A YouTube channel called Election Time recently ran an item showing Democrat Tina Kotek polling at 45% and Republican Christine Drazan at 44% in the governor’s race.
And this isn’t the only outlet saying Kotek has the advantage.
“While Oregon’s 40-year history of electing Democratic governors and the state’s strong distaste for Republican President Donald Trump suggest Drazan has a difficult road ahead of her,” the Oregon Capital Chronicle opined on May 26. And I recently heard a couple political analysts on OPB saying Kotek will likely win it all again.
They can’t be serious.
This is the “Tax Everything that moves Kotek” who just tried to pull a fast one on Oregonians by shifting a despised transportation tax measure to May in hopes reduced voter participation would doom it, but still saw more than 83% of voters across the political spectrum reject it.
This is the leader of Oregon’s Democratic party that has fostered an anti-business climate for decades, enabled horrendous K-12 school performance despite high per pupil spending, filled the state Supreme Court with liberal judges ever since the administration of Republican Victor Atiyeh, whose term ended in January 1987, and exploded the state budget since then, increasing it from $12.57 billion in 1987-1989 to $138.9 billion in 2025-2027.
It’s the party that gleefully accepted, and then stalled returning, a $500,000 contribution from a disgraced and bankrupt crypto company after the U.S. Attorney’s Office requested it return the money to the federal government.
This is a party so beholden to unions, which represent just 15% of working Oregonians, that it enacted a law to pay striking public and private workers unemployment benefits, that has watched Oregon’s business reputation tank in national rankings, that tolerates underperforming K-12 schools while suspending the requirement that high school students must pass standardized proficiency exams (the “Essential Skills” requirement) to graduate, that has watched the projected cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement project swell from $4.8 billion to $14.4 billion, and potentially $17.7 billion.
Oregon is in trouble and continuing Democratic Party control isn’t the solution.
It’s a tactic as old as the hills. Put controversial measures on the ballot in predicted low-turnout elections, hoping to gain from voter apathy.
Oregon Democrats, ever anxious to ignore the public will, pushed the vote on Measure 20, the much-reviled $4.3 billion transportation funding referendum, to the upcoming May 19 primary ballot, rather than the November ballot, in hopes that would give it a better chance of passing.
Maybe they were right. With only about a week to go to cast ballots, about 87 percent of eligible Oregon voters have not done so.
Critics of the measure came up with about 250,000 signatures to get the measure oin he ballot in the first place, more than three times what was required. Where are all those people now?
If approved,
At a time of escalating gas prices due to the Iran war, and President Trump discussing lowering the federal gas tax, gas prices in Oregon would increase six cents per gallon to 46 cents.
Vehicle registration fees would increase from $43 to $85 for passenger vehicles; $63 to $105 for utility trailers; $44 to $86 for mopeds and motorcycles; and increase passenger vehicle title fees from $77 to $216.
Payroll taxes would double to 0.2%.
The deadline to have a ballot postmarked or in a drop box is 8:00 p.m. May 19. DO IT!
“Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act helped roughly triple the ICE budget, allocating $45 billion for building new immigration centers and hiring 10,000 new ICE agents. One dispiriting lesson of the imperial boomerang is that, once. bought and paid for, structures of intimidation and oppression tend to endure.” David Wallace-Wells, 1/25/2026
Update, 1/30/2026 – The Washington Post reported that local officials are raising logistical and humanitarian concerns in 23 towns where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to convert industrial buildings into detention centers that combined would hold up to 80,000 people. ICE has offered few details about its plan since The Washington Post first reported on it in December 2025. One detention center the Department of Homeland Security wants to open would be a more than 1 million sq. ft. industrial warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia that would be retrofitted to hold 8,500 detainees and hundreds of staff, more than the city’s total population. The City Manager, Eric Taylor, has said the city does not have the water or sewer infrastructure to support the facility. Unaddressed is the question of why the government needs such huge detention facilities when it says it’s objective is to deport people.
Update, 2/12/2026 – It’s not just more detention centers coming down the pike. Wired reported that ICE and DHS have quietly carried out a months-long expansion, securing more than 150 new leases and office expansions across nearly every state, often in or near major metro areas. Many new facilities sit near schools, medical offices, and places of worship, with DHS pressing the GSA to bypass standard procurement rules and hide lease details under claims of “national security.”
Update, 2/21/2026 – Funding for the Department of Homeland Security expired has expired and Democrats have made 10 demands to rein in Trump’s surge of deportation forces into U.S. cities. One of those demands is “Compliance with Basic Detention Standards and Oversight of Facilities.” Think about it. Incarceration facilities are already legally required to be humane and hygienic., but as Radley Balko has reported on SubStack in The Unpopulist, there is a growing pile of reports from attorneys, journalists, human rights groups, judges, and others about shocking, inhumane conditions at facilities around the country.
Update, 3/7/2026 – So far, DHS has completed the purchase of 10 of the 23 detention center properties it initially pursued, spending more than $890 million, according to deed records or statements by local officials. Efforts to acquire 10 other properties — in Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia — have failed, according to statements by local officials or building owners.
In the years preceding his death in 1875, George Templeton Strong, a prominent Wall Street attorney, kept a voluminous journal of his life and times. In April 1865, near the end of the American civil war, he wrote, “These four years have reduced me to something like pauperism, But I am profoundly grateful for them nevertheless. They have given me — & my wife & my boys, — a country worth living in & living for, & to be proud of.”
I can’t say President Trump’s inhumane crackdown on immigrants and harassment and murder of American citizens in the past year have given me a country worth living in, living for and to be proud of.
Not while the Trump administration promotes hatred of “the other”. David Masciotra. David Masciotrar ecently wrote in the Washington Monthly, “Through (Elie) Wiesel’s story and the stories he told and created, two truths become inescapable. The first is that it is naïve, if not catastrophic, to underestimate the power of hatred. “
I doubt 7-year-old Diana Crespo, a second grader at Gresham’s Alder Elementary School, and 5-year-old Liam Ramos, the bunny-hatted child detained by immigration agents in Minneapolis, see America as a country worth living in and living for and to be proud of either. They are both being held at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s South Texas Family Residential Center in Texas.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has spread its detention center tentacles across the United States:
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported on January 29, 2026 that ICE is planning another detention center in Newport, Oregon as soon as May.
The Atlantic reported that the warehouses expected to be detention centers could become white elephants if there’s a change in ICE policies and the detainee population decreases. “If the goal is to not have endless illegal immigration, those centers will be obsolete in three to five years,” a longtime ICE official told me. “The amount of money going into them is abhorrent.”
The spread of these. detention centers reminds me of another brutal time.
Most of us know the names of a few Nazi concentration camps, like Dachau, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank died. But they were part of a massive complex of more than 850 ghettos, concentration camps, forced-labor camps and extermination camps CNN has identified. They stretched from France and the Netherlands in the west to Estonia, Lithuania and Poland in the east that the Nazis established during the 12 years Adolf Hitler was in power. Their purpose — to segregate , oppress and persecute their opponents.
Like the ICE detention centers, the Nazi system started small and then metastasized like a cancer, according to the Wiener Holocaust Library.
Initially there were so-called SA camps. (Sturmabteilung (SA), or “Brownshirts,” was the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing). After the Night of Long Knives in 1934, the SS and Heinrich Himmler shut down the SA camps and consolidated control of all camps in Germany. Himmler and the SS used Dachau, an original SS camp, as a blueprint for all camps. From 1934 onwards, the SS developed and then operated the camp system, which lasted until Germany’s defeat in 1945.
The SS started building major camps, beginning with Sachsenhausen in 1936, then Buchenwald in 1937, Flossenbürg and Mauthausen in 1938 and Ravensbrück for women in 1939. Political prisoners were the first inmates. Then people with previous criminal convictions. Next were the so-called “asocials”, such as Roma, homosexuals, prostitutes, the homeless and the “work-shy”. The mass imprisonment of Jews began in 1938 after the Anschluss and Kristallnacht.
As the Second World War began in earnest, foreign citizens from newly occupied countries such as Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands began to be imprisoned , followed by Soviet prisoners of war (POW’s) after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Those who believe U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can and will be restrained under the Trump administration might want to stop and reconsider.
With an administration where cruelty is the point, it can happen here.
Black Friday is probably going to turn into Bleak Friday for some credit users at Oregon retailers.
“When it Comes to West Coast Furniture Stores, We Have the Best Prices in Home Furniture,” Mor Furniture says on its website. On Nov. 26, the site is highlighting: “IN-STORE ONLY. No interest with equal monthly payments for 61 months on purchases of $6000 or more made with your Mor Furniture credit card. Equal monthly payments required for 61 months. Learn more.”
If you’re not careful, it could be a costly trap
Let’s say you buy furniture that costs $6,800. The monthly payment due for 61 months, Mor told me, would be $112.00. BUT, if you still owe any of the $6800 at the end of the 61 months, even $1, Mor Furniture will charge you interest on the full $6800 at a 35.99% rate starting from the purchase date.
Do the math. The total interest on an amortized $6800 loan paid off in 61 months at an annual interest rate of 35.99% would be approximately $7,422.39, more than the cost of the furniture itself. In other words, that furniture will cost you $6,800 + $7,422.39, a total of $14,222.
Shop at Key Home Furnishings and you will encounter the same problem if you don’t pay off your entire purchase price in the time required.“No interest will be charged on the promo balance if you pay it off, in full, within the promo period.,” Key says. “If you do not, interest will be charged on the promo balance from the purchase date. The promo balance is equal to the promo purchase amount and any related optional debt cancellation fees. “
Wayfair credit card financing also offers 0% interest options for a set period (e.g., 6, 12, or 24 months) on qualifying purchases, but if you don’t pay the balance in full before the promotional period ends, you will be charged retroactive interest on the entire original purchase amount at a high APR.
A perceptive consumer observed on Reddit, “One really has to study a business structure. They aren’t furniture dealers first, they are credit companies first, predatory lenders that have attached a tangible item or service to their scheme.”
It’s worth noting that deferred financial schemes are not restricted to furniture stores. Numerous other retailers offer it, too.
For example, Car Toys, a specialty car audio and mobile electronics retailer, promotes “No interest if paid in full within promotional period” but “Interest will be charged to your account from the purchase date if their purchase balance is not paid in full within the promotional period.”
Window company Renewal by Andersen can trap consumers, too. NO MONEY DOWN, NO MONTHLY PAYMENTS, NO INTEREST FOR 12 MONTHS* its website says. Then it adds, “*Interest is billed during promo period but will be waived if the amount financed is paid in full before promo period expires.’
Anybody can be caught in these credit schemes, but the people most likely to be vulnerable are consumers with lower credit scores who suffer a job loss or medical emergency that makes it hard to pay off the balance, triggering the retroactive interest charge.
The now beleaguered federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau cautions all consumers to know the difference betweenzero interest and deferred interest, because the differences can have big effects on your wallet.
A zero percent interest promotion will not add interest based on the balance of your purchase during the promotional period. If you still have an unpaid balance when the promotional period is over, you will start to pay interest on the remaining balance only from the date the promotional period ends.
In contrast, some retailers offer financing such as “No interest if paid in full in 12 months.” That’s when you need to be wary because it usually means the promotion is a deferred interest offer.
Portland may be “The City That Works”, but the city’s speed camera program doesn’t. And that’s costing a bundle.
Portland started using fixed speed cameras to identify and fine drivers in 2016. It began by issuing warnings starting on Aug. 25 of that year for violations occurring on the SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway corridor. The program started issuing formal speeding tickets at the end of a 30-day trial period on Sept. 24, 2016.
But a persistent problem quickly emerged. Every photograph had to reviewed and every citation had to be issued by a sworn police officer. That was creating a backlog in processing citations and hindering the city’s ability to expand its automated enforcement program.
In 2020, Portland’s fixed speed cameras issued 38,502 tickets. Each one had to be reviewed by a sworn police officer, a massive time sink to say the least.
Finally, in 2022 a solution was found when the Legislature took up HB4105, which allowed the City of Portland to utilize non-police staff (specifically, “duly authorized traffic enforcement agents”) to review and issue citations based on photographs from fixed speed cameras, thereby freeing up police officers to focus on other duties.
Support for the bill was widespread.
“Allowing duly authorized enforcement agents to review citations will create more review capacity – while at the same time ensuring that appropriate training and certification for reviewing personnel are in place,” the City of Portland testified before the House Committee on Rules. “This will address police capacity as well as traffic safety needs.”
Multnomah County testified that requiring police officers to review and issue citations “reduces the capacity (of sworn police officers) for other police priorities and also creates a costly barrier to use of automated enforcement.”
Dana Dickman, at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), testified that not only was each traffic safety camera violation being reviewed by a sworn police officer, but “100% of traffic safety camera violation review occurs on police overtime. Expanding the pool of qualified reviewers would lower the cost of this function.”
Reporting on HB 4105, Willamette Week noted that Portland was then advertising a starting salary for officers of $66,934. “In a 2,000-hour year, that’s $33.47 an hour. At time-and-a-half, an officer would be paid $50 an hour to review photo radar tickets.” Willamette Week said those payments explained why the Portland police union opposed changing the law.
Maybe that’s why once the bill passed in 2022, any sense of urgency in implementing it seemed to evaporate.
In December 2024, Jonathan Maus, publisher/editor of BikePortland’s news site, reported that he had asked the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s (PBOT) Communications Director, Hannah Schafer, about the status of implementing the new authority given to them in HB 4105. “PBOT is currently developing the program that will result in PBOT staff reviewing and issuing citations for moving violations from the automated enforcement cameras,” Schafer replied.
Well, here we are in October 2025, 34 months after the effective date of the law, and sworn police officers are still reviewing each and every moving violation recorded by one of the city’s cameras.
Earlier this year, Willamette Week reported that even though speed cameras have been effective, more have not been installed because, as PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera put it, police officers are currently the ones to review all citations, mostly on overtime shifts, and the bureau is limited by police availability. They’re also hamstrung by capacity at the Multnomah County Circuit Court, which adjudicates the citations.
Meanwhile, the cost of all that overtime? I filed a public records request to find out and it took repeated requests to get the precise numbers I asked for:
Year
Overtime Hrs.
Cost ($)
2022
501.83
41,964.57
2023
411.59
36,963.07
2024
423.00
40,991.56
2025
628.21
60,423.17
Total
1,964.63
$180,342.37
It comes out of the fines paid by speed scofflaws, not the city budget, but still, that’s $180,342.37 down the drain and into police officers’ pockets.
The overtime rule has obviously been quite lucrative for some Portland Police officers. A complete annual breakdown in overtime payments each year is provided in the footnote.[1]
In July 2025, PBOT’s Speed Safety Camera Program Manager, Steve Hoyt-McBeth, told me he’s “very eager to get the ( duly authorized enforcement agents ) program up and running” but “the current holdup is funding”.
Hiring the positions had been held for approximately six months because of PBOT’s budget challenges, he said. “I was hopeful that I’d be able to begin the recruitment this summer, but the lack of a funded state transportation package, which puts an approximately $11 million hole in PBOT’s FY25-26 has kept the pause button pressed.”
Hoyt-McBeth said part of the holdup is also tied to staff capacity to develop the program. “No municipality in Oregon currently utilizes the statutory authority to have Agents issue citations, so we have to develop the training and program ourselves without a template from another jurisdiction,” he said.
So, when are the Portland Police going to relinquish their lucrative overtime work on speed camera violations and pass it on to non-police staff?
There’s a saying of uncertain providence, “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime”.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson wants to give the homeless in the Pearl District a fish.
Wilson wants to turn an industrial building at NW 15th Avenue and NW Northrup Street into a so-called “low-barrier” overnight-only homeless shelter able to accommodate up to 200 people. An all-night warehouse for the homeless. According to the NW Examiner last month, the city and property owner Vanessa Sturgeon of Sturgeon Development Partners signed a 12-year lease in May that Mayor Keith Wilson has described as a two-or-three-year deal. The $18,000-a-month lease covers the main floor and part of a basement, a total of 16,000 square feet, to be used only for shelter for unhoused individuals.
Low-barrier means the people who stay there from 8pm to 6am wouldn’t have to show an ID, be sober (there’s be no sobriety checks) or drug-free, although alcohol and drugs would not be allowed. The 200- bed shelter at Northwest 15th will have only two showers and sex offenders will be allowed inside the low- barrier shelter because no one will be checking for IDs.
A critic posted on reddit: “It’s basically a night prison. 200 people, 6 toilets, low barrier, barely a snack, no meals, no counseling, no fresh clothing. And then they are going to “disperse” these people every morning near parks and schools.”
Potential overnighters could access a bed by standing in line before the shelter opened. At a July 28, 2025, public forum at the Armory, Skyler Brocker-Knapp, who oversees the city’s shelter plan, said people will be handed a card with information about where to receive social services after leaving the shelter.
I still remember going to a free lunch for the homeless program in an underground Portland parking garage a number of years ago. Tables spread out across the center of the garage displayed a bounty of meal options put together by multiple well-meaning social justice volunteers, from sandwiches and lasagna to potato chips and hot ethic dishes. Homeless people streamed in, wearily assembled in slow-moving lines, grabbed hold of what they wanted and found a spot on the concrete floor to sit and eat.
It wasn’t uplifting. It was depressing.
Nobody was there to help the struggling people get their lives back on track, to inquire about the welfare of their children, or to make them aware of accessible pathways towards lasting change. The whole thing was a misguided feel-good effort at charity by naïve good Samaritans.
More recently, I saw a group of fresh-faced, eager suburban teenage girls handing out sandwiches from the trunk of their car to homeless people at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. That might have eased their consciences, but how, exactly, did that drive change?
As Kevin Dahlgren has noted in his Substack, @truthonthestreets, “We don’t have a homeless crisis; we have a mental health and addiction crisis. Unfortunately, many still treat the homeless crisis as if it’s a housing crisis and push for more and more shelter beds. The problem is these shelters are far too low a level of care for the majority of our mentally ill.”
“Many advocates for the homeless assume that homelessness is primarily due to the unaffordability of housing, rather than drug use, antisocial behavior, criminal activity or mental illness,” says Devon Kurtz,director of public safety policy at the conservative Cicero Institute. “From this assumption flows misguided confidence that living on the street is an unfortunate but preferable alternative to institutions that curb the civil liberties of individuals who are simply poor. This assumption is wrong. In the largest survey of homeless Americans ever conducted, only 4% cited high housing costs as the primary reason they were homeless. Significant majorities said they had mental-health issues, had used illegal substances and had been to jail or prison for extended periods.”
A woman who directed a social service agency in the Portland area that served low-income families once told me the whole free food approach was “antiquated”, a long-ago discredited tactic , and that unrestricted aid was counterproductive.
So’s the proposed low-barrier Pearl District homeless shelter.
Portland started using fixed speed cameras to identify and fine drivers in 2016. It began by issuing warnings starting on Aug. 25 of that year for violations occurring on the SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway corridor. The program started issuing formal speeding tickets at the end of a 30-day trial period on Sept. 24, 2016.
But a persistent problem quickly emerged. Every photograph had to reviewed and every citation had to be issued by a sworn police officer. That was creating a backlog in processing citations and hindering the city’s ability to expand its automated enforcement program.
In 2020, Portland’s fixed speed cameras issued 38,502 tickets. Each one had to be reviewed by a sworn police officer, a massive time sink to say the least.
It took until 2022 for a solution to be found, a notable victory for Portland. That was when the Legislature considered HB4105, which allowed the City of Portland to utilize non-police staff (specifically, “duly authorized traffic enforcement agents”) to review and issue citations based on photographs from fixed speed cameras, thereby freeing up police officers to focus on other duties.
Support for the bill was widespread.
“Allowing duly authorized enforcement agents to review citations will create more review capacity – while at the same time ensuring that appropriate training and certification for reviewing personnel are in place,” the City of Portland testified before the House Committee on Rules. “This will address police capacity as well as traffic safety needs.”
Multnomah County testified that requiring police officers to review and issue citations “reduces the capacity (of sworn police officers) for other police priorities and also creates a costly barrier to use of automated enforcement.”
“We are very concerned about the epidemic of traffic fatalities trending upward across Oregon,” said The Street Trust. “We would like you to rethink trac enforcement as an administrative function in order to increase municipal capacity to enforce traffic laws and to reduce costs to expand their automated traffic enforcement (ATE) programming in ways that meet local community’s needs.”
Dana Dickman, at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), testified that not only was each traffic safety camera violation being reviewed by a sworn police officer, but “100% of traffic safety camera violation review occurs on police overtime. Expanding the pool of qualified reviewers would lower the cost of this function.”
Reporting on HB 4105, Willamette Week noted that Portland was then advertising a starting salary for officers of $66,934. “In a 2,000-hour year, that’s $33.47 an hour. At time-and-a-half, an officer would be paid $50 an hour to review photo radar tickets.”
Willamette Week said those payments explained why the Portland police union opposed changing the law.
Once the bill passed, any sense of urgency in implementing the new law seemed to evaporate.
In December 2024, BikePortland noted that the change still wasn’t in place, even though the bill had been on the books for nearly two years. Jonathan Maus, publisher/editor of BikePortland’s news site, reported that he had asked the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s (PBOT) Communications Director, Hannah Schafer, about the status of implementing the new authority given to them in HB 4105. “PBOT is currently developing the program that will result in PBOT staff reviewing and issuing citations for moving violations from the automated enforcement cameras,” Schafer replied.
Bike Portland said PBOT expected to have about 40 cameras in operation and to be issuing 100,000 citations by 2025.
So here we are in July 2025 and sworn police officers are still reviewing each and every moving violation recorded by one of the city’s cameras.
Earlier this month, Willamette Week reported that even though speed cameras have been effective, more have not been installed because, as PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera put it, police officers are currently the ones to review all citations, mostly on overtime shifts, and the bureau is limited by police availability. They’re also hamstrung by capacity at the Multnomah County Circuit Court, which adjudicates the citations.
According to Willamette Week, PBOT says “it’s looking to hire three people who can review citations to alleviate the burden on police staffing and increase the number of tickets the city can process.”
PBOT’s Speed Safety Camera Program Manager, Steve Hoyt-McBeth, tells me he’s “very eager to get the program up and running” but “the current holdup is funding”.
Hiring the positions has been held for approximately six months because of PBOT’s budget challenges, he said in an email. “I was hopeful that I’d be able to begin the recruitment this summer, but the lack of a funded state transportation package, which puts an approximately $11 million hole in PBOT’s FY25-26 has kept the pause button pressed.”
Hoyt-McBeth said part of the holdup is also tied to staff capacity to develop the program. “No municipality in Oregon currently utilizes the statutory authority to have Agents issue citations, so we have to develop the training and program ourselves without a template from another jurisdiction,” he said.
Clearly, this entire situation with the speed cameras has been mishandled by Portland, which continues to shell out overtime money to cops . But it seems the City Council is clueless. Meredith Washington, Community Liaison for Councilor Angelita Morillo, read this post and responded to me, “I’m unsure what your message is here.”
So, when are the Portland Police going to relinquish their lucrative overtime work on speed camera violations and pass it on to non-police staff?
A bill clawing back $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding for NPR and PBS, including OPB, has passed the Senate. It is expected to pass the House next and then to be sent to President Trump for his signature.
Are you and thousands of other Oregonians prepared to start or increase donations to OPB to replace the federal money it now relies on?
Public radio across the country is already begging for money. On July 18, Alyson Brokenshire, Senior Director, Principal and Major Gifts at PBS News Hour sent out a message: “For the first time in history, Congress voted to zero out funding for public media, including PBS News Hour. This decision creates a critical funding challenge for us, but one we can meet with your sustaining support.” WBUR in Boston also sent out a plea on July 18: “Give. Longtime listener or reader? Become a first-time donor at this pivotal moment. Give again. Thank you, a million times over, for being in our corner. Give more. Help us close this $1.6-million funding gap, right now. Give every month. When you become a Sustainer, we know we can rely on you. Month after month. Year after year.”
In fiscal year 2023, government grants to OPB totaled $4,679,653 or 9.5% of the station’s $49,370,988 in revenue from contributions, including sponsorships.[1]
I’m already a sustaining contributor to OPB. I provide ongoing, monthly financial support through automatic deductions from a credit card. I recently increased my monthly donations because of the threats of funding cuts by the Trump administration. Am I prepared to donate even more when those cuts are real?
My sense is that OPB has a tough road ahead if it tries to replace all of the $4,679,653 in annual federal support it now receives.
Current economic uncertainty is one thing likely to impact fundraising. There is already evidence that such uncertainty is leading people to scale back on discretionary spending, including charitable donations.Nonprofit giving in the US has taken a$65 billion hit since 2021, according to Philanthropy.org.
Another reality is that a substantial percentage of America’s private wealth is held by conservative and center-right donors, many of whom are wary of institutions they perceive as liberal, and many of whom see public media as liberal. That perception was recently reinforced by Uri Berliner, a former senior business editor at NPR. In 2024, he wrote a blistering critique of NPR in The Free Press, accusing it of lacking viewpoint diversity and ofa drift towards a progressive ideology
Trump administration officials and members of Congress have piled on, claiming that NPR and PBS push “left-wing propaganda” and accusing them of violating the CPB’s nonpartisan mandate.
Never one to be subtle, Trump has mercilessly blasted public radio and television. “NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote late Wednesday on Truth Social. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party. JUST SAY NO AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
“NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia)said at a subcommittee hearing earlier this spring,
Could OPB survive without the federal grants or any increase in donations? Probably, but the hit would be hard, though not as hard as the likely hit on KCUW in Pendleton, OR, which relied on federal money for 98% of its revenue in 2023. KCUW is is managed by members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states, but there’s no firm provision in the bill for that.
The impact of any cut in OPB’s programming would be felt particularly by Oregon and Southern Washington’s more educated and higher income populace (71% of OPB’s TV audience, 82% of OPB’s digital audience and 85% of OPB’s radio audience has attended college). The public broadcast audience also typically falls into higher household income categories and have for years, primarily because households that listen to public media tend to have more formal education.
One potential threat to any OPB fundraising outreach is the changing media landscape and its burgeoning cost.
Not only are media outlets multiplying, but alternative media are increasingly soliciting subscriptions. I have long subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (that subscription alone costs me $779.88 a year) and the New York Times, but added a subscription to Bari Weiss’ Common Sense newsletter, later renamed The Free Press, in 2021. I have since added subscriptions to a raft of other Substack publications with various points of view.
I also make contributions to a number of Oregon and national non-profits, the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, and a Ukrainian news site, The Kyiv Independent. And once in a while I’m a sucker for a GoFundMe plea.
My point is, like many Oregonians, I’m already heavily invested in trying to do good. But there’s a limit. Periodically, I have to cull my subscriptions and donations because the cost gets out of hand. This means reprioritizing. And in the case of public broadcasting, fundraising pleas are going to come from various entities competing against each other for support, including individual programs, such as PBS News Hour, and individual stations, such as OPB and KCUW.
If OPB wants to replace the $4,679,653 in government financing it is set to lose, it is going to have to convince a lot of people to up their giving or chip in for the first time.
This at a time when Oregon’s economy is facing a period of sluggish growth and some signs of weakness, with potential big givers from companies like Intel and Nike under stress and smaller givers uncertain about their economic prospects. President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is also likely to put pressure on many Oregonians and the state budget and there’s potential harm from Trump’s aggressive tariffs.
All food for thought.
[1] In most instances, sponsorships are considered charitable contributions by the underwriters. On OPB’s IRS Form 990, these sponsorships are included in the $49,370,988 reported as contributions and grants. There is also a small amount of sponsorships that meet the definition of advertising, which primarily occur on OPB’s digital platforms. For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on OPB’s IRS Form 990-T.
For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on our IRS Form 990-T. Sponsorships are not otherwise disclosed on the tax filings. Total revenue was $56,821,607.
Notable Sources of Revenue
$
Percent of Total Revenue
Contributions
$49,370,988
86.9%
Program Services
$1,381,015
2.4%
Investment Income
$3,446,034
6.1%
Bond Proceeds
$0
Royalties
$0
Rental Property Income
$415,851
0.7%
Net Fundraising
$0
Sales of Assets
$2,207,719
3.9%
Net Inventory Sales
$0
Figures are from Form 990 which non-profits are required to file annually with the IRS. These CPB grants are included in the Contributions and Grants revenue of $49,370,988 on OPB’s FY 2023 IRS Form 990. CPB grants are not included in government grants on the Form 990 as CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation, not a government agency.
Democrats in Salem are preparing to dig much deeper into your pocket with a massive transportation revenue bill, HB 2025. Because its multiple parts obscure its impact on individuals, let’s look at what it would mean for car owners, which is about 92% of households in Oregon. There are over two dozen increases to vehicle-related fees in the bill.
Planning on buying a new car? Oregon’s zero percent vehicle sales tax has made it a great state in which to purchase a car. HB 2025 proposes a new Vehicle Sales Tax in the form of a 2% “transfer tax” on the sale price of new cars and a 1% tax on used cars valued at over $10,000. The average price paid for a new car in the U.S. in May 2025 was $48,799, according to Kelley Blue Book (Up from$21,041 in 2020).[1]That would mean a sales tax of $975.98 on your new car. The average price paid for a used car in Oregon is $35,556. That would mean a $335.56 sales tax.
Fees for vehicle registration would go up, too. Registration of a new car would increase from $43 to $113.
Oregon’s current vehicle registration fees for gas-powered passenger vehicles range from $126 to $156. The bill proposes a $66 increase to the existing vehicle registration fees. If you currently pay $126 to re-register your car, the cost could increase to $192 ($126 + $66) under HB 2025.
The cost of new license plates would rise from $12 to $33.
The cost to take a driver’s skill test at the DMV would increase from $45 to $111.
Buying or owning a gas-powered vehicle? Oregon’s current 40 cent per-gallon gas tax would increase to 50 cents per gallon in 2026 and 55 cents per gallon in 2027. The gas tax would be indexed to inflation beginning in 2029. The average vehicle in Oregon uses approximately 489 gallons of gas per year. That would mean a $48.90 increase in gas costs in 2026 and a $73.35 increase in gas costs in 2027.
Buying or own an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle? A Road Usage Charge (RUC), a mandatory per-mile fee, would be imposed on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners starting July 1, 2026 or these drivers could opt for a flat annual fee, initially set at $340. The proposed $340 annual tax is based on driving 18,000 miles a year at 20 mpg at the new gas tax rate
A payroll tax that funds public transit via the Statewide Transportation Fund would increase from 0.1% currently to 0.3% by 2030. The tax would increase to 0.18% in 2026 and then to 0.25% in 2028 and 0.3% in 2030.
In a time of growing economic stress for Oregonians, it’s going to be enough to drive you to the poor house.
[1] That was up from the average price of $21,041 for a new car in 2000. In other words, not only will multiple costs associated with a car go up under HB 2025, but you will likely be making increasingly higher monthly payments on your new car because you’ll take longer to pay it off. While 3-year car loans were once common, they are less typical now. Today, the most common car loan terms are 60 months (five years) and 72 months (six years), and increasingly car buyers are agreeing to go with seven and eight year car loans, leading to higher total financing costs. Then there’s the growing cost of repairs. Garage repair costs are up are up over 43% in there past six years and the cost of fixing damaged cars has gone up 28% since just 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Oregon is justly proud, for example, that in 1971 it was the first state to pass a bottle bill to address the growing problem of litter from beverage containers and to encourage recycling.
Other times being first is an abomination.
That will be the case if Oregon Gov. Kotek signs SB 916, which would award up to ten weeks of unemployment insurance benefits to workers who go on strike.
The Oregon Employment Department (OED) anticipates that the bill would result in an additional $2.1 million of benefit payments in the 2025-27 biennium. Critics of the bill say this doesn’t take into account the likelihood of longer and more frequent strikes if workers can count on some income while striking.
The whole concept of strikes is an assumption that the loss of income for workers and the loss of production by employers will motivate an eventual settlement. SB 916 would change that whole dynamic, putting employers at a disadvantage. Equally egregious, because the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund is funded through a payroll tax that is paid by employers, Oregon employers would be paying workers not to work.
What makes their strong support for this bill particularly egregious is that it is aimed at benefiting an extremely small portion of the labor force, but a sector that overwhelmingly favors the Democrats in campaign contributions.
In 2024, just 15.9% of wage and salary workers in Oregon were union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dig deeper and you find that the union membership rate for public sector workers in Oregon, about 51%, is considerably higher. That is consistent across the country, where unionization is about five times higher nationwide in the public sector compared with the private sector.
Supporters of SB 916 often try to bolster their cause by alluding to the fact that New York and New Jersey already allow unemployment benefits to be paid to strikers, but they neglect to mention that both states bar public employees, such as teachers, from striking.
No wonder the bill has drawn across-the-board opposition from businesses and public entities, including already stretched local governments and school districts.
Earlier in the process, two Senate Democrats, Jeff Golden, D-Ashland and Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, showed praiseworthy wisdom in voting against the bill. “Counties, cities and schools are scrambling to just maintain current services,” Sollman said. “Now is not the time to be adding more uncertainty and more expenses.”
Both senators subsequently changed their minds and voted for a scaled back bill, but Sollman’s statement is still valid. As Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, said, “This is bad policy. It’s going to be harmful to our students. It’s going to be harmful to the state.”
Despite the financial strains facing Oregon, and even the likely diversion of kicker money to address forest fires, Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat with strong ties to labor, has said she plans to sign the bill.
“I know the argument has been that this will be highly detrimental to our school districts,” Kotek said in a June 9 media availability. “I don’t particularly believe that is an accurate assessment of that bill and at the end of the day I support the right of folks to strike and I believe the way the bill is drafted we will actually see shorter strikes.”
ThinkingOregon 