Measure 26-261

What is it?

It’s a five year levy, funding the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) Library, Museum, and Educational programs.

The levy is $0.05 per $1,000 of assessed value on your property tax. For the median homeowner, that ends up being ~$13 per year, give or take, which nets the OHS ~$4M a year, roughly 30% of their total budget.

On your property tax statement, you’ll see how much you pay under this line item:

MULT CO HIST SOCIETY LOC OPT

Quick primer on the Oregon Historical Society:

• Museum: The thing most people think about when they think about the OHS. It’s literally, the Oregon Historical Society Museum on the Park blocks across from the Portland Art Museum. Three floors of permanent and rotating collections. Open seven days a week (10am - 5pm; noon - 5pm on Sunday). $14 admission for adults, free for Multnomah County residents (thanks to this levy)

• Library: unheralded, but arguably the most important part of OHS, this holds the world’s largest collection of Oregon-related stuff. Manuscripts, photographs, maps, personal papers, etc. Free to use, and I imagine great if you’re a historian, journalist, genealogist, or someone who otherwise needs access to Oregon-related ephemera. (It’s part of the same building as the museum but you sign in at the front desk and go to a different floor.)

• Education Programs: mostly, but not entirely, programs, tours, and free admission for K-12 students. This also includes curriculum development, classroom resources, the Oregon Encyclopedia, a lecture series, and some other stuff.

Why is it on the ballot?

This is the fourth time the OHS levy has been on the ballot.

The first time was in 2010, which, let’s be honest, was 100% a bailout. The OHS had been struggling through the 2000s, with financial difficulties, churn through multiple executive directors, layoffs, and more. They received some temporary funds from the State in 2007 and 2011 to help stabilize operations.

Between the 2010 levy, the 2011 state money, and a new Executive Director in 2011 (Kerry Tymchuk), the OHS found their footing and has since been pretty stable.

Voters renewed the levy in 2016 and 2021 with increasing margins each time. It’s now up for a fourth time.

Like previous years, it’s a five year levy and the rate has continued to stay consistent over its life (5 cents per $1,000 in assessed value). Assessed home values gradually rise year over year, which means voter funds to the OHS have risen in nominal terms (raw dollars) over the last 15 years. However, in real terms (i.e. adjusted for inflation), the levy’s purchasing power for OHS has slightly eroded over that same time frame.

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Diving down some rabbit holes

For such a simple levy, I kept finding interesting nuggets to tug at.

The funding model is weird

A local, reoccurring levy to fund regular operations is not normal, for a historical society or really most any public good of this form (museums, zoos, etc.)

What would be a normal funding model?

• Private non-profit — usually this is a mix of gate revenue (ticket sales) and private philanthropy. Good examples here would be both the Portland Art Museum, and OMSI.

• State Agency — Most states’ historical societies are actually state agencies or state trustees, where the state appropriates money from their budget to support ongoing operations. Washington, Colorado, and Idaho all work like this.

• The Oregon Zoo is kind of a hybrid of the above, but is probably closer to “state trustee”. A lot of their funding comes from gate revenue but money also is appropriated out of Metro’s general fund. They do receive capital investments money from bonds / levies, but this is not uncommon. They don’t receive operations funding through their bond.

OHS is based in Multnomah County but its charter is statewide. The math here gets a bit complicated but I would argue this funding model is more regressive than other local rags think.

Accountability isn’t there

All those other state trustee agencies? The state gets a say! Quite directly, they appoint members to the organizations’ boards, usually about half of the board.

Not so with the OHS. OHS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dating to 1898. The board is self-perpetuating where trustees nominate trustees. Trustees are volunteers, and they are ratified during OHS’ annual membership meeting. Multnomah county has zero seats on the board. Neither does the state of Oregon.1

What we do have is the “Levy Oversight Committee,” which exists to ensure our levy is being well spent. The LOC meets twice a year. I don’t have transcripts from most of the meetings but I skimmed the one for Dec. 2024, as well as the minutes for several other meetings. There are a lot of status updates, but folks do ask tough questions. Yet, even they seem to recognize they can’t do much if they don’t like the answers.

To quote Bill Bennetts (LOC member) directly:

I don't think this committee has any real power. All we can do is encourage more money going to the smaller organizations.

He’s right. The OHS can simply do what they want with our money. An opportunity for misaligned incentives.

And yet… OHS appears decently well-run, financially

Prior to the first levy, OHS was clearly in crisis. I don’t know if it was the money or the new Executive Director who steadied the ship. Based on my experience with non-profits, I’m inclined to credit the leadership, though certainly the additional funds made the job a heck of a lot easier.

I feel like many times when I deep dive on a bureau or institution, I find some skeletons in the closet. But OHS? They seem to be spending our money (mostly) responsibly. Their audits have come back clean and their financials look ok.

In the ~15 years since the levy began, revenue has outpaced expenses, net assets have doubled. Pretty solid!

On the mission side, it’s quite a bit less convincing

In advance of this piece, I visited the OHS, for the first time in over a decade. I thought it professional and well laid out. I learned a few things. It was… fine? But I can’t say I’m looking to make a return trip, despite the fact that it’s free for me. I’m hesitant to draw conclusions from my own experience, though, so I looked at the numbers, in a very obvious place

The 2021 ballot measure language:

Approximately 70,000 visitors use these facilities a year, including about 8,000 schoolchildren

The 2026 ballot measure language:

Each year, approximately 40,000 people visit OHS’s Portland facilities, including about 5,000 schoolchildren.

I know downtown Portland has had a rough go in terms of foot traffic, but a 40% decline is something to be concerned about. This may be an artifact of covid or any number of other factors so it’s not a total red flag but it’s a real concern.

Moreover, it’s a concern I haven’t seen addressed by OHS leadership nor a question I’ve seen asked (at least publicly), by the Levy Oversight Committee. Again, a moment where I worry about (the lack of) accountability.

How am I voting?

The case for is pretty straightforward: the OHS is a shared good, a cultural institution, and the organization has been responsible for our money. Oregon has a messy history and the OHS, via the levy, makes that history accessible for us all. In short: it’s 13 bucks. Less than a food cart sandwich these days. Every time the levy comes up, more people vote for it2. History is good for the soul; just pay the damn thing.

The case against is a little more structural: funding models, accountability, and so forth.

I was legitimately on the fence until this mailer graced my stoop:

The eagle-eyed reader will notice it’s paid for by Oregon History PAC. Who funds the Oregon History PAC? It’s entirely funded by the Oregon Historical Society! If my math is right, ~$65k for the 2021 levy cycle, ~$50k for the 2026 cycle. No grassroots or philanthropic backing at all.

So a taxpayer-funded organization is paying the equivalent of an Associate Curator’s salary… to run a campaign… to renew its tax-payer funds.

That’s not a crime. It’s not even that unusual. But the levy renewal passed with 71% of the vote in 2016, with 78% of the vote in 2021. What are we even doing here?

If Mortlandia has an ethos it’s probably something like:

1. Cities are generational projects, and we should think on generational timescales.

2. Structural change is hard, but necessary.

3. Everything has trade-offs, it’s best to be clear-eyed about them.

Let’s solve this structural problems before it becomes a crisis. OHS is well-capitalized right now. Let’s push them toward a better, more sustainable, more accountable model while they have the leadership in place equipped to navigate the transition. In the short term, that will mean MultCo residents paying full fare when they go. In the long term, it means OHS will have to partner with the state (like most other historical societies) or find more varied sources of private funding (like the art museum literally across the street).

I’m voting ‘No’ on Measure 26-261.

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Follow up to a silly post-script

Predictions for Measure 120 (Gas Tax)

• The Oregonian: No — confidence, 60%

  • Actual: No

• Portland Mercury: Yes — confidence, 90%.

  • Actual: Yes

• Willamette Week: Yes (but grumpily, with caveats) — confidence, 70%

  • Actual: No (but grumpily, with caveats)

Predictions for Measure 26-261 (Oregon Historical Society Levy)

• The Oregonian: Yes — confidence, 90%

  • Actual: No

• Portland Mercury: Yes — confidence, 95%

  • Actual: Yes

• Willamette Week: Yes — confidence, 75%

  • Actual: Yes

Turns out I’ve poorly calibrated to the Oregonian’s editorial board.

A Pencil among us

First, some quick background:

There’s a write-in candidate for governor that has recently gained some real traction: a talking pencil. No, I am not joking. From the NPR article about them:

Picture a smiling office supply store mascot: Pointy lead tip just above its bespectacled face. Big yellow barrel of a body. Pink eraser down around the knees.

That’s Pencil, Oregon’s most unlikely gubernatorial candidate this year.

And when I say “recently gained traction” I mean, two people reached out to me about Pencil on Monday.1 To give you some context, unless Taylor Swift or the Mountain Goats drop a new album, I never have multiple folks reach out to me about the same thing. For better or worse, Pencil’s gone viral in my little neck of the woods.

So… I reached out. And Pencil’s campaign manager, J. Schuberth was nice enough to respond. I interviewed them yesterday.

Needless to say, this all came together very fast. I’ve posted the full interview below and I really recommend reading the whole thing, especially if you’re invested in K-12 educational outcomes, particularly elementary-aged reading. But, in the interest of readers who don’t have that kind of time, I wanted to put some of my key takeaways at the top.

• Pencil is legit. I don’t mean legit as in “is a real candidate.” That they are not. What I mean is they know the problem, and the solutions, quite well. I am decently versed on the latest educational performance data and educational best practices and they know this stuff cold, way better than I do.

• Pencil is right. In advance of the election, I don’t have time to fact check every one of Pencil’s claims. However, I can say:

  • Pencil is right that Oregon schools are performing poorly. 46th in 4th grade reading; 48th in 4th grade math. But it gets worse, adjusted for demographics, we are 50th in both. 50th as in last, in the country. 8th grade scores are better, but not by much.

  • This is partly a money problem, but it’s not only a money problem. Depending on the source, we are somewhere between 19th and 22nd in per student spending.

  • These are bad stats! We should be ashamed of these stats! We should be trying to fix them!

• Pencil believes the problem is fixable. They are probably right. A lot of ink has been spilled about the “Mississippi miracle”, where Mississippi turned around their poorly ranked reading scores over the couple of decades, through a combination of phonics, teacher instruction, early intervention, and 3rd grade retention. A lot of states have adopted some or all of these strategies and seen meaningful improvements

• Pencil is genuine. They say they’re just a dyslexic adult, with a dyslexic kid, who is simply pissed at how many of our kids can’t read. They also say this campaign is entirely self-funded. These claims look legit.

  • No one besides J has funded Pencil PAC, and they’ve put in ~$24k. Real money, but a reasonable sum for a well-resourced person with a passion project.

  • I’ve scoured FEC.gov and the dark money trackers and all of J’s donations match that of a lifelong democrat2.

• That last part is important, because Pencil blames Kotek, and the broader democratic coalition (legislators, ODE, the teachers unions), for their inaction.

  • For those who remember the Obama-era Education Reform wars, this passes the smell test. Teachers' unions were the primary opposition to high-stakes testing and centralized accountability. (Whether you think that was principled resistance or cynical self-interest probably tracks with how you felt about the education reform movement broadly.)

• The conceit (of a talking pencil) has got people talking. I respect the hell out of that in this attention economy.

So if you’re also unhappy with the trajectory of Oregon schools, consider the Pencil when you vote this week.

But first, a brief interlude with a real teacher

After I spoke with Pencil, I also talked on background3 with a teacher who works at one of the Oregon schools that is over-performing, identified as a “Bright Spot” by education outlet The 74 Million:

We calculated each state’s expected reading proficiency rate, based on its local poverty rate, and compared that to its actual third grade reading scores. This methodology helped us identify schools that are beating the odds and successfully teaching kids to read… These exceptional schools are in the top 5% of their state in terms of outscoring their expected reading proficiency.

I don’t want to over-leverage on one data point — test scores can be noisy. But this school has a pretty good reputation by word of mouth in the Portland community, so I’m inclined to think there’s something there when the data and anecdotes match.

What are they doing right? Interestingly enough, the teacher wasn’t sure! But, some things worth noting from this teacher:

• PPS has really shifted towards a “Science of Reading” approach, with cross-school SoR study groups in the last 2-3 years and with a district-wide, district-mandated curriculum, comprised of:

  • Fundations for phonics, K through ~3rd grade

  • Heggerty for phonemic awareness, K and 1st (auditory skills)

  • Wit & Wisdom for English Language Arts, for K through 5.

• There’s strong pressure from the district to ensure every classroom is teaching the same thing, even to the point where they want to remove non-curriculum posters from classroom walls.

  • Still, some of these curricula can be challenging to work with. Teachers have to adapt materials to make them age-appropriate for their class (e.g. Wit & Wisdom is super text heavy, which doesn’t make sense in, say, a Kindergarten class)

• Even with that generalized pressure, each classroom is its own “biome” and accountability comes mostly from the school administration, rather than from the district as a whole.

I found the teacher’s perspective interesting. It suggests to me that Portland Public has already begun to take some of the broad critiques about K-3 reading education seriously, and they’re starting to implement some of the recommendations Pencil is pushing for. But, just as importantly, that implementation is happening jaggedly, and with gaps in quality materials. A green shoot, perhaps; one that could use some watering — especially at scale, statewide.

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Now, on to the full interview:

Pencil 4 Gov: the interview

This interview was edited, mostly for clarity and a little for length.

Mort: Okay, jumping right in — give me the elevator pitch for Pencil.

J: Oregon is 50th out of 50 states in fourth grade literacy. That’s bad, I would say, and I think we can all agree on that. This is not a problem with our kids, with their parents, or with our teachers. This is a systemic problem, and that means we have to fix the system. The good news is it’s a fixable problem. Many other states have done things, and we just need to do those.

Mort: And for 50th, you’re basing this on the NAEP rankings?

J: The NAEP rankings, but it’s really important — there’s a group, and it’s linked on my website — that adjusts them for demographics. We’re almost last when you don’t adjust them, and we’re 50th when you adjust for demographics.

Mort: Is this a new problem post-pandemic, or have we been low for a while?

J: Not new. I got involved with advocacy before the pandemic, and then the pandemic hit, and we thought maybe people would realize we’d have to step up. It just got worse. We’ve been increasing spending in Oregon for many years and at the same time we’ve continued to see reading scores — and math at different levels — go down.

The other thing I’ll say — I’ve been here almost 20 years, and I remember the 40-40-20. You may not have been around for this. There was something called the Oregon Education Investment Board, and by 2025 we were going to have 40% of Oregonians with BAs, 40% with AAs, and 20% with high school graduation — meaning 100% graduation. That just came and went, and we forgot about it because we didn’t achieve it. That was around 2010-2011.

Oregon is very good at setting goals and then doing nothing to actually achieve them. The graduation number is something people have focused on as going up. A problem with that: we got rid of all standards for graduating high school during the pandemic and didn’t bring them back. Students are graduating unprepared. We know that because 40% of kids going to community colleges in Oregon have to take remedial courses before they take credit-bearing ones. Most never make it to credit-bearing.

Mort: There’s some data out of California4 to that same effect.

J: Yeah, the California one, especially in math — they’re a little shocking. We have this problem too in math. Our math scores — I can only fix reading right now…

The report you’re referring to was about students going into universities. You have to remember those are kids who got into a university. If they’re taking remedial courses, what do you think is going on with students going to community college, or not going to college at all? When you have it at the university level, that’s a red flag.

Mort: You seem to cite a lot of the Mississippi Miracle data on your site. Is that right?

J: Some, but go ahead.

Mort: You seem to have a belief this is a solvable problem and that there are particular interventions you’d recommend. Where are those interventions from?

J: Those interventions are from scientific research that’s been proven, and Mississippi and other states have implemented it.

Research shows 95% of children can learn to read if given proper instruction. What is proper instruction? Broadly, there’s something called “the science of reading”, or structured literacy, that people have probably heard about. After many years, we understand how people learn to read, and you can train teachers in it.

So, structured literacy. There are two levels. First: how do you get kids reading? We know how to do that. The science of reading is a huge body of literature. If you train teachers properly, especially when kids are young, and you provide tutoring for those who need extra help, 95% of kids can learn to read — across all demographics.

We’ve seen this not just in Mississippi. Out in eastern Oregon, Dr. Rhonda Fritz is doing amazing work going into schools training people. Within a year they’re doubling how many kids are reading at grade level. They’re doing this in Corvallis. There are tons of examples in Oregon. But they’re isolated, and usually depend on one or two people driving it. So the first part is: we know what to do.

The second level is political and institutional. Mississippi did this at scale for an entire state. What that takes — there’s an Oregon Department of Education, and then 197 separate school districts. In Oregon, we take the money, push it out, and say you can kind of do whatever you want with it. Almost no guardrails. Mississippi was like that. They were 49th, and they said this is unacceptable. They transformed their Department of Education from compliance-based box-checking to one that connected funding to outcomes.

First thing they did: they trained every K-3 teacher in the science of reading, then kept going with upper grades. Everyone got the same training. Second, teachers weren’t learning these methods in higher ed when they got their masters or BAs. So they retrained the professors too, so new teachers coming out would know how to teach reading properly, and districts wouldn’t have to spend money retraining them.

That’s two things on Pencil’s platform: train all K-3 teachers in the science of reading — not a one-day one-off. Eastern Oregon has an amazing program, takes a couple months, with coaching and facilitating. Colorado used it. It’s used in 12 other states. It’s already set up at Eastern Oregon University, and why we’re not using it, I don’t know.

Second: a licensure exam. When new teachers come out of their prep program, they have to pass an exam showing they know how to properly teach reading. We don’t have that in Oregon.

There will be children who struggle to read.

For students who struggle, there are usually two groups. One is someone like my son who’s dyslexic. I’m also dyslexic. I paid thousands of dollars for tutoring, and now my son’s going to college next year. That’s what you need for students struggling who may have dyslexia.

The other group is multilingual learners. The way our brains work — if you’re trying to learn English and reading, kindergarten and first grade is this magical point where if you give tutoring during that period, extra of the same science of reading, just more of it — they have to hear the phonemes. A letter is the letter A. A phoneme is /a/, /ā/. It’s the sound.

The second thing Mississippi did was bring in extra tutoring and help for kids who needed it. You save so much money this way. If you can get kids reading by third grade — Johns Hopkins did a study in Massachusetts across special ed, multilingual learners, all the demographics racially and SES — after a year of good instruction plus tutoring, two years later they were still at grade level. There’s a magic moment, and you save tons of money later.

The third thing — this is what no one talks about with Mississippi, and it scrambles all politics — Oregon is the 48th most regressive state in funding high-poverty schools. Sit with that for a moment. Liberal, progressive people, especially Portlanders with this image of themselves — 48th most regressive. Mississippi doubles down and sends more support, more literacy coaches, to schools doing worse because they have more children struggling. They don’t punish you. They say, we’re going to help you. That’s why they’ve made such progress.

In Oregon, the governor could change tomorrow how we calculate funding. They’re using an estimate rather than a real count of poverty, and it’s basically robbing schools and districts with higher poverty of hundreds of millions of dollars, and has for a couple years.

Mort: Is that just an accounting issue? Because I’d think Measure 5 and 50 and how we calculate property taxes would have pretty dramatic impacts too.

J: No, it’s not. Some people will argue this — we’re 19th in per-pupil spending. These are averages, and that’s what’s so hard, trying to understand how money actually comes in and goes out of the state. But you can right now look up on the Oregon Department of Ed website per-pupil spending for every school, and it’s thousands of dollars different for someone in Lake Oswego or PPS than someone in a rural school. That is not based on property taxes.

The money coming in and going out is calculated by a formula. About 75% of a school district’s money comes from the state, the other 25 is local — levies and so on. In that state formula, they use an estimate of how many kids are living in poverty, and it’s way under what the actual is if they used what almost every other state uses. There are articles on this. Salem-Keizer hired a private consultant to show they’re owed hundreds of millions. The governor could change that tomorrow if she wanted. It’s not about legislation.

Mort: Stepping back — one thing not on your platform that’s part of the Mississippi law is holding back third graders who can’t pass the year-end reading assessment. Is leaving that out intentional?

J: Very intentional. Step by step. If we put that on, it’s the only thing people would talk about. And the research is — these other things are way more important than third grade retention. Retention can be important, but when you look at how many kids are actually held back, it’s very few, because no one wants to hold kids back. So it acts as a reminder. That said, plenty of parents have told me, I would want my kid held back. They ask for it. They call it social promotion, just being pushed through.

In Oregon we can’t even get to that conversation right now. And I’m also not convinced from the research. Mississippi did a whole bunch of things and people focus on retention, especially liberals. It’s probably not as important. There are other places doing really well helping students who don’t have third grade retention.

Mississippi started this and everyone talks about Mississippi. The truth is Mississippi laid the groundwork and then a bunch of other states started doing things. So now we have 20 years of research to look at: what did the states do, what do they have in common? What they have in common are the things I laid out.

Mort: So your argument is that’s politically — I wouldn’t say toxic, but politically… interesting — and not a bridge worth crossing because of the data.

Is it that the data isn’t compelling for retention, or that you want to do the other stuff first because the other stuff is more valuable?

J: When I look at policies — who’s making gains — not all of them have third grade retention, but all of them have these other things. That tells me those things are most important. Colorado doesn’t have third grade retention and is making gains because they trained all the teachers. When you’re trying to change a system, you focus on the things you have the most research for, where you can make the argument: these are the levers that move things.

I have to say, I have kids. If my kid couldn’t read in third grade I would have held them back. But I had thousands of dollars for private tutoring. Most people don’t.

Mort: My understanding is you’ve met with some folks in the Oregon government. How has that gone?

J: Which folks? I’ve also talked to people in other states. Like you, I decided — I used to be an academic, I like research and data. I’m a policy wonk. I read all the policies and called anyone who would talk to me — people who wrote them, implemented them, or got them passed in legislatures, from North Carolina to Mississippi to Colorado. People will talk to you. It’s amazing. I brought some of them in to talk to our legislators, including people from Mississippi. Basically they said, no thanks, we’ll do it the Oregon way. The Oregon way means 50th out of 50.

Mort: Can you be more precise? In what ways did they argue about particular approaches?

J: Yeah, and I’ll talk about stuff that’s on the record. What I’ll say is — what I’ve been most disappointed by in Oregon legislators, and we need to say this out loud: I’m interested in kids reading, but I’m also interested in power. The people who have the power to change this system are Democrats, and we need to be clear about that, because they’ve been in power 20-plus years with supermajorities. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue — everyone would say kids should read. But the supermajority here has really hurt Oregon. Behind closed doors, people agree with us, they get it, and then they turn around and don’t vote for things that would actually change anything. That has a lot to do with a supermajority in one party.

Things in the public domain — if you watch an Education Committee meeting, last year they brought in people to discuss how far behind we are. A Georgetown group presented to the House Education Committee showing a huge increase in funding and resources to the Oregon system, in real dollars and per-pupil (19th out of 50), with bad outcomes. Instead of asking what the problem is, people like Representative [Ed. note: Senator] Lew Frederick said something really disparaging about Mississippi, that he had relatives there and it wasn’t as great as people were saying. That comes up a lot. “We should focus on what our kids are good at.” Which is a strange response! Sure, kids are great at a lot of things, but if they can’t read, you’re setting them up for a really difficult life.

That’s the Ed. Committee!

A few people have asked the right questions. Boomer Wright, Republican. McIntyre, Republican. Representative Ricki Ruiz, Democrat, has been amazing — he pushed for the summer dollars to be used only for literacy and got huge pushback… Janeen Sollman

Do you know what’s going on with Senator Sollman?

Mort: No.

J: Basically, we’ll see what happens. May or may not be a senator next week, because she’s being primaried by someone backed by the OEA — the Oregon Education Association. There’s an article about how she felt bullied by them. She’s one of the strongest supporters of measures with Ricki Ruiz on literacy. She also pushed back on the new policy where, in Oregon — the only place in America — workers can now get unemployment while on strike. Her argument was that puts districts at a real disadvantage; it makes striking much easier. A series of things that I’d say are what we need to start doing, and she’s being primaried by the OEA for it. So when we have these conversations with legislators who want to make change, we know they’re up against this.

The governor’s office — she said education was one of her three top priorities. She hired two people to run education on her behalf. One had no background in education. This was in her first two and a half, three years. That’s a strange signal. When that person is arguing with experts we’ve brought in from other places, or from people in the state, and it’s clear they don’t understand education or basic policy — that’s been our experience.

We also, in 2023 — I don’t know how deep you want to go — I wrote a bill based on conversations with everyone. The bill they put forward, the 2023 literacy bill, and now this accountability bill, are jokes. I showed them to people in other states and they were like, what is this? Who wrote this? I don’t know where they pulled some of these ideas from. When we challenged them, they couldn’t even come up with places. Another example — when they looked for literacy frameworks, they brought up a bunch of states. Mississippi wasn’t there. None of the states with good outcomes were on it. They were using Alaska and others. We’re not even sure if the people we’re engaging with are engaging with the latest research.

Mort: So from your perspective this is a coalitional problem — for whatever reason, part of the Democratic coalition isn’t engaged in this, or doesn’t see it as a problem. Fair?

J: No, I’ll be much more frank. The teachers’ union — and let’s separate that from the teachers. Teachers are education. Anyone who wants reform, this is not the teachers’ fault, the kids’ fault, the parents’ fault. But teachers are not the same thing as the teachers’ union, and the teachers’ union here is one of the strongest in the country after Illinois. They call it the alphabet letters in Salem — the OEA, plus COSA, the Coalition of School Administrators, plus the Oregon School Board Association. Those three groups oppose anything against “local control” — which is not a legal issue, it’s a cultural idea. Mississippi has local control. They’ve said: you can’t tell us to do anything. When we were in Salem, people would say, don’t say “accountability,” don’t say “mandate.” And it’s like, no — you have to mandate some things. The state gets to tell districts what to do. Those groups have been very much against that, and it’s hurting children. It’s also hurting teachers. Teachers want to succeed, they want and deserve this training. Whenever we do trainings with people, they’re like, oh my god, this is phenomenal. Then they get very upset — I’ve been teaching ten years, I can name the children I could have helped. Why did I not get this training? They’re angry and ashamed.

To answer your question — the problem is there’s a teachers’ union, and there’s no parent and child union. It’s supposed to be representatives and the governor. They’re shirking their responsibility. If you read the new accountability bill — Dr. Christine Pitts has written really well about this — they point left and right. The state says it’s the districts, the districts say it’s the state. If you’re a parent, you’re like, what? You can’t have shared accountability. You have to have a place where this is what we’re doing, and if you’re not doing it, we’re intervening. The new accountability bill is a joke.

Mort: I’ve got two final questions. What does success look like for Pencil? Because Pencil will not be the next governor.

J: As you would say.

Mort: I would say that with 99.9% confidence.

J: Actually true — I checked with the Secretary of State. An inanimate object cannot be the next governor.

So — why am I dressing as a pencil with my free time and resources? I want people to get this message, and we’re already there. I can’t tell you how many people didn’t know we were 50th, but they know something’s deeply wrong. Parents are asking, what is going on? People are asking about the money — we have record money, where’s it going? Which people need to ask, because this budget crisis everyone’s having — there’s another way of looking at it as a lack of accountability. They spent money they knew was one-time funds, and they haven’t been right-sizing for many years.

Success looks like people connecting their own experience with the system. This is a systemic problem, and the state has to solve it — it can’t only be done at the district level. Second, I want people to know this is not parents’, teachers’, or kids’ fault. We’re getting that across. And I want people to feel we can actually change this — because that’s what we’ve lost as advocates. I’ve been at this seriously for seven years; I have friends who go back further. There’s a sense we can’t change anything, it’s just like this.

I met with a representative and brought up — maybe we need a single curriculum, the state can buy it, it’s much cheaper, you train everyone in it, then we know what everyone’s using. Instead, 197 school districts using all kinds of stuff. He responded, oh, that’ll never happen, the districts will never let it. My response was: you, legislator, and the districts work for me, the citizens, and the children of Oregon. We built this system, and we can change it. We have to believe that. That’s what Pencil is trying to succeed at. That said, I would love for Oregon to be number one in education. Pencil would settle for number two.

Mort: As DeRay Mckesson always likes to say, these systems and structures are built by people.

Okay, my final question is off the beaten path. Your scholarly work — you clearly know a lot about education, but your scholarly work is actually in...

J: Medieval mystics?

Mort: Marguerite Porete — she was burned in 1310 for arguing the church couldn’t mediate the soul’s relationship with God. To what degree do you see that in your candidacy, if at all?

J: Oh my god, what a great question — you win for great question. Yeah, she was someone willing to speak truth to power, and she got burned for it. I don’t think they’re going to build a pyre and burn Pencil anytime soon — although I’d go up pretty fast. It’s wood, and the costume isn’t natural fibers either.

The other thing I studied was Foucault’s later work, which is about speaking truth to power. About using your own position and risking it, saying the thing out loud. What I’ve always been interested in is why people don’t. I’m fascinated by that. I’m someone who’s never been able to keep my mouth shut.

It hurts me to see the system failing children this way, and I’m compelled to do something. Over the years, that question — why some people go along with what everyone else is doing and others don’t — is a lot of what my scholarly work has been about. Especially when there are costs.

That’s also what’s weird — people send me nasty emails, say weird stuff on Facebook, but there’s really no cost here. And that puzzles me too, about the legislators. They won’t be re-elected, but — why won’t some teachers speak up, or principals, or other people in the system? If you care about children, that’s what we need. More people speaking up. And you’re not going to lose your job, because you’ve got a great union.

Mort: That's it. That's what I've got.

J: That's awesome. Well, thank you for taking an interest in Pencil, but really in education. I'm not a politician, I don't want to be a politician. I write crime novels now, that's what I really do. I'm a printmaker who writes crime novels. I'd rather be doing that than dressing up in a silly costume, but my conscience won't let me.

Mort: You're a parent, and you're passionate.

J: A parent with resources, though. My kids are fine because I paid a lot of money. That's what's so hard. My partner works in addiction with men coming out of or going into the prison system. Most of them struggled to read. I'm so aware — I'm dyslexic. I have a PhD from the University of Chicago. My mom had been trained on the west side of Chicago in a phonics method, and when I couldn't read at the school I went to, she tutored me. I didn't know I was dyslexic until I was 26, trying to study for my exams at Chicago. I wasn't getting through them fast enough and almost dropped out — I was like, how are people getting through all these books? They said, you're dyslexic. I was like, that's weird. Then I realized what my mom had done. If she hadn't — I mean, this is dumb luck.

Thanks for making it to the end! Kudos to you, dear reader.

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Election season! Let’s get right into it with the biggest ticket item.

Measure 120

What is it?

It’s a measure that increases fuel taxes, registration/title fees for roads, and a tax on wages for public transportation services.

Here’s a nicely formatted table with everything that matters

What does this net out to, in practice? Estimates vary and the math gets messy depending on whether or not you have a car, how much you make, etc. But realistically, it’s in the $50-$250/year range during 2026 and 2027, dropping to $20-$140/year beyond that.1 Assume closer to the top end if you're a high earner with multiple cars, closer to the lower end if you're not.

The gas tax and the title/registration fees are constitutionally mandated to go towards road projects and maintenance. That money is split 50/30/20 between the state, counties, and cities, respectively. The payroll tax portion goes toward public transportation. For the purposes of the Mortlandia readership, that basically just means TriMet but other cities get money too, mostly in support of their bus systems.2

Why is it on the ballot?

This is where it gets messy.

Oregon, like most states, historically has predominantly paid for its roads through gas taxes and other user fees. That mostly worked, for a time. But fuel efficiency across all cars and trucks have been rising for decades (Thanks Obama), which means each gallon taxed has to pay for more miles of road wear. Roads don’t degrade linearly, either. So you can defer maintenance cheaply for awhile but once roads get bad they get really bad. We’ve been deferring maintenance since at least 2019, likely well before. That bill is coming due.

Meanwhile, the gas tax is not indexed to inflation. Couple that with rapidly rising construction costs (due to — you guessed it — inflation) spending has quickly outpaced revenue. Add, again, cost overruns on mega projects (rose quarter expansion, for example), and you can see how we get here, from a structural standpoint.

To add insult to injury, in the 2023-2025 budget, ODOT made a $1B forecasting error on expected federal funds, which has, fairly or not fed a narrative of agency mismanagement."

So yeah. That’s why we need the money.

But that doesn’t explain why it’s on the ballot. It’s on the ballot because back in June of 2025, the legislature tried, and failed, to pass a comprehensive transportation package called HB2025. Weeks later, when ODOT layoff notices went out, the Governor scrambled via a special session and the legislature did pass a watered down version of HB2025 called HB3991, one that the more suburban and moderate members could stomach.3

HB3991 did lots of things. Of note, it:

1. Raised the gas tax

2. Increased title and registration fees

3. Temporarily raised the payroll tax

4. Changed the governance structure of ODOT

5. Added a mandatory usage charge (RUC) for EVs and hybrids

6. Added a +$30 fee for vehicles that get +40mpg

7. Repealed the statutory authority to add tolls (to I-5 and I-205)

8. Did a bunch of other wonky things, like making diesel gas taxed at the same rate, changing tax rates for trucks, adding biennial performance audits, etc.

After HB3991 was passed, a coalition of the anti-tax crowd rose up and got ~200,000 signatures (more than twice what they needed) to send items 1, 2, and 3 to voters as a referendum, leaving the others (4 through 8) enshrined into law.4

Measure 120 is that referendum, on those three things.

Like I said. Messy.

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How am I voting?

Oregon's roads are funded almost entirely by drivers, more so than most states. (In Oregon it’s ~80%, in Washington it’s ~55%.) And that model continues to make sense, but only if we update it to reflect the realities of today’s costs and today’s revenues.

In my perfect world, we’d treat gas taxes + title/registration fees as both a user fee and a Pigouvian tax. While everyone should share some tax burden for the roads (emergency services need to be able to get to everyone, after all) the burden should fall heaviest on those who put the most wear on the roads. And because there are distinct negative externalities to internal combustion engines (more global warming and more health impacts from the air pollution they create), gas taxes are pretty elegant as a nudge toward more efficient vehicles. In other words, heavier and less efficient vehicles (trucks, SUVs) should be paying more than smaller, more efficient cars.5 Because while a 4,500 lb pickup truck (Toyota Tacoma) is only 45% heavier than a hybrid sedan (Toyota Prius), it does 4.4 times the road damage. Even factoring the fact that it is much less fuel efficient (~21 mpg vs. ~50 mpg) and thus paying twice the gas taxes, the math is still weighted (hah!) in the Tacoma’s favor. They only pay 2.4x the cost for 4.4x the wear and tear.

And to be honest, even before the referendum, HB3991 didn’t solve this. Far from it. By including the flat, per-mile road usage charge (RUC) and the high-efficiency surcharge, we were still overcharging small and efficient vehicles compared to their bigger, dirtier brethren.

But the way the Measure 120 is structured, voting ‘No’ just makes the problem worse. Backers of the referendum only included the provisions they didn’t like — the gas tax, the title fees, the desperately needed money for public transport — and let the rest come into effect. They got all their carrots (changing the ODOT governance, making I-205 tolling more difficult) without any of the sticks.

That really grinds my gears.

Voting ‘No’ also leaves us with a gaping hole in the budget for this year, a bigger one for next year, and a worse negotiating position to ever get transportation right.

The 2026 Legislature already preemptively rebalanced ODOT's budget assuming Measure 120 fails by raiding $218 million from previously-funded projects like Safe Routes to School, community EV charging rebates, and grants for port and rail improvements. Those projects don't happen if 'No' wins. They do if 'Yes' wins.

I’m not here to defend ODOT or ODOT’s budget. It’s pretty clear they’ve made some pretty big mistakes. But the ODOT governance is changing whether we vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

Nor does voting ‘Yes’ solve the structural problem with our transportation funding. I think that will require some innovative thinking. I would propose, for example, moving to a weight-based RUC, to accurately track wear and tear.

Voting ‘Yes’ prevents the big scramble to cover the transportation funding. And it will help avert many of the planned TriMet service cuts. Voting ‘Yes’ merely a stop gap, but it’s one step closer to the big structural change we need to actually fix our roads. ‘No’ is two steps back.

I’m voting ‘Yes’ on Measure 120.

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A silly post-script!

I intentionally pushed myself to release this endorsement BEFORE the Willamette Week, Oregonian, or Portland Mercury dropped their editorials. This was mostly for myself, because I didn’t want their opinions to color mine. But also, while I’m here, I’m going to play the prediction game!

Predictions for Measure 120 (Gas Tax)

• The Oregonian: No — confidence, 60%

• Portland Mercury: Yes — confidence, 90%

• Willamette Week: Yes (but grumpily, with caveats) — confidence, 70%

Predictions for Measure 26-261 (Oregon Historical Society Levy)

• The Oregonian: Yes — confidence, 90%

• Portland Mercury: Yes — confidence, 95%

• Willamette Week: Yes — confidence, 75%

• Mortlandia: ??? — check back later this week to find out.

First and foremost, some housekeeping:

1:

Have you paid your arts tax? It’s due! You’ve got one hour to get it in!

I hope you’ve paid your other taxes too, of course. The official Mortlandia recommendation is to use Free Tax USA if your taxes are easy or an accountant (or perhaps Tax Act) if they are not. Because TurboTax and H&R Block are rent-seeker cancers on our society who helped kill IRS Direct File.

2:

It’s going to be a busy month or so for Mortlandia. Election Day is May 19th, just over a month away. Expect a bunch of posts incoming. Consider this an amuse bouche for the month to come. You’ve been warned.

For no reason, no reason at all, I’ve been thinking the last week or so about the Hague Invasion Act.1 Never heard of it? Don’t feel bad about that; it’s new to me too. The Hague Invasion Act is, in effect, law that prohibits us from assisting the Hague / the International Criminal Court if they try to charge US officials or servicemembers with war crimes. In the height of the Afghanistan war we just… opted out of international accountability. Instead we literally authorized the President to invade the Netherlands if they ever even tried to hold us accountable.

Call me a globalist cuck but this is a bad law. (Something folks said at the time2 and why folks have tried to repeal it a few times since.)

It’s not the only bad law that I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve also been thinking about the Jones Act and the Renewable Fuel Standard (i.e. ethanol requirements). Without going into too much detail, these laws that increase the costs of both fuel and food, hitting poorest Americans the hardest.

The world would be better if these laws just… didn’t exist. If they were struck from the record, with a big red felt pen.

Thinking about these (bad) laws in these (troubled) times is a good exercise. As both a capital and lowercase liberal, the sort of person (me) who wants universal healthcare or climate action, it can be easy to say, “hey, there oughta be a law!” to prevent malfeasance. But sometimes the malfeasance is the law! To paraphrase social democrat / District 2 councilor Sameer Kanal, “It’s harder to do business in Portland than almost anywhere else” and “I’m not worried about businesses moving abroad but I am worried about businesses moving across the river or decamping to the suburbs.”

So on today, tax day, I thought it would be a good exercise for a left-leaning person like me to highlight local laws and regulations that we should just… be rid of. To use the right-leaning tool of the line-item veto to eliminate some regulatory capture and make things a little better. Reform is hard. It takes careful thought and new statutory language. But repeal? Repeal is just a matter of political will and the strikethrough tool.

State Board of Tax Practitioners

ORS 673.605–673.740 (Source)

What is it?

This one is topical! Oregon requires a separate state license for tax preparers, administered by a board composed of six licensed tax consultants and one member of the public.

What is the impact?

Preparers have to do 80 hours of course work, pay examination fees, license renewal fees, and various continuing education requirements. These costs are passed directly on to consumers, in the form of higher fees for tax prep and less competition due to fewer tax preparers (since anyone who doesn’t want to jump through these hoops simply won’t practice in Oregon).

Indeed, those costs are more burdensome on the smallest operators. It’s easy for the big guys to comply which further entrenches companies like H&R Block at the expense of small, local, artisanal tax preparers.

Case for repeal

The IRS already requires all paid preparers to hold a Preparer Tax Identification Number. Beyond that, Oregon is one of only a five3 with comparable state-level requirements. The other 45 states operate without and folks seem to get along filing their taxes just fine. This is regulatory capture wrapped up in the language of consumer protection.

Landscape Construction Professional licensing

ORS 671.510–671.760 (Source)

What is it?

Oregon requires separate licenses for both:

• landscape construction professionals (the individual) and

• landscape contracting businesses (the business)

for a broad range of landscape-construction work, including planning/installing new shrubs and trees, and irrigation work. The system includes exams, bonding, and substantial (at least $500,000) liability insurance requirements.

What is the impact?

It raises the costs of doing landscaping business and, again, these costs are passed directly on to the consumer through higher prices and reduced competition (especially for small operators). Oregon already distinguishes basic maintenance (e.g., mowing/edging) from licensed construction work, which means there’s already a license-free path for some work. But God forbid, as soon as you plant a couple of new trees…

Case for repeal

There might be some argument for the insurance and consumer protection elements of licensing for projects with more structural elements. But given that 30+ other states don’t require it, I’m not terribly convinced. Existing general contractor licensing and consumer protection law should cover these needs adequately.

At minimum, we should eliminate the dual licensure and considerably narrow the scope of these licenses to the highest risk work (retaining walls, water features, and similar high-liability projects). But I’d be willing to strike it all.

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Oregon Certificate of Need laws

ORS 442.315 (Source), specifically OAR 333-570 (Source)

What is it?

In Oregon, opening a new hospital or adding new skilled nursing care beds typically requires state approval through the Certificate of Need (CON) process. As I understand it, CON laws were federally mandated in the '70s to control Medicare-driven overbuilding; but that rationale collapsed as the federal mandates were sunset in subsequent years. Nonetheless, Oregon kept the structure.

Under Oregon’s process, “applicants and affected persons” may seek administrative review and contested-case proceedings before final decisions.

What is the impact?

In practice, the CON process gives incumbent providers a formal pathway to delay or oppose new entrants. In the most egregious example I could find, Legacy Health was able to block two new rehab facilities for four years. Meanwhile, Oregon has the second fewest rehabilitation beds per capita.

Case for repeal

It’s probably worth reassessing the CON law framework in its entirety4, as academic research shows they increase costs and narrow choice in healthcare. But before we even get there, the provision (OAR 333-570) that gives competitors an avenue to gum up applications of prospective competitors is particularly galling and should clearly get the axe.

You might be saying, “hey, these things seem small. Why bother? Who cares?”

When it comes to tax preparers, you’re probably right. (Hospital beds, on the other hand…)

Still, I think it’s instructive. There’s broad consensus that we have affordability problems, that permitting takes too long, and so forth. Things feel slow, expensive, stuck.

If you spend the time to dig in to figure out why, you’ll realize there’s no one thing. It’s death by a thousand cuts. To accept the status quo is to accept slow, expensive, stuck.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

I’m just one guy, with a limited capacity for research. These are the three I’ve highlighted but there are a dozen more good candidates for repeal, and hundreds more for reform. I chose these three because they didn’t seem to have a particular political valence or a huge constituency. Just a few concentrated people benefitting and diffuse harms for everyone else.

But also, I’m just one guy, with a limited capacity for research. There’s nothing stopping our representatives from doing the exact same thing, at scale and better. They can just do things, in the next legislative session, to make incremental progress. Our job is merely to ask them to try.

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Good news can be tough to find in a town where the 2025 word of the year was “Doom Loop.” But courtesy of PBOT, we had some legitimately good news drop late last year.

After spiking over the course of the pandemic, traffic deaths in Portland are back to pre-pandemic levels, at ~40 per year. Per OPB:

Local transportation leaders have attributed the drop to multiple factors, including greater awareness, increased infrastructure funding, more traffic cameras and an overall change in driving behavior since the pandemic upended people’s lives.

Assuming current trends persist, we have about 6 deaths per 100k residents, which is actually pretty good for a city of our size, though still well behind our perennial rival Seattle.1

At a macro level, “back to pre-pandemic levels” truly is good news, especially compared to what we saw in 2020 - 2024. But there’s also a reason “zero” has always been the goal of Vision Zero. At the individual level these were 39 real people with families and futures and dreams.

I Was Promised Flying Cars

What if I told you there was a way to further reduce traffic deaths by ~91%?

You would probably say “we should do that!” or, perhaps, “what’s the catch?”

Well, there’s a way to reduce traffic deaths by ~91%. And the catch is that there’s no driver.

We are, of course, talking Autonomous Vehicles a.k.a. AVs.

I won’t go through all the evidence for these claims. Lots of ink has already been spilled on it elsewhere. The data mostly comes from Waymo itself after >100M miles driven but independent researchers have verified that the data is credible. Feel free to read up on your own here:

• Waymo’s own Safety Impact Report (Updated Dec. 2025)

• Comparative performance of AVs vs. humans based on insurance claims (Jul. 2024)

• Understanding AI’s analysis of every Waymo crash (Sep. 2024 & 2025):

Understanding AI

Human drivers are to blame for most serious Waymo collisions

It’s Autonomy Week! This is the second of five articles exploring the state of the self-driving industry…

Read more

2 years ago · 110 likes · 43 comments · Timothy B. Lee

Understanding AI

Very few of Waymo’s most serious crashes were Waymo’s fault

Everything was fine until the wheel came off…

Read more

8 months ago · 97 likes · 41 comments · Kai Williams

Suffice to say, I have read most of this analysis and I find it pretty convincing. Your mileage may vary. I should note a few caveats:

1. I only find AV safety data credible for Waymo. Tesla’s approach to AVs has been pretty fast and loose (though sometimes hilarious). Tesla’s AV software is not yet safe enough for my comfort. Meanwhile, Cruise had to shut down after they lied to investigators. There are other AV companies who seem solid (looking at you, Zoox) but they don’t have a robust enough track record for me to endorse them quite yet. In short: we have a more-than-promising proof of concept in Waymo but we can’t trust players across the industry outright.

2. We’re almost two decades into AVs and we’re still in the middle innings. Waymo is just starting to scale beyond their initial markets. They’ve been operating autonomously since 2020 but only started driving paying passengers on the interstate two months ago! The impacts of AVs in new cities, on other drivers’ behavior, and on the built environment itself is still uncertain. Waymos appear quite a bit safer than human drivers but there may be second order effects (positive or negative) that we won’t fully understand for some time.

Still, we are far enough along that I am ready for Waymo to pilot in my community. The promise of genuinely safer streets is hard to ignore. To quote a recent NYTimes Editorial (emphasis mine):

In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore. We stop when there is unexpected harm. We also stop for overwhelming benefit, when a treatment is working so well that it would be unethical to continue giving anyone a placebo. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.

There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles.

That seems right.

So what’s between you and a Waymo ride down Burnside? Let’s figure it out.

Does Waymo want to be in Oregon?

As of writing (Jan. 2026), Waymo operates in 6 major cities: Phoenix, San Francisco + San Jose, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta. They’ve announced commercial service launches for 12 additional U.S. cities by the end of the year and they’ve been doing driver testing in at least 10 more beyond that.2

Portland is not on any of these lists.

Why not?

The best way to determine if it’s viable for Waymo to operate in Portland would be to look at existing rideshare volume. Unfortunately, that metro-level data is proprietary and Uber and Lyft both hold it pretty close to the chest. So for fun, I put together a toy model3 with the following inputs:

• Market Size (by population for the metro area) [40%]

• Median household income (a proxy for ability to pay) [40%]

• Downtown parking costs (a proxy existing auto costs) [20%]

Here’s the result:

It’s obviously a bit imprecise but according to my model, Portland metro should rank 21st in terms of market opportunity. Across the top 30 markets in the model, Waymo is publicly making moves in 26 of them. So, in theory, Portland should be “worth it” for Waymo.

Looking beyond economics, with Waymo announced in Seattle and launched in San Francisco, there shouldn’t be particular concerns around weather or the populace more broadly. Seattle has rain and hills just like us; the Bay has anarchists just like us. We are not particularly poor or sprawling like Riverside-San Bernardino. If there’s any reluctance on the part of Waymo, it’s probably regulatory.

And indeed, right before I hit “publish” on this piece, the Willamette Week reported that there is some interest on the part of company:

The robotaxi company Waymo is eyeing Portland.

That’s according to Portland Bureau of Transportation director Millicent Williams, who briefed city officials in a Jan. 20 email

So it seems like it’s worth it for them. But is it worth it for us?

Does Oregon want Waymo?

I haven’t found any decent polling around Oregonians’ interest (or lack thereof) in Waymo. In other cities, people have been pretty reticent about AVs prior to their rollout but then opinions shift positively as they get used to them.

But whether or not Oregonians want AVs today doesn’t much matter quite yet. Because today Waymo is illegal in Portland.

From Portland City Code 16.40:

• Driver definition: Section 16.40.030(R) defines “driver” as “a person operating a PFHT [private for-hire transportation] vehicle”

• License requirements: Sections 16.40.170 and 16.40.270 require all drivers to possess “a valid state-issued driver’s license”

• Maximum Hours: Section 16.40.180 requires “No person may provide PFHT services after driving more than 12 hours in any given 24-hour period.”

There’s more where that comes from. Suffice to say, the PFHT code currently blocks Waymo from operating here.

At the state level it’s considerably less clear. It’s probably legal for Waymo to start testing in Oregon? From ODOT:

Oregon does not currently regulate AV testing, but the voluntary notification process allows ODOT to provide safety information to interested companies on work zones and lane closures on proposed test routes and dates

But most of the current rules predate AVs and there’s not really any case law here one way or the other. Oregon's vehicle code (ORS Title 59) implicitly assumes— but doesn’t explicitly require — human drivers. This ambiguity means driverless operation is neither clearly prohibited nor clearly authorized, which creates a legal risk for operators.

Were the market big or lucrative enough, Waymo might forge ahead anyway. But when the market is more marginal this sort of uncertainty could kill any chance they would want to take the risk, especially when they are already supply constrained.

A Quick Aside on the history of AV legislation in Oregon

How we got here is actually a good lesson in Oregon governance. In 2018, we enacted HB 4063 to designate ODOT as the lead for AVs and we set up a Task Force on Autonomous Vehicles. In 2019, the legislature considered House Bill 2770 which would have built out a framework for AV testing, permit fees, liability minimums, etc. This bill made it decently far through the lawmaking process but it was never actually put to a vote.

The Task Force on Autonomous Vehicles did produce a lengthy report in 2019 with dozens of recommendations. Then they quietly disbanded in 2021.

None of their recommendations were ever codified into law.

So that’s where we are. We created a committee to study it, we studied it, and…. nothing happened. Which leaves AVs in a strange legal limbo: neither legal nor illegal, where no one is willing to operate yet but, if one were to start, we wouldn’t be protected from any negligence or malfeasance. The worst of both worlds.4

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So What’s Next?

When the Task Force put together their recommendations it was still 2019. The world has changed a lot in the subsequent 7 years. (Heck, Waymo still used safety drivers until 2020!) At the same time, a lot of their recommendations were pretty good. We just need to figure out how to implement them at the state level, and then navigate Portland’s regulatory framework for PFHT, work with the Port of Portland and then…

~ ~ record scratch ~ ~

Wait, what’s this? An HB4085 to legalize and regulate AVs? Introduced just this week in the 2026 legislative short session!!?!5

Let’s nerd out.

HB4085

Full text here.

Instant Reaction

Reading through, my immediate thought is: HB4085 looks like industry-friendly legislation to create a pathway for AVs. Furthermore, I think it’s better than the status quo but I don’t think it should be passed into law as written.

The Good

• It resolves the legal ambiguities around what a “driver” is.

• It creates a deployment pathway for AVs, not just a testing pathway.

• It ensures a framework for first responder interactions.

The Bad

Section 8.2

…shall maintain a motor vehicle liability policy that provides combined single limit per occurrence third-party liability coverage of at least $1 million

California has a minimum liability of $5M per incident.

Washington has a minimum liability of $5M per incident during driverless testing.

Oregon’s 2019 Task Force recommended a minimum liability of $5M per incident.

Recommendation #1: we should increase the minimum liability from $1M per incident to $5M.

Section 10.6

Authorization granted…shall not expire unless suspended or revoked pursuant to section 12

And if you read section 12, suspending or revoking authorization is actually pretty difficult. With no expiration written into the statute either, ODOT’s hands are tied except in extreme cases.

Recommendation #2: ODOT should have wider leverage to revoke or suspend authorization, for patterns of risky behavior / traffic violations or for failures to submit the proper information (proof of insurance, collision reports, etc.)

In addition, we should consider some sort of sunset clause to ensure that ODOT periodically reaffirms each AV firm’s authorization to operate.

Section 7.2

…shall provide the Department of Transportation a copy of any collision report that the person is required to provide the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration…

This data sharing is necessary but it’s just not enough. There’s no requirements for data transparency around disengagement, on operational data, or much of anything else. California requires quarterly data reports and we should too.

Recommendation #3: AV operators should be required to share more data, on a quarterly basis. I’m not sure if it makes more sense to write this into statute or have ODOT write the regulations but regardless, I’d expect better data sharing with the state. I would want to see the following, at minimum a) vehicle miles traveled, disaggregated by vehicle, b) total trips with origin/destination by census tract c) all incidents including collisions, citations, and stoppage events where vehicle couldn’t complete the trip d) response times for requests for interventions by first responders.

The Controversial

There’s one last item that has already raised some hackles:

Section 13

A local government or local service district may not: (a) Prohibit the operation of an autonomous vehicle or on-demand autonomous vehicle network; (b) Impose a tax, fee, performance standard or other requirement specific only to the operation of an autonomous vehicle or on-demand autonomous vehicle network.

This is called local preemption. It would basically invalidate Portland City code 16.40 with respect to AVs, and prevent localities from adding on additional requirements or taxes.6

Sounds bad! Except…

State of Georgia law (e.g. Atlanta)

No rules or regulations relative to the operation of fully autonomous vehicles or automated driving systems shall be adopted which limit the authority to operate such vehicles or systems conferred by this Code section.

State of Texas law (e.g. Austin)

A political subdivision of this state or a state agency may not impose a franchise or other regulation related to the operation of an automated motor vehicle or automated driving system.

California is less explicit but the end result is the same: their state regulatory body handles AVs over any objections from localities.

In short: local preemption is the standard for AV rollout and adoption.

Which actually does make some sense to me. From a rider’s perspective, does matter if you’re in riding in Gresham or Portland or Troutdale? Shouldn’t they all function pretty much the same?

District 4 City Councilor Mitch Green disagrees with me. Per his quote to Bike Portland:

I oppose this bill’s effort to preempt our ability to locally regulate autonomous vehicles.

But, of course, local electeds are always going to want more control, not less.

I just don’t see the value in Portland going their own way here, given that it’s not the standard. We overcomplicate things enough as it is and I’d rather one, single, responsible regulating party — a.k.a. one neck to choke at ODOT — rather than a mosaic of overlapping regulations. I don’t have any interest in watching different layers of government all pointing fingers at each other when something goes wrong (or more likely, when nothing goes right in the first place).

Sins of Omission vs. Commission

So there we have it. A flawed bill7 that could be the harbinger of a much better future.

But I also want us to go into this clear-eyed. Some day Waymo is going to kill someone. No matter how good they are, it’s a matter of time. Just last week a Waymo hit a kid at in Santa Monica. In their telling:

The event occurred when the pedestrian suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path. Our technology immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle. The Waymo Driver braked hard, reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made.

…

Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, walked to the sidewalk, and we called 911.8

It’s so easy to visualize: a car driving along slowly, a kid runs out, the car slams brakes but can’t stop, kid gets hit. In this case, the kid was fine (thank God). And honestly? If their telling is accurate, the Waymo probably did better than I would have in that situation. But who knows? We’ll let the NHTSA investigation run its course and let them figure it out. Some day, though, some other kid somewhere else won’t be so lucky.

And no one — no politician, no regulator, no company exec is going to want to call the parents or go on TV and admit that they were the one that changed the law to allowed the car to operate. When it happens, they will get (rightly) raked over the coals.

But remember where we started this all? With those 39 traffic deaths last year? I think it’s instructive to hear about just one of the stories of what happened, of a father and son walking down the sidewalk.

The victim, 49-year-old DaRon Craig, was walking with his 12-year-old son when a speeding grey Ford Escape struck him and another pedestrian, killing him

…

Her son, being a firsthand witness, was eventually able to explain to his mom what happened.

“I was talking to Dad. I was right next to him […] We’re basically touching arms […] We were laughing about something, and I turned around and Dad was just gone.”

I didn’t know DaRon and I don’t know his son. But I’ve walked that stretch of MLK dozens of times. I go to that Safeway and to that Walgreens and to the bank down the block. His death, quite literally, hits close to home.

DaRon is dead because our laws and our roads make car crashes inevitable. He’s dead because our culture accepts car crashes as “accidents”, as something that happens, as normal, as all just part of the price of mobility. I’m sure no politician ever had to call DaRon’s son and tell him that; tell him that we choose to accept his dad’s death as the price of progress and because we’re too chickenshit to do better.

Motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for ages 5 through 24.9 It doesn’t have to be this way. Waymo is 10x safer than humans today and I see no reason that won’t improve as they get more training data and as there are more of them on the road.

AVs alone10 won’t not solve the problem but they look to be the single best tool we have. So let’s figure out how to start using them rather than dither in committee for another half decade.

Final Thoughts + A Call to Action

Agree with me? Disagree with me? Whatever the case, now is the time to have your voice heard. Like, literally, in the next 72 hours. There is a public hearing schedule for Monday, Feb. 9th. Register to testify (or submit written testimony) here: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2026R1/Measures/Overview/HB4085

Alternatively, just reach out to your state rep. this week and tell them what you think. It only takes 2 minutes. Find your representative here: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/FindYourLegislator/districts-initial.html

Before we start, for those of you are new here, welcome! This is an extremely infrequently updated newsletter/blog about Portland politics. You’ll find I tend to dive in to the minutia of public policy, its implementation, and the actual impacts of these things on Portlanders in their everyday lives. Hopefully you like that sort of thing.

I’m neither a journalist nor a professional about any of this stuff. Think of me more as an informed hobbyist—the neighbor you like to check in with before you submit your ballot.

For those of you who don’t know why I’m welcoming new subscribers, the Willamette Week gave Mortlandia a nice shout out in a recent issue. Thanks WW!

One thing that’s a challenge when you’re writing for free on the internet is that you’re often not writing on much of a deadline. A blessing for me, insofar as I don’t have to treat this like a real job. But also a bit of a curse because by the time I can do my research, everyone else has dropped their endorsements.

So if you want to see what the other folks think, check them out:

Oregonian: No
Willamette Week: Yes

Since you’re already here, though, let’s talk Parks. Because I have thoughts.

2025 Portland Parks Levy

Portland Parks are pretty great. Under-maintained, perhaps. But beautiful, plentiful, large. Sometimes I think about Peninsula Park. By Portland standards, it’s definitely not top 3. Maybe not top 5. But it’s got a pool, a splash pad, a concert gazebo, a 2 acre rose garden. In many cities, Peninsula would be a destination. Here, it’s almost an afterthought. There’s a reason why our parks reliably rank top 10, nationwide.

It also costs money! Which is why there’s a levy renewal on the ballot.

What is it?

A tax. Specifically, a 5 year tax on assessed home values of $1.40 per $1,000 of assessed value. It replaces a 2020 levy of $0.80 per $1,000 of assessed value.

The median home is PDX is assessed at $221,600. (If that sounds low to you, it is, and it has to do with the weird way we assess property taxes here. It’s complicated and a subject for next time.)1

What does that mean? For the median homeowner, that means:

2025 Levy: $221,600 x ($1.40 / $1,000) = $310 per year ~= $26 per month
2020 Levy (current rate): $221,600 x ($0.80 / $1,000) = $177 per year ~= $15 per month

Those numbers will hit you a bit higher or a bit lower depending on when your home was built and how bougie your neighborhood was in the 90’s. As a homeowner, this tax will show as a line item in your yearly tax bill.2 As a renter, it’s all just wrapped up in your monthly rental cost.

The vast majority of this revenue will pay for ongoing park operations costs (e.g. money to park staff, mostly), with a token amount (~2%) going towards deferred capital maintenance.

So that’s the (rather stark) choice. Pay ~$11 more a month for continued park services at the current level or pay ~$15 less a month and a couple hundred park staff lose their jobs.3 There is no third option.

Why is it on the ballot?

In 2002, voters approved measure 26-34, a 5 year levy of $0.39 per $1,000 assessed. That ran for 5 years and raised $9M+ a year. Once that lapsed, we just paid for Parks out of the general fund for a decade or so. But as costs outpaced revenue from fees and whatnot, it was clear this wasn’t sustainable and the Parks bureau faced a significant shortfall every year.

In order to cover the shortfall the 2020 levy was whipped up.

But costs have gone up. According to levy backers, so too must the levy in order to keep service levels as is.

The Argument Against

Let’s cover the obvious point first.

This is a 75% increase in the levy, after 5 years. Inflation, over that same period is 25%. That’s a huge delta and we need to understand that to vote for (or against this) this clear-eyed.

I always recommend that folks scan the voter’s guide for every race. There’s often a lot of rubbish in there but every once in awhile you’ll find a gem. This election is no exception. The arguments in favor include a pretty broad coalition of electeds, special interest groups, unions, business associations, and neighborhood associations. They are basically all saying, “yay parks! Portland Parks are great!”

On the negative side it’s mostly anti-tax zealot nonsense. Still, one argument in opposition caught my eye, from an architect and former school superintendent. I’m going to reprint it here in full since I feel like it’s a pretty good steelman of the “No” position.

We Love Our Parks! That’s Why We’re Voting NO!

Parks Are Treasures—But We Need Real Solutions

Our parks enrich our lives. But loving our parks means demanding a plan that sustains them—not just throwing more money at a system that’s failing to deliver.

The Problem With This Levy

The proposed levy is a 75% tax hike. Supporters say it will “save” our parks, but it actually locks us into an unsustainable spiral. Without a course change, levies will keep rising every five years while Park services stagnate— and one in five park assets remain at risk of failure or closure within 15 years.

Since the 2020 levy:

• Parks’ authorized staffing jumped from 521 to 826 positions

• New, maintenance-intensive amenities were added

• Critical repairs at existing assets were sidelined

• The backlog of repairs ballooned from $450 million to $600 million

Portland already spends $318 per person on parks— well above the national average of $192. The issue isn’t funding; it’s discipline.

What Supporters Don’t Tell You

Out of the proposed $1.40 per $1,000 tax rate, just three cents—about $2 million per year—will be dedicated to major maintenance. That won’t scratch the surface of the $600 million capital maintenance crisis. The rest—$84 million annually—will continue funding the operational bloat that created this crisis.

A Smarter Alternative

This is not a do-or-die vote. The City Council still has time to propose a smarter, more balanced levy. For instance, a $1.00 tax rate with 20 cents dedicated to capital maintenance would yield over $13 million annually for maintenance—nearly seven times more than the proposed levy provides.

Our Parks Deserve Better

A basic rule of budgeting is simple: don’t build what you can’t maintain. City Hall has ignored that rule while asking taxpayers for ever-bigger blank checks.

Vote NO on the 75% tax increase. Demand accountability and real stewardship of Portland’s park.

Bob Weinstein, Rod Merrick

This analysis passes the smell test and it’s pretty damning

In short:

1. Hiring has outpaced what we could afford.

2. We have a significant backlog of deferred maintenance.

3. New amenities keep getting added, increasing operational costs.

Analysis

I’m going to go deeper on each of these below but the tl;dr is pretty simple. All three of these criticisms are pretty valid. I think the only question then becomes: are they reason enough to vote “no”?

Hiring boom

Parks staff increased. Unfortunately I can only find granular data for spending in dollars, not in headcounts, so I don’t know the exact breakdowns of recreation staff vs. tree planters vs. whatever else. At minimum, 142 new full time positions were created in the first year after the 2020 levy, so the ~300 new heads over 5 years tracks. A lot of these positions (~85) were for tree maintenance but a bunch more were for various other things, including a lot of equity-related stuff.

Here’s the thing: this was entirely expected! This is what the 2020 levy was for!

Quoting the 2020 levy directly, that money was to…

• Proactively maintain existing park trees and plant hundreds of new trees each year where the rate of canopy cover is lower;

• Prevent closures of community centers and pools;

• Provide recreation programs, including summer camps, family-friendly movies and concerts, fitness and art classes, teen- and senior-focused programs, life-saving swim lessons, and a summer program serving free lunches to children experiencing poverty;

• Remove financial barriers for low-income households by ending current dependence on recreation fee revenues;

• Prioritize services for communities of color and households experiencing poverty, including equity centered outreach, community partnership grants, and increased engagement with volunteer and partner groups;

• Modernize PP&R’s data systems to improve internal efficiency4

I have a hard time hating on Parks for making a bunch of hires when we passed a levy so that they could do a bunch of stuff that required hiring. There’s no evidence headcount will continue to increase at the same clip with this levy.

Backlog Maintenance

A tale of two cities. Similar climate, similar culture, similar challenges.

Acreage:

• Portland: 14,000 acres (~9,000 acres if you exclude Forest Park)

• Seattle: 6,800 acres

Per Capita Parks Spending

• Portland: $145M / 635k = $228, per person, per year

• Seattle: $228M / 780k = $292, per person, per year

Parks Deferred Maintenance Backlog

• Portland: $550-800M (2024 data)

• Seattle: ~$270M (2017 data)

I imagine that Seattle maintenance backlog has grown in the last decade but I doubt it’s grown 3x. It’s pretty clear we have a maintenance backlog challenge given that 86% of Parks assets are in “poor” or “very bad” condition. But we’re also underinvesting, at least a little, compared to Seattle.

To me, $.03 of the levy going towards the maintenance backlog is simply not enough. I would like to see it closer to $.15 or $.20. This criticism of the levy strikes me as more than fair.

New Amenities without Maintenance

Portland has something called “System Development Charges (SDCs)”

SDCs are one-time fees assessed on new development that must be used for capital projects that expand park system capacity. Oregon law prohibits using SDC funds for operations and maintenance.

So… developers build (and thus pay SDCs), new park amenities get created, operational costs go up…but there’s no new funds to cover them. It’s a pretty vicious cycle. Another fair criticism

For now, at least, SDCs have been suspended by the mayor and governor. Folks in charge are aware of this dynamic. But there’s no real solve yet. The 2025 Levy is, one hopes, a bridge for the period between “understanding there is a structural problem” and “actually fixing the structural problem.” Time will tell.

Baumol’s Cost Disease

One last thing that I haven’t seen mentioned by anyone.

If you hang out in nerdy wonky internet parts, you may recognize this chart:

That’s changes in the “real” costs of goods and services over a 20-year time frame. There’s a lot to be said about this graph but I think the key takeaway is simple: industries with productivity improvements get cheaper over time. Industries without them get more expensive.

Cell phones are cheaper and better today because the factories where they are made are better and faster and more automated than they were 20 years ago. But childcare hasn’t seen productivity improvements. One childcare provider could watch over four infants 20 years ago. One childcare provider watches over four infants today. But their rent is higher, their costs are higher, so we have to pay them more. Which is what it is — childcare is great; child caretakers are great! But it does mean, as a percentage of our collective income, more and more inevitably goes to “low productivity” industries. This is known as Baumol’s Cost Disease.

We have some of this dynamic in Parks. Some work could be sped up / made more productive by technology: better mowers, more advanced arborist tooling, surveying drones, etc.

But much of it can’t. Unclogging toilets, lifeguarding at the pool—absent some wild new inventions, there just aren’t easy ways to increase the productivity of these jobs. So costs are going to naturally, continually, inexorably increase.

It’s something to watch as time marches on. Five, ten years from now, if we want to maintain our Parks to the same quality as we have today, each employee will cost more. It’s inescapable and we may need to make tough trade-offs going forward.

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My Verdict

I think this is a genuinely hard choice. We have real structural problems with our parks. The most recent audit is pretty tough but also fair. Still, it also seems like folks in office and in Parks are starting to recognize the structural issues, even as it’s unclear that they have the political will to fix them.

It’s just not obvious to me that voting for the parks levy will do anything to help. In my most pessimistic moments, I worry we are just enabling a bad cycle get worse. I just don’t know.

Still, this is a little different from the Portland Schools bond to me(which I voted no on). That was a capital bond. A 6 month delay there would have been a real headache for Portland Public Schools but it could have forced a real reckoning without impacting the day to day of students learning.

Here it’s less clear. This is predominantly for operating funds. A no vote may force that same sort of reckoning but it would also definitely be at the expense of hundreds of jobs, having real impacts on real folks, today. What form that takes (worse maintenance, closed pools, no more free lunches for kids) is undetermined. But it really seems like it would hamstring the day to day operations of one of Portland’s best assets.

In the end, I’ve decided to vote yes for the parks levy. That’s the official Mortlandia position.

But if you vote no? I get it. I have reservations too. Throwing good money after bad doesn’t tend to solve anything.

In 2030, when the levy comes up again, I hope we see considerable progress towards controlling costs and ensuring accountability while stabilizing assets. I want to see a solution at the state level to the SDC problem, and a real plan to chip away at the maintenance backlog. If I don’t, I expect you’ll find me voting against a 2030 levy.

September 27, 2025

Dear Secretary Hegseth,

Seems like today’s the day you’ve finally called up the troops here and I’ll say: it’s about time! Like many places in America Portland is a place with a lot of problems and we could certainly use a bit of help. So, a hearty welcome!

I thought you could use a local guide to give you ideas for some things for the troops to do while they’re here. Folks around here don’t love it when transplants move up here without giving back to the community and I’d hate for anyone’s stay to get spoiled by grumpy locals.

So make yourself at home and make yourself useful! I tried to keep it to things y’all actually had jurisdiction over, since I hear the mayor and city council are being real stick-in-the-muds.

1. Augment TSA staffing at PDX. We’ve dropped to 6th(!) in the “best airport” rankings and hopefully y’all can help us bounce back to first by shortening those lines.

2. Clear graffiti from interstate signs. It’s incredibly rampant on I-405 right now.1

3. Deploy teams for Portland Harbor Superfund cleanup. It’s still contaminated from WWII shipbuilding (among other things) and we need to cap (or remove) that sediment.

4. Expedite VA disability claims processing. The current backlog is 4+ months, I’m told. Pro-tip: the view from the skybridge is divine on a clear day. (Why else would it have 5 stars on Yelp?)

5. Remove invasive Tree-of-Heaven along highways. They host the spotted lanternfly, a looming agricultural threat here, and early fall is the perfect time to address them.

6. Nightly light show along the side of the Edith Green federal building. Could be a real boon to downtown foot traffic.

   

7. Investigate wage theft cases through Department of Labor. Portland has rampant violations in the service industry.

8. Remove e-scooters from Willamette River. We don’t need the batteries corroding down there!

9. Improve railroad crossing signals at SE 11th. People are tired of getting stuck down there constantly and our local microsite documenting it is down. 😭

10. Pair with the Coast Guard to do emergency seismic inspections of all of our bridges. The big one cometh!

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11. Clear the Global Entry interview backlog up by the airport. The wait time for an interview is currently about 1 year!

12. Accelerate NEPA environmental review for I-5 Bridge replacement options. We’re already 20 years into planning and it doesn’t feel like we’re any closer.

13. Manually move lampreys upriver at the Bonneville Dam. Credible estimates suggest that only ~50% of these cuddly little guys actually make it through the fish ladders.

    

14. Paint the Fremont Bridge. It’s peeling pretty bad.

15. Enforce FTC’s “click to cancel” rules on every gym and subscription service in town.

16. Triple the staffing at the Killingsworth post office. It’s the nearest location to my house and it’s legendarily slow. 🫤

17. Clear trash off the I-205 multi-use path. (While you’re there, would you be so kind as to trim back the blackberry bushes too?)

18. Actually enforce the remaining sections of the Portland Police Consent Decree that are still active. I’m not a lawyer but I believe that still includes training and use of force. I’m sure you’ve got experience with that.

19. Military brass band concerts daily on federal courthouse steps. This last one is a bit of a passion project for me. Modest Mouse used to practice in a house off Belmont and you could sometimes hear them in Colonel Summers park. I’m afraid they stopped years ago and, if I’m being honest, we could use a really good rendition of “Float On” right about now.

Thank you for the time hearing me out. We hope you enjoy your stay. I expect you’ll find our brewery and nightlife scene particularly to your liking.

Sincerest Regards,

The entire Mortlandia editorial staff

Have You Heard the Good News?

If you’ve ever met a YIMBY, they can sometimes feel like Evangelical Christians or Crossfit enthusiasts. They’ll talk your ear about zoning reform and parking minimums and floor area ratios. It’s exhausting,1 even when the facts are on their side.

If you’ve tuned them out, it means you may not have heard them pitch their newest gospel: Single Stair reform. I’ll try to keep it brief-ish, because I don’t want to be one of Those Guys.2

What is Single Stair reform?

Think back to your study abroad experience, my friendly bougie reader. Consider the cities you spent time in — Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris. Remember how walkable those cities were, how many mid-rise flats there were (you probably even stayed in one), how there were adorable cafes on corners to laze about in?

I suspect you thought, at some point, “why can’t we have this in America”?

There are many reasons why we can’t, too many to explain here. But Mike Eliason had the insight that across most of the world you can build 4 to 6 story apartment buildings around a single staircase, whereas in most of the US you can’t. That same apartment requires two stairwells.

Why does that matter? Design is all about constraints. The requirement for two stairwells constrains the architectural options for building layout.

In order to pencil out with two stairwells, nearly all builders make apartment buildings that look like the Holiday Inn Express you stayed in last night: a long “double loaded” corridor, with small rooms on each side.

The single stair approach allows for many more dynamic layouts, enabling a larger variety of units and facades. The benefits are legion:

• Better Apartments: Without that second stair, you can build more varied units in more buildings that fit on a wider variety of lots. Your apartment gets windows on multiple sides instead of just facing a hallway. Cross-ventilation! Natural light!

• Cheaper: Single-stair buildings can be 10-25% cheaper to build than double-loaded buildings.

• Family-Sized: Current rules basically force developers to build studios and 1-bedrooms because the building layout is so inefficient. As much as 75% of North American apartments are studios or have just one-bedroom. Single stair layouts make 2 and 3 bedroom apartments more financially feasible to build.

• More Housing: Without the long hallways of double-loaded buildings, single-stair buildings have a much smaller footprint and can be built on smaller lots.

The impact of this little code requirement is surprisingly deep.3

Why, then, do we require two?

There is a legitimate reason! We’re worried about fire. If there’s a first floor fire near the single staircase, you’re pretty screwed.

Except… what if the risk is low? Really low. From 2012 to 2024, NYC only had 3 fire deaths across 4,400+ single stair apartments. And the vast majority of those are older buildings, many without modern requirements around sprinklers, operable windows, pressurized stairwells, and so forth.

Put another way:

• Single stair 4 to 6 story buildings in NYC saw ~4.86 deaths per million “occupant years” of experience

• Over the same period, all other residential units in NYC saw ~4.54 deaths per million “occupant years” of experience.

• The difference is not statistically significant.

• All of the three deaths were in the unit where the fire originated. None of them would have been prevented by a second stairwell.

Three fire deaths in 12 years. Meanwhile, in just the first two months of 2021, three folks died in makeshift shelter fires in Portland.

The world is full of trade-offs and the more clear-eyed we are about that, the better.4 It’s not clear that single stair buildings are more dangerous than double loaded ones5 but even if they are, I’d rather a very slightly elevated fire risk if it means we can build more, to house more people, for cheaper and in ways that make for more dynamic and walkable cities.

So I’m pretty sold. And I’m not the only one. Single Stair reform has passed in Tennessee, Colorado, Austin (TX), and is in the “study/proposal” phase in a bunch of other jurisdictions.

Reform in Oregon

“But wait, Mort” I hear you saying, “didn’t Oregon pass something along these lines awhile back?”

You would be correct.

In June of 2023, HB3395 was signed into law. Key section:

SECTION 8. On or before October 1, 2025, the Department of Consumer and Business Services shall review and consider updates to the State of Oregon Structural Specialty Code through the Building Codes Structures Board established under ORS 455.132, to allow a residential occupancy to be served by a single exit

In October of 2023, Oregon’s Housing Production Advisory Council (HPAC) recommended singles stairs up to 5 floors in buildings with various other safety standards met (sprinklers, etc.)

Neat! So we have single stair options now?

Not so fast.

In the 2025 Oregon Structural Specialty Code review process, a public proposal (PP-02) for "Alternative safety measures for small-footprint apartment buildings of 4-6 stories and no more than 20 homes per stairwell" was unanimously disapproved by the committee.

Those codes are set and won’t be reviewed again until 2028. Which means there’s no single stair option for us for the foreseeable future.6

What the heck happened?

I’ve seen zero press on this so I had to go direct to the source:

Perusing through, it seems as though the committee was particularly concerned with how this would impact rural jurisdictions. They thought statewide adoption was inappropriate for rural areas with limited fire service capacity and, more generally, that there was a lack of sufficient safety data for the height increase.

I personally remain underwhelmed by these arguments but I can see why they voted the way they did. Ultimately rural jurisdictions may have different needs than urban ones. I don’t want to speak for those jurisdictions.

But I do live in Portland. Where does this leave our urban jurisdiction?

Turns out, we can amend our own building code through Oregon Revised Statute 455.040

This isn’t a turnkey process, I’m afraid. It requires:

• The city to submit a formal request

• Public meetings about the change

• State review and approval.

Arduous! But given the existing concerns of the committee, I’m skeptical we’ll see them change their tune in 2028. We might as well get started now.

Which means the next time you see your nearby city councilor, chat with them about the merits of Single Stair reform.

Elsewhere, in local news

And now, for a roundup of other happenings locally. Lots of useful tidbits in the last few weeks. Here are the ones I found the most intriguing:

• The Broadway Bridge is closing to vehicle and streetcar traffic for six months, Oct. 2025 through Apr. 2026. One sidewalk will remain open for pedestrians and bikers. (Source).

  • Seems like necessary maintenance but expect traffic impacts, especially around Blazers games.

• Speaking of the Blazers, the $4.25B sale is final, with a couple of minority owners with ties to Oregon, which means the Blazers are staying in town. (Source).

  • It’s s good sign but with the Rose Garden lease up in 2030 there’s still a decent chance we have an arena fight ahead that gets ugly.

• It may be hard to get a covid vaccine this fall thanks to RFK Jr. related nonsense. (Source).

  • Internet rumor has it that the best place to get vaxxed and relaxed is Vancouver, WA right now, though that could change after this week’s ACIP meeting (scheduled for Thursday, Sep. 18).

• The Ash borer has made it to town. (Source).

  • Expect pretty gnarly impacts to the 100,000 ash trees in town (~2% of all of the trees in Portland). 😢

  • EDIT after publish: Some neat creative ideas / green shoots are out there to mitigate the impact. 😮

• This concert in the Rocky Butte Tunnel seems neat. (Source). 4 pm Saturday, Sept. 20. Free.

• I found this interview with John Tapogna illuminating about some of the longterm challenges Oregon has. (Link). He didn’t even mention PERS (though I guess that’s more a medium-term challenge at this point)!

  • Note the decline in Oregon K-12 performance aligns pretty neatly with the transition from the No Child Left Behind era to the Every Student Succeeds Act era.

• Pedestrian traffic downtown is up. Still down from the pandemic but at its highest in 5 years. (Source).

• A Michelin star Austin BBQ joint is opening up an outpost in Tough Luck (NE Dekum)! (Source). Mortlandia’s Texas correspondent7 gives us the skinny:

  This is super cool. La Barbecue is legit. […] One of the ladies who owned it, LeAnn (RIP), is from a family of BBQ folks, the Muellers, who go way back as pitmasters, and her brother, John (also RIP), made the best brisket and sauce I’ve ever had in my life. Cool to see them expanding up here.

Thanks, as ever, for reading. Tell your friends.

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Preamble

If you haven’t voted yet please use a drop box. Voting deadline is Tuesday, May 20 and it’s too late to mail.

Off-cycle election season is back! No extended digressions1, let’s get down to business.

This May’s election is simple:

• Schools,

• Schools,

• Schools,
  and, of course,

• Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality

Let’s take them in reverse order.

Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District

UFSWQD, for short.

What is it?

It’s a special district to address flooding issues and water quality isssues in Portland, obviously. It’s basically all in the name. Here’s their history. It’s existed in its current form since 2016 but various versions have existed since 1917 (which I don’t think helped folks much in the 1948 flood of Vanport).

Why is it on the ballot?

Because we pay for it, so we vote on it? Like the Multnomah County Soil and Water Conservation Districts, this is another case of Too Much Democracy.

Were it up to me, this would be managed entirely in-house by either Multnomah County or the State of Oregon. We’d hire some expert technocrats and call it a day.

But it’s not up to me, and so voters have to vote on something they don’t understand or care about, even if their lives depend on it (which, in this case, may actually be true if you live in low lying parts of North or Northeast Portland).

How am I voting?

Lori Stegmann (again) for Position 1. I’m not quite sure why she is up again after we had to vote for her in November. I also wouldn’t vote for her for other positions in the city or county, as I’m skeptical of the company she keeps. But her opponent, Leo Morley does not appear to be a serious candidate.

All other candidates are unopposed.

Multnomah Education Service District

What is it?

To quote the Mercury:

Multnomah Education Service District is responsible for coordinating education services and resources for regional school districts. MESD is one of nearly 20 ESDs in Oregon and provides everything from special education, to health services, alternative education, outdoor school, career pathways, and more.

Why is it on the ballot?

Again, I’m skeptical we should be voting on a position that we, as voters are unequipped to accurately assess the success or failure of the board. But here we are. It’s on the ballot because that’s how Oregon rolls.

How am I voting?

Susie Jones. Erica Fuller didn’t submit to the voters guide. Rebecca Yeaman seems passionate about book bans but otherwise doesn’t appear to have any relevant experience. Kevin Michael Butler is actually endorsed by a sitting member of the board, which got my attention, but the rest of his Voter’s Guide submission was generic and unhelpful—one step up from word salad. That leaves Susie Jones, who has experience in the job and was a previous educator.

Will that make her a good board member? Honestly — no idea. But “can walk and chew gum” is the bar and a retired teacher/retired community college faculty member who previously sat on the board can probably do both.

Portland School District

What is it?

It’s the school board for Portland Public Schools (PPS). I don’t know why they don’t call it the school board because it’s the school board.

Why is it on the ballot?

Because 50-60% of our property taxes go to schools, 40% of our state income taxes go to schools, and, if you’re one of the lucky few, another 3% of another chunk of your income goes to (pre-)schools.

Also maybe you have a kid or three in school.

How am I voting?

Before I get to my actual choices, I need to throw my cards on the table. Thanks mostly to late night, beer-soaked policy conversations with Conor P. Williams of the Century Foundation, I am an Obama-era school reform liberal when it comes to schools.

Broad strokes, that means I believe a bunch of things which were popular in 2009-2016 but many of which have since fallen out of fashion:

• Students outcomes first — Teachers and parents are great and their input is crucial. But ultimately the outcomes of students are far more important than any other stakeholder in the system.2

• Data-driven accountability — Yes, over-testing and teaching to the test are bad, but we need to actually measure how students are doing to understand how to best support them.

• School choice — I’m pretty skeptical of a lot of charter school initiatives (especially in red states) but I’m not a priori opposed to them. Indeed, I think school choice, when properly implemented, can be a net benefit to students from all backgrounds.

• Pre-schools, early interventions, dual-language programs, etc. all can improve outcomes when implemented wisely and funded appropriately.

• Phonics is good, yo.

Basically, it’s a technocratic and accountability-based approach to schooling grounded in data, rather than one based on… anything that isn’t that. Vibes, I suppose.3

I had hoped to vote with this lens, basing my votes on whomever most closely hewed to educational philosophy here. In practice…it was much less obvious. Mostly folks are fighting about per-student funding (which they don’t control, the state does) and the capital funding, a.k.a the bond (which they also don’t control but at least is more relevant to the gig).

There also seems to be a divide on accountability — on what we should be holding teachers and schools accountable for vs. the state. The background noise to all of this is the 2023 teacher’s strike, which was brutal for students, parents, and teachers alike.

That strike is interesting. It’s been a minute, so my memory is a bit foggy but in the binary choice of “who was right, the teachers or the administration”, I sided with the teachers. I wanted to see them get paid more, which they did. But there’s a lot of complexity under the term “administration”. It’s the principals, it’s the central office, it’s the state budget, it’s the school board.

Disentangling that is complex and I don’t pretend to be an expert. Broad strokes, I’d like to see: 1. more funding in a more reliable funding model from the state and 2. more accountability for student achievement at the district, the per-school, and the per-teacher level.

Which is to say, I want to invest in teachers and in schools but I also want to ensure accountability up and down that chain.

District 1, Zone 1:

Ken Cavagnolo has a bunch of interesting ideas on his website and is a bit of a fire-breather, in a way that resonates with me. But I’m left with a feeling of “why the school board?”

Christy Splitt seems generally well-meaning and has a bunch of rather unpleasant experiences in her time with a kid at PPS. She’s on the board now, but her term has been extremely brief so she doesn’t have much to show for it. Her platform is shallow and generic.

She wants more money for the schools, of course. Me too! I’m supportive, in principle that but it’s clear that isn’t the only answer to what ails us. Oregon is about average among states for funding-per-student but significantly below average in terms of reading and math scores.

I’ll admit this is all vibes but between her WW interview and her platform, I’m left with the feeling that she won’t force the hard decisions and trade-offs that may be required to improve outcomes.

In the end: I’m open to both and could be swayed It’s an abbreviated term, so it’s less of a commitment either way.

Realistically Christy Splitt is going to win. I’m interested to see what she does with the remainder of her term. But I’m voting Ken Cavagnolo—his background for a candidate is unusual but I’m willing to take the chance.

District 1, Zone 4:

Herman Greene has served on the board for a term. His approach seems to be students-first. I’m glad he highlighted some of the major issues with the Bond and I appreciate his realism in negotiations with teachers as well. But I don’t love his style, nor do I love that he shows up unprepared to meetings

Rashelle Chase-Miller has a strong literacy background and does appear to be prepared, for meetings or otherwise. But like with Splitt, her WW interview answers have me worried she’s going to use school funding (or lack thereof) as an excuse for the school achievement issues.

Both candidates are flawed. I won’t begrudge you for voting for Rashelle Chase-Miller. But I’m going Herman Greene.

District 1, Zone 5:

Whereas Zones 1 and 4 are “less of two evils”, Zone 5 is actually a choice between two seemingly good choices.

I love an 18 year old who is capable, knowledgable and deeply, hopelessly involved. I dig that so much. And I appreciate his lived experience, very recently, as a student; it makes me confident that he’ll focus on students first rather than other actors in the system.

I also appreciate folks who can actually make things happen in the district. I don’t care much about lights on a sports field but lead abatement is exactly the sort of infrastructure improvements we should prioritize.

I wish they were running in different districts. Since I can only vote for one, I’m swayed by Virginia LaForte’s “top 3” priorities for the district: chronic absenteeism, repairing crumbling infrastructure, and raising low reading proficiency rates.

District 1, Zone 6:

A former cowoker of Rob Galanakis described him to me like this:

Smart dude, very much the kind of technocrat you’d want making decisions. Also likely incapable of getting elected or working within a system to get shit done.

So I’m obviously predisposed to like him.4

But liking him doesn’t mean I’ll vote for him. Two reasons:

1. He will have to work within a system to get things done. Governing requires coalition building, which requires tact.

2. His opponent has is a strong, pragmatic candidate with the right focus for schools. Her top 3: chronic absenteeism; fairer access to the arts, apprenticeships work, and college prep courses; and taking greater fiscal responsibility. I can get behind that.

I’m voting Stephanie Engelsman.

School District Measure 26-259

What is it?

It’s a bond! A $1.83B dollar bond. It will replace an existing PPS bond, so property taxes should roughly stay flat and the money will get spent…somehow. The original plan has the majority set aside to replace three high schools, with the remainder to go towards a handful of other changes

OPB has the best rundown I’ve seen on it.

Why is it on the ballot?

Crumbling infrastructure! We have it! PPS typically pays for capital improvements via property tax funded bonds. Many districts country-wide do this, so there’s nothing unusual here. What is a little unusual is the price tag which is 50% larger than the previous largest bond in history. Inflation, man. It’s a bummer. Trump’s tariffs will only make this worse and interest rates are much higher now than in the 2010s.

My thought process

Full disclosure: I, personally, have a vested interest in this as my kiddo is districted for Jefferson, one of the schools targeted for replacement.5 I’m also a Portland city resident, and thus a local tax payer.

The case for the bond is pretty straightforward. We have a significant backlog of deferred maintenance for our schools. We have rebuilt the majority of high schools in the city and the majority of the money will go to finishing this job. We also live in the Cascadian Subduction Zone and an earthquake here will be Very Bad, especially for folks in buildings with unreinforced masonry (like, say, a school with a brick facade).

It’s mostly unsaid, but there’s an additional case for: delaying this work will only cost more money thanks to inflation/tariffs/rising interest rates. We’ll have to pay now or later; might as well pay now.

The case against the bond is a bit more complicated and different folks have different critiques. I’d say the come down to some combo of the following:

1. $1.8B is a lot of money!

2. Specifically, the $1.15B for the three high schools is a lot of money.

3. Enrollment is projected to decline significantly in the coming years.

4. The money is better spent on fixing up elementary and middle schools rather than the high schools.

5. There have been cost overruns with previous bonds and insufficient oversight/accountability.

6. There is not enough transparency in how the money will be allocated with this particular bond.

I would recommend reading the following endorsements to get a sense of the landscape:

• Mercury: Yes

• Oregonian: Tepid Yes, followed by a more enthusiastic yes

• Willamette Week: No

I waffled here a lot. I want money for infrastructure and a lot of these schools need the upgrade. I also had to look at a very big number and just sit with it while. It’s easy for very large numbers to wash over you so I wanted to consider that actual scope6 from first principles.

Assuming no change to what’s delivered, and assuming they basically hit their budget, what’s the difference between a $500M bond and a $1B, $3B, or $5B bond?

Would I vote yes for all of them? For none of them?

At $500M, the answer is obviously yes to me.
At $5B, the answer is obviously no.

Per the apocryphal Churchill quote, now we’re just haggling over price.

I know folks are worried about declining enrollment. Cities are dynamic, funny things and I’m not confident projecting out enrollment 10-20 years out. But I can look at the cost for the capacity of these schools and see if it makes sense.

Let’s go to the chalkboard.

Howard County, MD -

• My hometown just finished a high school build out. They broke ground in 2020, finished in 2023. Total costs were $143M for a 1,750 student capacity.

  = $81k per pupil

• Median income in Howard County is $68k and median home price is ~$667k.

Lexington, MA

• The most expensive HS construction on record, still in progress. Our local press will quote this as costing $662M but the actual price tag is now up to $695M.7 This is for a school that has a capacity of 2,400.8
  = $289k per pupil

• Median income in Lexington is $219k and median home price estimates vary but it’s between $1.6M and $2.5M.

Portland, OR

• Three high schools at $1.15B (+ the $366M already spent on planning fees) = $1.5B / 3 = ~$500M per high school, each with a capacity of 1,700.
  = $294k per pupil

• Median income in Portland is $47k and median home price is ~$545k.

So we’re talking about, on a per pupil-capacity basis, the three most expensive high schools in the country.

Why costs are so expensive deserves another post, which I don’t have the time, patience, or deep knowledge to write. Thankfully the Oregonian has a decent rundown. It’s a combo of green energy requirements, labor requirements, and (in my opinion) an unwillingness to make hard trade-offs.

How am I voting?

“Most expensive schools in the country” is a tough pill to swallow. And yet, were this the only chance to vote for a school bond in the next decade, I would probably swallow that pill and vote yes. The upgrades (especially the HVAC and seismic upgrades) are sorely needed.

Luckily for me, this isn’t the only chance. There will be a primary election in May of 2026. If voters shoot down the bond this time that should be more than enough time for the district to trim costs, perhaps even work with the city to eliminate expensive requirements. I’m confident they will try again soon enough.

I’m voting no on 26-259.

In the meantime, I pray the Big One waits for a few more years to hit.