In 2024, Oregonians saw a record-breaking wildfire season, the end of drug decriminalization, the start of a new form of government in Portland and more. We’ll look back on the year’s biggest news stories from the Pacific Northwest with a panel of local commentators. Lisa Bates is professor of Black Studies at Portland State University; Scott Bruun is president and CEO of the Oregon Bankers Association; and Anna Griffin is vice president of news, talk and podcasts at OPB.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. There are only 12 hours left in 2024. We’re going to use the next one to look back on some of the biggest stories of the year. There’s a lot to get to, from elections and homelessness, to the end of drug decriminalization in Oregon and a historically bad wildfire season. Luckily, I have three very smart people in studio with me to make sense of what happened. Scott Bruun is a former Republican state lawmaker, who is now the president and CEO of the Oregon Bankers Association; Lisa Bates is a professor of Black Studies at Portland State University; and Anna Griffin is OPB’s vice president of news. It’s great to see all three of you.
Scott Bruun: Good to see ya.
Anna Griffin: Hi, Dave.
Lisa Bates: Good to be here, Dave.
Miller: I want to start with Portland elections. We’re on the cusp of an entirely new form of government and an almost completely new slate of leaders.
Scott, first – why do you think Keith Wilson is Portland’s next mayor?
Bruun: I think he had a business background. He talked from a moderate perspective. I think that Portland voters were looking for something not extreme, not hyper-progressive. I mean, he is definitely left-of-center. There’s no question about that. He would tell you that. But I think Portland voters are looking for calm, consistency and good governance – things they haven’t seen for the last “fill in the blank” years. And given his background, given his temperament, I think that’s why he was elected strongly.
Miller: Lisa, Keith Wilson leveraged both anti-incumbency sentiment, and also his big central campaign promises he is going to end unsheltered homelessness quickly by setting up dozens of overnight shelters. What do you think of these shelters as policy?
Bates: As a policy matter, I think that he is gonna be deeply challenged to get this done, not only because of what I think are appropriate debates over whether this is a good idea actually to have overnight only shelters, but also the siting. I mean, one of the biggest problems that Portland has had, in terms of addressing shelter, temporary housing, supportive housing, deflection center, is NIMBYism. Nobody wants any of these buildings, any of these facilities, any of these programs anywhere near them. So, where do you place, where do you actually site these activities?
Miller: And I’m curious, Anna, what do you see as potential challenges he could face as he tries to implement just this part of his plan? I shouldn’t say “just” this part because this was his central campaign promise. If there was a policy reason that he won, as opposed to more biographical things or anti-incumbency, it was this. What do you see as the roadblocks?
Griffin: Oh, there’s so many. I think Lisa touched on one of them. Nobody wants a shelter near them, at least not as a visceral, “Yes, I want to shelter” – “Do you want a shelter next to you?” “No, of course, I don’t want that.” Well, maybe you do, you just haven’t thought about it. We know the solutions to homelessness at this point: build more housing, offer a lot of different options of shelter for a wide range of people.
Actually getting that done is exceptionally difficult. You have the siting question. You also have questions of who’s gonna to staff these shelters. The nonprofit sector is having huge staffing problems right now. Those are very hard jobs. And also, how are you gonna pay to keep these things open past the initial, “Yes, we’re all in favor of this”? It sounds great and it is a path toward a solution. But it is so much harder, particularly for a mayor, who does not have experience working in government.
Miller: Well, Scott, on that note, we’re going to have both a first-time mayor – first time elected official – and an almost entirely new city council. There are a handful of people who’ve either previously served on the council, currently served – in the case of one person – or have served in the past on other elected bodies. What kind of learning curve are you expecting from these 13 people together?
Bruun: Well, a tremendous learning curve. I mean, as somebody who was a newbie in a legislative setting, the first year or two, you feel like you’re drinking out of a fire hose. That’s the best analogy that you can come up with.
Miller: But you were one of a handful of newbies in a body of 60 in the state House. So here, we’re talking about nine of 12 who’ve never done this before, right?
Bruun: That’s exactly right. I think there’s so many paths to take about this. But yes, a huge learning curve. Getting used to each other, getting used to how governance works, getting used to the systems of government, getting used to how meetings work. I mean, it’s gonna be fun to watch, frankly. I wanna, not push back, that’s too strong of a word … but I have a little bit of disagreement from where Lisa and Anna were on this issue. That’s why you brought me on, right? To do that a little bit.
When you talk about Keith Wilson and whether or not it’s good policy to create new encampments, I don’t think it is. When people elected him, I think what people in Portland were expecting was fixing the homelessness problem, or at least beginning to fix it, not just shifting it from point A to point B. NIMBYism is a real challenge. There’s no question about that. And that will be a major stumbling block to doing this. But moving a homeless person from “homeless point A” to “homeless point B” doesn’t solve the larger problem.
Repealing Measure 110, as the legislature did this year, is a step to the solution. You have to require people to be responsible, and in too many cases they’re not. So we have rampant drug use which leads to mental health crises. Until we start fixing those issues, just because we’ve created new encampments, isn’t gonna solve the issue in the city. The people of Portland are not gonna be satisfied with that.
Miller: What’s your overall assessment, Lisa, on how the ranked choice ballot election works? This is our first time, because we’re not just talking about a different form of government, but a different form of electing government. What caught your attention about this first iteration of it?
Bates: Well, one, there was a tremendous amount of community education available to talk with people about how ranked choice voting worked. Personally, as a voter, it felt better to be able to make ranked choices, to be able to express my true preferences and not feel like I’m strategically gaming the system. We saw a great diversity of folks appear. Obviously, there was an enormous number of candidates for city council, but things shook out in really interesting ways in terms of looking at the roll through. If you went through the election results round by round, who ended up surfacing to the top, I think you could see that voters were able to make choices that they really liked.
I was particularly intrigued and delighted by the “Don’t Rank Rene” campaign, as a strategy to describe to people who were not accustomed to ranked choice voting, how to eliminate a person that you don’t want to be elected. That campaign said don’t put this man on your ballot at all because any number will give him votes. [It] seemed to be pretty effective.
Miller: But I wonder about that. I mean, Anna, the sense I get is that most of the city council winners and Keith Wilson for mayor, were the people who got the highest number of first place votes to begin with or high ranking votes. I guess I’m wondering if you have a sense yet, in this first iteration, of how much the ranked choice aspect of this actually affected the outcome of these elections?
Griffin: I think your point is really well put. That if you look at who finished first, if you are an insider in Portland politics, a lot of it was not surprising. But what you did see was so wonderfully broad and diverse in every possible definition of the term, at least within the super progressive Portland field of candidates. And that, to me, is the ultimate sign of success of this system. It was really messy. It was really confusing. A lot of groups, including OPB, did a lot of work to educate the public. People were still confused. We saw that …
Miller: And more so, in District 1, which has a much higher percentage of low income residents and People of Color.
Griffin: Yes. But if you look at the range of candidates, that is exactly what voters set out to fix in Portland, when they voted to adopt this form of elections.
Miller: Let’s turn to Measure 110. Scott, you brought it up, and it was certainly a huge change and a huge backtracking on the part of, in this case, the legislature, from something that voters themselves had done. So this was essentially the end of drug decriminalization. Democratic lawmakers recognized that Oregon’s first in the nation experiment had become very unpopular, so they led the charge to recriminalize drugs like fentanyl and meth. The governor signed the bill into law in April. It went into effect in September.
Lisa, first – what lessons did you draw from the passage and then the rollback of drug decriminalization in Oregon?
Bates: Well, Dave, you know that I am a longtime skeptic of voter ballot measures and policymaking through voter initiative. And I think there was a wave of sentiment. I love this wave. I’m in this wave of anti … using the criminal justice system or criminal legal system to try to effectuate change in serious social problems. But then, unpopularity from the same set of voters, causes the legislature to turn around and roll it back.
What we’ve actually found out since this whole thing happened is that Measure 110 had nothing to do with what went on in reality. If you actually look nationally, and as we look back with research, we’re able to see the sort of waves of opioid overdose, deaths, problems with people who are or become unhoused, these pendulum swings. They were happening around the nation with or without Measure 110.
We don’t really have a system in Oregon in place to address the very serious issue of substance use disorder. We don’t have a system in place to address severe mental illness. And we do not have enough housing for people. That’s happening in a lot of places. And if you actually look at the research, this kind of flip-flop around criminalization and decriminalization is not a key factor in the outcomes that we’re seeing.
Miller: Scott, you were saying that you were celebrating … and we shouldn’t say exactly the “end of Measure 110.” It’s the end of half of it, the half that made national or international news, the end of decriminalization.
But I’m curious, piggybacking on what Lisa was saying, can you imagine an alternative timeline where fentanyl was not just hitting the West Coast – a deadly wave of the most powerful synthetic opioid that humans have yet released on our streets – where that didn’t happen right when drugs were decriminalized and where Measure 110 was seen in a very different way. I mean, is that a scenario that you think is possible or, in your mind, was this just always bad policy?
Bruun: I mean, first of all, let’s set the table. Measure 110 was an unmitigated disaster. Most of us knew that before it was elected into law. But having said that, yes, you’re right, the drug crisis of today is not your father’s drug crisis. Twenty, 30, 40 years ago, you could overdose and people died, of course, but you didn’t have the rampant loss of life like you do with fentanyl and other drugs on the streets today. So you’re right, Dave, the timing of this could not possibly have been worse. If we had done this 30 years ago, would it have a different outcome? I don’t think so.
We wouldn’t have seen the deaths on the streets and the deaths in the tents that we’ve seen over the last couple of years in Oregon. But we still would have made Oregon a place that draws that sort of element that doesn’t want to adhere to those laws. I mean, we became, nationally, a net place to go to if you want to have no recourse for the life you want to live that’s involved with drugs, darkness and everything else. So Measure 110 was an unmitigated disaster.
To Lisa’s point, I think it’s an excellent one. However, we had a problem prior to Measure 110, so it wasn’t like everything was great, then Measure 110 came around and everything went to heck. We had an issue prior to Measure 110. Measure 110 is largely repealed for the most part, as you say. We’re still gonna have a problem after Measure 110, so we have to deal with that directly.
Miller: Well, let’s turn to what is replacing it. Lawmakers provided a little bit of money that counties can use to start up deflection programs. The details vary from county to county, but the basic idea is that police can connect drug users to treatment, instead of charging them or as an alternative to charging them with a possession crime. A majority of counties, now, have started to set up deflection programs.
Anna, we’re only a few months into this new paradigm. How would you say it’s going so far?
Griffin: So far, it’s hard to compare how things are going right now with how things were going under Measure 110, because it was a bit of an unmitigated disaster. We are seeing some counties really embrace the opportunity to steer people out of the criminal justice system, which I think is the overarching philosophy that even backers of Measure 110 originally would embrace.
The problem is, yet again, we have a system where how you’re treated by law enforcement, by the criminal justice system, what kind of support you get for recovering from your addiction – which is a mental health challenge, not a character defect – depends largely on what zip code you live in or where you get stopped. And that is just not a long term sustainable policy.
Miller: I’m curious, Lisa, what are you gonna be paying attention to that would let you know whether or not the new deflection system under Measure 110 is working? How will you decide for yourself that we’re moving in a better direction?
Bates: For one, I will actually utilize social science research that allows me to compare, outside of what I look at when I’m riding the bus downtown. Measure 110 is only understood as an unmitigated disaster if you never leave Oregon. All over this country, there is an opioid crisis and there is a housing crisis everywhere. And across states and localities that have very different approaches to how the criminal legal system interacts with those two factors – not having anywhere to live and having a drug addiction or substance use disorder – is Measure 110, isn’t it? It’s not what caused or created this problem. It’s a thing that happened at the same time as two very serious crises that are happening across this nation. We are particularly affected because we have a very serious and long-term housing crisis in Oregon.
I’m not in addiction science, so I understand, my learning is that we are in a state around opioids that is more physically … dependence-creating set of drugs, which is very bad. But I also just have to think that it’s really hard to address substance use disorder as a mental health problem, as a physical health problem, if you don’t have anywhere to live. So I will be looking at our bigger systems overall, to try to understand how we are delivering housing that can be lived in by the now 22,000 unhoused people that we have in the state of Oregon.
Miller: I wanna turn more squarely to homelessness in a little bit. But I want to turn now to the potential impacts that a second Trump presidency could have specifically on Oregon, starting with his central campaign promises: mass deportations and major crackdowns on immigration. Scott, what are you expecting the new administration will actually try to do?
Bruun: From an Oregon perspective, I think there’s really two primary things to consider when you think about Trump. The first thing is just that – he’s made immigration or stopping illegal immigration the central pillar of his campaign. I think there’s a lot of worry in Oregon that there’s going to be these mass roundups. I mean, he talked about that to a degree. That’s hard to actually see happening in the way it was described in the campaign.
What I think you’re going to have with the Trump presidency is certainly expelling, if you will, deporting criminals that have become criminals within the country. So they’re here illegally, that’s the first step, but committed some crime after that. You’re gonna see those people booted out of the country pretty quick. And I think that’s a positive thing. What I don’t think you’re going to see is a mass roundup and deportation of families. I just can’t imagine that happening. I do see much stronger border enforcement, but that’s, in my way [of thinking], almost the lesser of the two things to consider.
I think the biggest thing for Oregon to consider with the Trump presidency is, what Oregon is gonna do in response? As soon as Trump was elected, two days later, you saw California say “We’re gonna have a special session to kind of defend ourselves against Trump.” I was at a post-election Democratic fundraiser a couple of weeks ago, listening to the folks talk about what we’re gonna have to do to protect ourselves against Trump. And my worry is that there’s going to be this notion in Oregon that we have to super-regulate ourselves, to super-increase our expenditures, to super-increase our taxation, to somehow defend ourselves against the Trump administration. I think that that’s overall going to be bad policy for Oregon.
Miller: I’m not totally sure what exactly you’re describing, Scott, in terms of what the Democrats at this meeting were saying they would be spending this money on. But Anna, Oregon already has a sanctuary law. Just remind us what it says, in terms of what people, at basically any government level in Oregon, cannot do?
Griffin: Essentially, it says state and local law enforcement cannot work with the federal government to go after people whose only “crime” (I’m putting that in air quotes) is that they’re in the country undocumented.
Miller: So, Lisa, it does make me wonder what kind of leverage the second Trump administration might use to get sheriff’s offices, or police departments, or K-12 school districts to take part, in some way, in information sharing or to aid in deportations. Maybe, if Scott’s saying mass deportations is not going to be the accurate way to describe what they end up doing, but if there’s any teeth at all to these campaign promises, it seems that they’re gonna need to rely on some kind of participation with people within states – the exact kind of participation that state law prohibits. So I’m just curious where that leaves everybody?
Bates: I think, in some ways, it’s important to think through how any promises of Trump or the Trump administration might get enacted through the institutional legal policy channels that would be required. It’s also really hard to know, is it likely or not likely? I don’t feel confident to say they’re not going to try to do mass family deportations. And in the past two weeks, there’s been a complete meltdown of the tech-right and the MAGA-right over which immigrants we were talking about to begin with, in this fight over H-1B, skilled worker visas, student visas, versus undocumented immigrants. So I don’t really know how any of that is going to shake out.
I would imagine that there would be a couple of possible avenues. One is simply speaking directly into the ears of Trump-aligned local officials, sheriffs being nationally one of those groups of people who tend to be heavily aligned, or other officials around. Whether that’s DOC staff, other police officers, or corps officers who will simply ignore Oregon’s law. Or it would be punitive withholding of federal funding for cities and states that refuse to participate.
Miller: Scott, I want to go back to what you’re saying before. So you were at some Democratic fundraiser where people were talking about how we prepare for the second Trump presidency. Portland streets have been notably quiet since the election. Clearly, the first time around, that was not the case – from the very beginning of the administration, for most of the four years of it, with peaks and valleys and some enormous peaks later.
But how do you explain the quiet? And this is not just about Portland. This has been nationwide, but let’s just stick regionally. Why do you think things have been so quiet in terms of visible protests?
Bruun: Yeah, I wish I had a perfect answer for that because as most people, including myself, expected … I think I was like most going into the election night, not having a clue how it was gonna end up the next day and assuming, like a lot of people did, that it could be five, six, seven days before we had a result …
Miller: And chaos, no matter what, you were assuming?
Bruun: Well, no, not necessarily. I didn’t think there would be chaos if Harris had won. I did think there would be chaos, I was convinced there would be chaos, if Trump had won. But I didn’t expect it to be the next day and maybe that was part of it too. Maybe it’s such an overwhelming electoral and actual vote victory that it caught people by surprise. And I applaud the city governance for doing this – it was their strong warnings against doing something and the preparation for that. That preparation wasn’t around in 2016 when we first saw that.
But you’re right, it wasn’t just Portland; it was nationwide. There just was maybe fatigue. I mean, maybe that’s the lesser answer but maybe the accurate answer. There was just fatigue against that sort of pushback that we’ve seen in the past.
Bates: Well, I think I’m probably the person in the room most likely to be on a march or know about a massive protest from the left. I would say that the tactic is in question. Like, what’s the point? And I would say that there was a lot of mass protest in the streets in 2024. It was people protesting genocide in Gaza. And there was really no policy change that’s happened from that, not just across the United States, hundreds of thousands of people out at a time, but around the world. So I think there’s just a lot of conversation about what is the point of that? Is that actually a thing that does anything or works in any particular kind of way? So a lot of rethinking about strategy and tactics.
Miller: So let’s turn, as I mentioned, to the United States Supreme Court ruling that came out of a Grants Pass case: Grants Pass v. Johnson. It overturned a six-year-old precedent from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Lisa, as our housing professor for a long time, can you remind us the basics of what the Supreme Court found?
Bates: So, basically, we have been operating under a previous precedent that says that as long as there are not sufficient sheltering spaces for people who are homeless, they can’t be punished or criminalized for sleeping outdoors. Where else are you going to go? So, particularly on the West Coast, that’s been a high impact issue because shelter capacity versus homeless population doesn’t match up.
Grants Pass, Oregon went to the Supreme Court, basically to argue to release them from that precedent. [There were] pretty extensive arguments and conversation about what does it mean to be sleeping out of doors? Under what circumstances could you be sleeping out of doors? What other options are available? But in the end, this new ruling does allow localities, states, etc. to ban camping, sleeping out of doors, or have punishment. A number of our local jurisdictions had laws in place to go into effect with that ruling.
Miller: And one of the points that some of the conservative justices made in oral argument is that Oregon already has a statewide law on the books now regarding local anti-camping rules. They were basically saying, “Hey, we think states should be the ones who figure this out instead of federal judges. And look, Oregon already has a law on the books to say that the restrictions have to be objectively reasonable, laws have to be objectively reasonable.” We can talk about what that means in a second.
But is it fair to say that, at least so far, not that much has changed in Oregon as a result of this ruling?
Griffin: Yeah, we’ve seen some communities move toward stronger camping bans. But the reality is unless you have places for people to go, a ban doesn’t really do very much. It just moves people from one spot to another, just moves the problem. And there are some who would [say], “I don’t want to look at it, so get it out of my eyesight.” That’s fine. But in terms of long-term solutions, common sense is you can’t ban something without saying, “Here’s where you can sleep.”
Miller: Scott, as I mentioned, Oregon’s law says that camping regulations cities use have to be “objectively reasonable.” But the law – and this was Tina Kottek’s bill not that long ago – doesn’t define what “objectively reasonable” means. So a small number of cases have actually been heard so far, for people at the state level to define it.
Do you expect Oregon lawmakers to actually take up this law, to amend this law in the coming session? Some people are talking about that, but it’s not clear to me how much movement there is.
Bruun: You know, sometimes in statute, having a little bit of wiggle room for interpretation is a good thing. Sometimes our laws are too black and white, and don’t look down on the case by case situation. Here’s the complete opposite example of that, where the lack of clarity in the law has created significant problems. So you’re right, with the Grants Pass decision from the Supreme Court, a lot of this is observational, but I would argue that things haven’t really changed in Oregon that much. Maybe a degree around the edges but the larger problem remains. And in cities and counties, their hands are very much tied by state statute which doesn’t give them clear directions.
So, to get to your point, when they convene in January for the 2025 session, clarity around that statute is super important. Legislators are hearing right now from their counties and their cities saying, “Give us a direction because we can’t operate under the current law.”
Miller: Lisa, would you like lawmakers to define what “objectively reasonable” means, as opposed to judges?
Bates: No, I would like lawmakers to capacitate a system for housing people. I would love for that to happen.
Truly, something I would commend listeners to engage with – ProPublica has a series about the things that they’ve lost, where people who are unhoused speak about, write about the objects that have been taken from them in encampment sweeps. Everything from birth certificates, family photos, critical pieces of their humanity, things that help them function on a day-to-day basis, resources that they need.
I just truly struggle with where we’re at, the whole West Coast. I mean, we are struggling with a very serious and deep crisis, and the entire framing of that crisis appears to be how I, a person who is comfortably housed, feel when seeing someone on the street. And I think it’s OK to feel distressed or disgusted at times, grossed out or scared. But it’s not OK to operationalize that into policy, because I can guarantee that the person who’s sleeping outside is experiencing many times greater distress, fear and upset than anyone who is living in a home is feeling.
I am not having a livability crisis because people are sleeping on the street in my community. The person who’s sleeping out there is having a livability crisis. And I think if we can reorient ourselves toward that conversation, then we can start to move toward a more sensible sort of policymaking.
Griffin: I was gonna say that the conversation we’re not actually having is what is the role of government? What is the role of government? People should not be sleeping on our streets ...
Miller: We are having that conversation. We’ve been having a version of that for 15 years, of how much should we put into shelters as opposed to housing vouchers? How do we get people permanently into some kind of stable housing? I mean, aren’t we having those conversations?
Griffin: Well, the conversation we’re not having is, is the role of the government to look at these problems, shrug and come up with new policy experimentations? Or, is the role of the government to find the money and fix a broken tax system, so that they’re actually providing shelter beds, rehab beds, places for people to be taken, mental health facilities? It all gets back to capacity. It all gets back to having the services to help our most vulnerable.
Bruun: But I also think, though, we tend to look at this as a housing crisis. I mean, you frame the question as a housing crisis. I would suggest that there’s two issues going on. We certainly have a housing crisis in the state of Oregon, but we also have a drug and mental health crisis in Oregon – and they are not necessarily the same thing.
My child has a housing crisis because even though she has a full-time job, she can’t afford a house. So she lives with us. The challenge from a governmental perspective is that we have horrible land use laws that were completely progressive 50 years ago and are now completely regressive. We have zoning considerations and we have artificial constraints. So that drives up the price of housing. But to say that the drug abuse and the exploding mental health crisis is necessarily a homelessness issue, it’s not. It’s a separate issue. There’s crossover, 100%, because somebody who is addicted to drugs and doesn’t have a place to go ends up on the street. But they’re not the same thing.
Bates: So there’s one group of people for whom the United States has, at this point, essentially ended homelessness, and that is veterans. Veterans include people who have very serious drug abuse and addiction problems; people with severe mental illness; people of all races and genders; people with families; people with all different kinds of work history, criminal system contact, convictions, history. And yet, we have managed to end their homelessness because, collectively, there was a decision to have the political will that this group of people was deserving of our help.
Now, I don’t question that. They were deserving of our help. But when I say we need to reframe the conversation, it’s that we need to reframe a conversation of the choices that we’re making, these policy choices about the role of government. They are constantly stuck in our idea that some people don’t “deserve” those things. The reality is that the tax kicker that we’ll receive this biennium would house every homeless person in Oregon individually for four years.
Miller: We’re gonna go faster now because there’s still a lot of stuff to get to, including the gigantic budget crunches all around the state – cities, counties, K-12 school districts, colleges, universities, all facing their own versions of the same basic situation. There’s some overlap, some individual peculiarities, whether it’s a community college or a large city. But basically, they’re all facing major deficits that are leading to either major layoffs or cuts.
Anna, first – can you just give us a scale of what we’re talking about?
Griffin: Oh, we’re talking millions and millions and millions of dollars. We’re talking a $27 million gap in the city of Portland, $14 million in Bend, $8 to $10 million in Eugene. It is every major community, many small communities around Oregon, most public school systems, the universities, the community colleges. We have a significant problem paying for basic public services.
Miller: Scott, what’s behind this?
Bruun: Well, I’ll tell you what’s not behind this. What’s not behind this is we’re under taxed, but that will be the conversation that we have in the legislative session, that the city of Portland will have, that the school districts will have. They’ll say we have inadequate supplies. They won’t talk about administrative bloat, but they will talk about the inadequate resources and they’ll say the only solution to this is tax increases. So that’ll be something that some of us have to fight pretty mightily next year.
The reality is we’re not under taxed. I mean according to the Tax Foundation, we’re 49th in the nation when it comes to business taxes; we’re 40th in the nation when it comes to individual taxes; we’re 30th …
Miller: When you say those numbers, you’re saying only one state is worse, has higher taxes?
Bruun: Only one is worse than us. Higher, exactly. Just take the city of Portland example – because Anna mentioned that – it has the second highest marginal income tax rate in the nation, second only to New York City. But the difference is the top rate in New York City kicks in when an individual taxpayer makes $25 million a year. In Portland, the top margin tax rate kicks in when an individual taxpayer makes $125,000 a year. So we don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.
Miller: But could you briefly say more about the spending because you’ve made your point about revenue. So what are you saying we’re spending money on that we should not be? And when I say “we,” I mean school districts, community colleges, universities, counties, cities.
Bruun: I know that we’re in a little bit of a glut with some of the smaller colleges because they’ve seen a flattening of the kids coming in. There was – not a baby boom – a “baby bust” 18 to 20 years ago. So some of the smaller colleges, you’re seeing that. But what colleges aren’t prepared to do is address the administrative bloat that has creeped in. I mean, when all of us went to college, we remember a much different college environment than exists right now. I’m probably the oldest one here. When I went to school at Oregon, it was $600 a term. That was a long time ago. But you look right now, a term at Oregon costs somewhere close to $4,000.
Yes, there’s inflation but not that sort of massive inflation. And what’s that paying for? It’s paying for a whole bunch of things: facilities, athletic facilities, a lot of nice stuff that isn’t necessary. It isn’t a necessary part of education, including staff, non-essential staff, all those sorts of things. So I think that’s the first step. But school districts, colleges, they’re not really willing to take that step. They’re first going to go – and I understand this – to the public bodies, to the policy makers, saying “We’re not able to pay our bills. Can you give us more money?”
Miller: Lisa, you’re in a funny position here as a professor at PSU, one of the flagship universities in the state and, I think, the poster child right now for a public university that is dealing with this, much more so than the U of O or OSU. How do you think about this issue writ large, as opposed to the painful reality that you’re dealing with among your colleagues right now?
Bates: Right. Well, one thing that’s really important for folks to understand is that the state universities are barely funded by the state. We have a state name, but tuition is up because tuition is what pays all the bills. The state does not pay. We’re ranked 44th in the nation, to talk about national rankings on higher education funding.
But I mentioned the kicker a moment ago. We’ve had $11 billion of kicker, because we have this bizarre system in which the estimated revenue and the estimated budget need to align within a certain percentage. We have a recently departed state economist, who vastly underestimated revenue and now works at a hard libertarian anti-tax, anti-government think tank. We have a new state economist who’s revising the system and methods because there is a lot of tax revenue here. There is money to pay for things. We aren’t choosing to use it because we’ve chosen a tax revolt. The city of Portland, the metro area, has money that it struggles to spend – from the Portland Clean Energy Fund, the supportive housing services, taxes – because we don’t have a very effective system to distribute and deliver money into what is also a very depleted ecosystem of organizations that could be using that money. Most stuff is handled through contracts and external arrangements.
So I think we have a pretty serious problem of state capacity. I, in a backwards way, maybe agree with Scott. This is not really a time … it’s not really a matter of raising taxes. It is a matter of addressing, very differently, how our tax system works and functions.
Griffin: We have a structural problem, not a spending problem, not a revenue problem. You just cited the Portland Clean Energy Fund. You’ve cited the Metro Supportive Housing Measure. I pay an arts tax. How many other separate taxes do I pay for basic public services? And I’m very excited about my kicker check, right? As a selfish person who has things I want to spend money on, yay kicker! The problem is our tax system is just insane and broken. We don’t know what we’re spending money on.
Bruun: I 100% agree with Anna. We might disagree on what the proper tax structure looks like, but our tax structure disincentivizes growth, disincentivizes job creation, disincentivizes investment. And because of that, the growth in Oregon, that we could grow our way out of some of these problems as opposed to having to cut or tax our way out of it, we just can’t achieve that.
Can I quickly defend the kicker though?
[Laughter]
Miller: You can, yes. I think Anna just did, in her own way.
Bruun: She did, from a personal perspective, and I appreciate her personal perspective. Let me give you a more public reason to defend the kicker. The kicker is the only tool in Oregon that puts a cap around out-of-control spending. So again, the legislature, every two years … the kicker doesn’t doesn’t impede what they do. They create their budget based on the revenues they’re projecting. As long as we can remember, it’s been a growth budget. The kicker is above and beyond that. But think about it. If, as Lisa is saying, they pulled it in and started adding that to the government.
Just last year, for example, there was a (I think 5.3%, I might be wrong) but over $5 billion in kicker payments went out. If that were actually pulled in and used by the state government, then that becomes the baseline the next two years out. Think about all the kickers over the years. What happens when, as inevitably happens, there is a downturn and then we have these massive promises, these massive obligations that we have no way in the world that we can actually meet?
Miller: I don’t think anyone, seriously, thinks that getting rid of the personal income tax kicker is on the table for 2025. So we can move on from there.
2024 was the worst wild wildfire season on record, in terms of total acreage burned. [It was] so bad that Governor Tina Kotek called lawmakers into Salem earlier this month for a one-day special session to backfill money that had already been spent on wildfire response, to pay bills. There is likely to be a fight in the upcoming legislature over how to fund Oregon’s increasingly expensive wildfire seasons. Proposed solutions include dipping into the state’s Lottery Fund or the Transient Lodging Tax, taxing the private timber industry or just using the General Fund to cover these larger costs.
I’m curious, Lisa, how would you like to see the state approach this? This is not going away and it’s likely going to get worse.
Bates: Well, in keeping with my principles, I actually think policymakers and people who are in administration are the ones to determine the source of this funding. I don’t think that’s the job for me, as a person out here paying my taxes. It’s something that needs to get done.
I will say this on behalf of the Oregon land use systems, that our land use system and its use of urbanized and non-urbanized areas is the thing that is protecting Oregonians from wildfire. It is the thing that makes it possible for us to have homeowners insurance. There are other states in the country where people are being priced out of housing because their homes are in way too much jeopardy from global-warming-induced natural disasters. And wildfires are one of them.
Miller: That is happening in Southern Oregon as well. We’re not immune from that.
Bates: We’re not immune from it, but we’re certainly protected much better than places where we saw entire towns burned down in California in the past five years, due to wildfire.
Miller: Scott, this is related to what we’ve seen in terms of wildfire but less about wildfire response funding. For decades, there’s been a seemingly intractable debate between environmentalists and the timber industry, basically over just how much logging should happen in the state. Are wildfires changing the political calculus? Are they leading to a different political consensus about, say, thinning operations or prescribed burns?
Bruun: That’s such a good question. Yes, because you look at the increased wildfire risk and the increased wildfires happening – I think it was 2 million acres last year, or this year, or something like that. Certainly, part of it is hotter, dryer temperatures. I don’t think anybody denies that. But you also have to look at forest management. Where the disconnect has been between the environmental community and the timber community has been over forest management. Where you don’t see these fires happening, or at least not happening to the degree, the heat and the damage, are on private lands. Private lands are well managed. The timber is well managed. The timber is very healthy.
You see this happening mostly on public lands. So yeah, I think that has to be part of the conversation. To come full circle, when we’re looking at it from a legislative perspective next year, yes, the cost to fight wildfires has gone up dramatically because the size and the duration of the season has gone up dramatically. But I think it has to happen at the federal level too, maybe even more at the federal level, but on the table, there has to be some serious conversation about improved forest management.
Miller: We have a little bit of time left. I want to get to sports before we say goodbye to you.
Some quick hits here. Anna, could major league baseball actually come to Portland?
Griffin: Yes.
Miller: Do you really believe that? Or are you just saying that because you love baseball like I do?
Griffin: I mean, practically speaking, it is an uphill climb, Dave.
Miller: Is there enough corporate money in Oregon to sustain a major league baseball team?
Bates: The Diamond Project keeps saying the money is there. They are not saying who the money is coming from, but I am a believer, Dave. Yes.
Miller: OK, you surprised me. I like being surprised.
But there is a team that’s coming, whether or not baseball is. A WNBA expansion team is coming to Portland. It was yanked away from basketball fans and then this year, it turned out it’s actually going to happen. Lisa, what’s this going to mean?
Bates: Oh, it’s really exciting. Portland is a women’s sports town and the WNBA has been just really thrilling. There’s a lot of more exciting players coming up: Paige Bueckers, Juju Watkins. And I think that it’s going to do super well here. Even the MNBA fans have to admit that the W is where it’s at.
Miller: And then Scott, the Ducks – your Ducks. You mentioned going to the U of O earlier. They’re gonna play in the Rose Bowl tomorrow, their first season in the Big 12, the #1 college football team in the country, undefeated.
I looked back, because my memory was that last year when you were on this end-of-year wrap up, the big sports news was the end of the Pac-12. And I looked to the transcript and this is what you said: you were “absolutely heartbroken” about the end of the Pac-12. And the way college sports – and really when we say this, we’re talking about 90% of football, 10% basketball – [had] been turned into semi-professional sports in college because of so many aspects in the last couple of years in terms of changes to NCAA rules.
Has the success of the Ducks blunted your heartbreak or your outrage?
Bruun: It hasn’t blunted my heartbreak. I remain as heartbroken today about the Pac-12 as I was a year ago.
Miller: Really?
Bruun: This is our home conference. I’m happy to see that it looks like there’s a little bit of lifeblood coming back into the Pac-12 with the teams coming in. I lose count. I think we’re up to a Pac-8 or Pac-9. I lose track. I want the Pac-12 to succeed.
Having said that, am I delighted about the Ducks? Absolutely. I mean, it wasn’t the Ducks who led leaving the Pac-12. They felt that their hands were tied and they had no other choice. USC is the team I want to loathe because they’re the ones who kind of led the exodus. And it was exactly that – it was all about money and professionalism. It wasn’t about team loyalties or conference loyalties. Having said that, the Ducks have done extraordinarily well. The Rose Bowl tomorrow against Ohio State, I’m not gonna predict a score. But “Go Ducks!”
Miller: Let’s go around the table. I’m curious, first of all, what story you think didn’t get enough attention this year? Anna, what do you choose?
Griffin: The continuing slow death of local journalism in Oregon and the impacts on how we feel about democracy.
Miller: Lisa?
Bates: Environmental impacts from data centers, with the rise of our reliance on so-called AI and Oregon’s data center economic development incentives that are taking up our water and power.
Miller: Scott?
Bruun: Measure 118, which was a colossal whacking of a new tax proposal that I’m very happy about. But then, at the same time, speaking of elections, the fact that once again Oregon is an outlier compared to the rest of the nation. Or at least Multnomah County, King County, San Francisco County and Los Angeles County are outliers compared to the rest of the nation.
Miller: All right. And then one prediction that you feel confident making for 2025? Scott, I’ll stick with you.
Bruun: Goodness gracious. The one prediction I have is that the 2025 legislative session will be absolutely unpredictable. [Laughter]
Bates: I think actually, following on Anna’s note about local news, we’re going to continue to be in an environment of very extreme conspiracy thinking, strange rabbit holes that people are getting down into, misinformation, and a need to really intensify our critical thinking.
Griffin: The Portland Trail Blazers will continue to be fun to follow … and actually terrible at basketball. [Laughter]
Miller: It is so much fun having all three of you here. Thank you so much.
Bruun: Thanks, Dave.
Griffin: Thanks, Dave.
Bates: Happy New Year!
Miller: That’s Scott Bruun, Lisa Bates and Anna Griffin. Happy New Year to all of you.
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