which district school best serves the individual needs of their child.

Armstrong says she wants Portland to be a model for the nation. To date, 35 states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, have enacted some form of school choice legislation. Letting parents choose among district schools would be an excellent path for the future of Jefferson High School and Portland Public Schools.