The United Way has some good programs. Offering rental assistance. I get it. Last-minute help to prevent evictions. Makes sense. But supporting rent control legislation. That’s over the line.
Not willing to leave the current bad enough rent control law alone, the Oregon legislature is back with Senate Bill 611 that would limit annual rent increases to 3% plus inflation or 8% total, whichever is lower. The exemption would apply to buildings 3 years old or newer.
The bill has the support of numerous progressive and social welfare groups, including United Way of the Columbia Willamette, which has apparently deluded itself into thinking social justice concerns override economic realities.
It has also apparently deluded itself into thinking it’s legitimate for a non-profit, which sustains itself on millions of individual and corporate contributions and says it is ”…deeply committed to helping create a just and equitable region where all people can thrive…” should advocate for legislation that contradicts economic realities and is opposed by property owners across the state?
United Way of Board members include:
Greg Geshel, Vice President Human Resources at Comcast
Ashlee Irwin, Medicaid Business and Strategy Consultant at Kaiser Permanente
Mahir Patel, Vice President of Pharmacy Services at PacificSource Health Plans
Tichelle Sorenson, Academic Director of the MBA Program at PSU
Layla Zare, Vice President and Relationship Manager at Bank of America
Kim Spalding, Senior Manager at Perkins & Co.
Charlene Zidell, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships & Family Vision at The Zidell Companies.
Do the employers who endorsed placement of all these people on United Way’s board support the deeply flawed rent control bill their employees are pressing so hard for?
“Next to bombing, rent control is the most effective technique so far known for destroying cities.” Assar Lindbeck, Professor of Economics
During the French Revolution, the National Convention, an attempt at a national legislature, passed the Law of the Maximum imposing a maximum price on dozens of essential goods, mostly food items. The limitations discouraged farmers and producers. They began producing less or hoarding what they did produce, rather than selling food below its real value. Less food made its way into the towns and cities, which only exacerbated the shortages and led to the emergence of a thriving black market
This is what happens when governments take actions that contradict economic realities.
Welcome to the Oregon legislature and rent control.
Oregon started down this road in 2019 with a law prohibiting landlords across the state from raising rents more than 7 percent per year, plus the annual change in the consumer price index (CPI). The limit only applies to buildings that are more than 15 years old.
Not willing to leave bad enough alone, now the legislature is back with Senate Bill 611 that would limit annual rent increases to 3% plus inflation or 8% total, whichever is lower. The exemption would apply to buildings 3 years old or newer. Landlords would also have to cover three months’ rent if a tenant has to relocate through no fault of their own, up from the current requirement of one month of rental assistance for a no-fault eviction.
This foolishness is what you get when Oregon’s Democrats are left in charge.
The problem is, no matter how much liberals embrace the concept, rent control doesn’t work. Any short-term benefits, including the applause of some constituents, are always overshadowed by the long-term problems rent control creates.
Landlords who can’t raise the rent on their property to a market price are more likely to cut back on maintenance and less likely to invest in improvements. Not only will landlords have absolutely no economic incentive to invest more in their properties, they may not even have the funds because of limits on their rental income.
Rent control distorts the housing market by misallocating rental units to those who are already renting them. Whenever government prevents the charging of prices high enough to clear the market, shortages will occur.
The imposition of rent control can lead to a “demolition derby” where older controlled rental units are purposely torn down and replaced with higher priced units.
Rent control does not guarantee low rents because it doesn’t regulate the starting rent for a new tenant. When a tenant in a rent-controlled unit moves out, any savvy landlord will set the rent in the new lease at the current market rent, which is likely to be much higher.
In a review of 140 economics studies on rent control in Economics Journal Watch, economists overwhelmingly agreed that, “A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.” From the abstract: “I find that the preponderance of the literature points toward the conclusion that rent control introduces inefficiencies in housing markets. Moreover, the literature on the whole does not sustain any plausible redemption in terms of redistribution.”
A broad survey of economists by the IGM (Initiative on Global Markets) Forum revealed a similar repudiation of rent control. The Forum is a program of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “Rent control discourages supply of rental units,” said Associate Head of the MIT Department of Economics, David Autor. “Incumbent renters benefit from capped prices. New renters face reduced rental options.”
Once rent control is imposed, it is extremely hard to get rid of, even where its futility is eventually recognized. That’s because rent control will have held rents far below the market rate, so removing them is likely to cause immediate and substantial rent increases, something few politicians (and even some rent control critics) will be willing to embrace in the face of a potential public outcry.
The bill has the support numerous progressive and social welfare groups, including the Southern Oregon social justice nonprofit Rogue Action Center, Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, The United Way of the Columbia Willamette and The Pacific Green Party, all of which have apparently deluded themselves into thinking social justice concerns override economic realities.
Rent control supporters claim its the quickest and easiest way to provide relief to renters in danger of being priced out of their home, but the fact is it just makes the problem worse.
Even with Oregon’s public school students already suffering from abysmal scores on national reading and mathematics tests and one in five students failing to graduate from high school in four years, state politicians can’t seem to stop inserting themselves into school curriculum decisions.
State Senators James I. Manning Jr. and Deb Patterson want to add another labor-intensive, complicated and questionable instructional mandate on students and teachers.
SB 284, submitted by the two senators at the request of Oregon Educators for Climate Education, “a statewide group of educators working toward Oregon legislation that would integrate and infuse PK-12 climate change education across all core subject areas”, would:
Require each school district board to develop a written plan establishing a climate change instructional program for kindergarten through grade 12 no later than June 1, 2026.
Require school districts to submit their plan to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) for initial approval and then again every seven years.
Require ODE to develop and adopt a model plan in consultation with other state agencies and stakeholders, to develop academic content standards, and to approve and make available list of resources and materials that meet academic content standards.
Require the Superintendent of Public Instruction to withhold distributions from Student Investment Account from school districts that fail to develop and implement climate change instructional program.
Require that career and technical education funding from High School Graduation and College and Career Readiness Fund be spent on programs that support climate-focused sustainability career pathways.
Meanwhile, state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Lincoln City, introduced House Bill 2905 that would add to existing requirements for Oregon’s schools to teach about BIPOC, LGBTQ, immigrant communities and others by requiring that schools “Ensure that the academic content standards for history, geography, economics and civics include sufficient instruction on the histories, contributions and perspectives of individuals who…are of Jewish descent.” The bill has already cleared the House awaits Senate action.
SB 284’s climate change mandate would come on top of a K–12 Native American curriculum for all Oregon public schools created after passage of SB 13, a Tribal History/Shared History initiative, in 2017. The initiative has developed more than 45 lesson plans for grades four, eight, and ten across multiple content areas. The Oregon Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education (ODE/OIE) launched the first phase of implementation in these grade levels During the 2020/21 academic year.
It’s all fine and good to want Oregon’s K-12 public school students to be up to speed on topics of the day, but adding more costly and time-consuming mandates when even the basic curriculum isn’t being effectively delivered is a recipe for failure.
And the legislature doesn’t have a particularly good track record with earlier curriculum changes it has imposed.
Legislation requiring that all Oregon school districts teach about the Holocaust beginning with the 2020-2021 school year is a case in point.
Claire Sarnowski, a freshman at Lake Oswego’s Lakeridge High School, came up with the idea of mandating Holocaust instruction after hearing Holocaust survivor Alter Wiener tell his story. Sarnowski approached state Sen. Rob Wagner, who agreed to introduce a bill.
It all sounded so simple and straightforward at the outset, but the final legislation was a classic example of mission creep.
The legislation went far beyond mandating that students be taught about the Holocaust. Employing the coercive power of government, teachers are now required to address a slew of social justice topics: the immorality of mass violence; respect for cultural diversity; the obligation to combat wrongdoing through resistance, including protest; and the value of restorative justice.
You can be sure that any mandated climate change curriculum would morph into similar broad terrain and impose even more demands on Oregon’s already overburdened teachers and students.
Enforce diversity, equity and inclusion justice? You betcha.
Suspend a requirement for an essential skills test in math, reading and writing to graduate from high school through the 2022-2023 school year? You got it.
Accept that nearly one of every five Oregon high school students don’t graduate in four years? Uh huh.
Increase the number of teachers employed in Oregon’s public schools to an all-time high even as the number of enrolled students drops precipitously to its lowest level in nearly two decades? Yup.
Ensure math and reading proficiency? Not so much.
Oregon’s public schools are turning too many students into functional illiterates and math morons.
Results from the recently administered National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal that a depressingly small percentage of Oregon students in grades 4 and 8 tested at a proficient level or higher in mathematics and reading in 2022.
The mathematics and reading comprehension assessments are given every two years to students at grades 4 and 8. The tests break results into four categories: below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter.
Mathematics
Grade 4
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level: 29%
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed below the NAEP Basic level: 34%
Grade 8
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level: 22%
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed below the NAEP Basic level: 43%
Reading
Grade 4
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level: 28%
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed below the NAEP Basic level: 44%
Grade 8
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level: 28%
The percentage of students in Oregon who performed below the NAEP Basic level: 33%
“If you’re blue, and you don’t know where to go to Why don’t you go where fashion sits? Puttin’ on the ritz”
Can you think of anything more incongruous than the Ritz and Stumptown?
Like a diamond in the rough, The Ritz-Carlton Residences Portland at 550 S.W. 10th Ave. are set to open for occupancy in July 2023.
Owners of the 138 residential condominiums on floors 21-35 atop The Ritz-Carlton, Portland will enjoy magnificent views as the $600 million building becomes a landmark in a dynamic Pacific Northwest city, the developers exult.
Keller Williams Realty Professionals is already marketing 39 of the individual condos at prices ranging from $1,1000,000 for a one bedroom 2 bath 1,105 sq. ft unit to $8,999,000 for a 3 bedroom 4 bathroom 3,256 sq. ft unit. Principal and interest on the mortgage, plus property taxes and condo fees, could translate to an $8000 a month expense for the 1 bedroom.
“We are seeing interest from folks that have made businesses in other cities that are spending more time in Portland,” he said, “and they want to be here. They like the lifestyle of Portland and the quality of life that we have here,” Brian Owendoff, owner’s representative for the tower, told KGW-TV in March.
Is he serious? Is “…the quality of life that we have here…” in Portland going to be a magnet for well-heeled luxury-seeking sophisticates?
In 1992, journalist and urban criticPhilip Langdon marveled at how “this courteous, well-kept city of 453,000, and especially its downtown, has become a paragon of healthy urban development.” Nobody’s saying that now.
With Ineffectual government at all levels, property crime more than double the national average, motor vehicle thefts through the roof. (More than 11,000 vehicles were stolen in 2022, up from 6,500 in 2019; and it’s not just individuals being hit. International Auto Sales on Southeast 82nd Avenue in Portland has had twenty two vehicles stolen in just two years, costing near a quarter million in damages.), homeless encampments sprouting like weeds, used hypodermic needles littering the sidewalks and parks (In 2022, crews collected 176,962 used needles in the 213 block Downtown Enhanced Service area), open air drug markets, routine store break-ins, routine homeless camp fires (Portland Fire & Rescue responded to more than a thousand tent or tarp-related fires during 2021-2022), gun violence, homicides (2022 was a particularly bloody year for Portland, with homicides climbing from 36 in 2019 to 97 in 2022 – a record), bicycle thefts galore (More than 1,000 bikes are reported stolen in the city each year, according to Willamette Week), public urination and defecation, Portland is far from the magnet it once was.
Businesses in the Ritz-Carlton area are already up in arms over Multnomah County’s new Behavioral Health Resource Center on S.W. Park Ave. between Oak and Harvey Milk Streets. Willamette Week recently reported business owners are asking the county to do more to keep the neighborhood free from what some of the center’s clients are bringing, including threats of violence and drug use. Painting a bleak picture of the situation, the businesses are frustrated to no end and question how the Ritz-Carlton will be able to attract customers to its $518 a night and up hotel rooms.
Polls conducted in 2022 showed only 11% of voters thought Portland was heading in the right direction — a steep drop from 76% in 2000.
There’s a reason why an outpost of the upscale Saks Fifth Avenue at Portland’s much-heralded Pioneer Place Mall abruptly closed in 2010 and was replaced by Off Fifth at Bridgeport Village in the suburbs, a discount venue that offers closeouts, clearance items and private-label goods. “Saks didn’t quite fit in with our fleece and flip-flops,” Kathleen Healey, senior associate broker with Urban Works, told The Oregonian.
That’s another way of saying Portland has a reputation for being kind of quirky, dismissive of pretense, leery of brazen displays of wealth. Drenched in wetness and lefty idealism, where people wait till the “Walk “ sign lights up even if no cars are coming, it is hardly a haven for moneyed showoffs or a welcoming place for a Ritz-Carlton.
Like with Saks Fifth Avenue, the prognosis isn’t promising.
There just aren’t enough of Slim Aaron’s beautiful people in Portland
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Lawyers may not all infest dimly lit moldy offices “like maggots in nuts”, as Charles Dickens wrote, but far too many have a habit of being pompously boastful without reason. Among those are surely lawyers who claim to be “Lawyers of Distinction”.
With inescapable regularity, an Orlando Florida-based company runs ads every year promoting the latest “Lawyers of Distinction”. The newest ad, congratulating the 2023 winners, ran in the Sunday New York Times today, Feb. 26, 2023.
This time there were nine winners listed from Oregon:
Joshua Callahan, Personal Injury Law, The Callahan Law Office, Clackamas, OR
Alice Cuprill-Comas, Healthcare Law, general counsel for Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR
Thomas Howe, Howe Law Firm, Portland, OR
Nicole Lemieux, Personal Injury Law, Portland, OR
Gregory Oliveros, Criminal Defense Law, ))& Law, Oliveros Law Group PC, Clackamas, OR
Maryanne Pitcher, Family and Divorce Law, RISE Law Group, Medford, OR
Phillip Williams, Estate + Injury Attorney, Eugene, OR
Kali Yost, Disability Rights & Estate Planning, Kali Yost Law, Portland, OR
Lawyers of Distinction says on its website it “Recognizes Excellence in The Practice of Law.”
Sounds impressive, until you dig deeper.
About all that’s required to be named a “Lawyer of Distinction” is to apply yourself or be nominated, fill out some online forms and pay a fee. It’s like diploma mills that claim to be higher education institutions, but only provide illegitimate academic degrees and diplomas for a fee.
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” is a phrase often attributed to P. T. Barnum, an American showman. It’s apparently true with respect to the attorneys who buy “Lawyers of Distinction” memberships as well as members of the public who are misled by them.
The Lawyers of Distinction website makes the application and review process sound complex.
According to the website, it includes a review and vetting process by a Selection Committee. That involves an analysis of a candidate’s work, experience and abilities based upon 12 independent criteria using a platform spelled out under U.S. Provisional Patent #62/743,254. Once a final score is generated, an applicant is subjected a final background check and Ethics Review. Applicants who achieve a minimum passing score and have no disqualifying ethical violations within a 10-year period prior to completion of the application are then eligible for acceptance to Lawyers of Distinction.
Sounds tough and thorough.
Don’t believe it.
Essentially, it’s just pay-for-play. It’s selling badges. It’s paying for meaningless accolades. Apply, pay the annual membership fee and you’re in.
According to the Florida Division of Corporations, “Lawyers of Distinction Inc.” is a private for-profit company with a principal address of 4700 Millenia Boulevard, Suite 175, Orlando, FL 32839.
Robert (Robbie) Brian Baker at the same address is listed as the President in the company’s 2020 Annual Report. But don’t go there expecting to be ushered into an office with a clean, modern aesthetic that communicates success. The address is identified online as nothing more than an “Orlando Virtual Business Address & Live Receptionist Answering Service.”
Lawyers of Distinction is a sign of the overabundance of lawyers, leading some to try to elevate themselves with impressive, but meaningless, awards. The ads the organization places in multiple publications are fake news at its most blatant and deceptive.
Some lawyers may want the Lawyers of Distinction plaque on their wall to bolster their self-esteem, even though in their heart they know the plaque is meaningless piece of junk. Maybe they want to add a plaque to their office brag wall. Maybe the “honor” adds glamour to what some lawyers describe as mind-numbing work.
Whatever their reasons for signing up, Oregon’s lawyers Lawyers of Distinction shouldn’t be proud; they should be embarrassed.
Widespread abuse of Lake Oswego, Oregon’s short-term rentals program proves the point.
In 2019, Lake Oswego tried to get a handle on controversial short-term rentals (STRs) by enacting Ordinance 2815. The ordinance allows STRs (rentals of less than 31 days) of certain residential properties.
Residents who want to operate a STR are required to obtain a business license from the city and pay an $80 annual fee. They’re also required to see to it that the city is paid Transient Lodging Taxes equal to 6% of taxable income from the STR. The tax revenue is used for the promotion and development of tourism and visitor programs for Lake Oswego.
Sounds pretty simple. If you own a property being used for STRs, you need to get a business license and pay taxes on your revenue. But a review of city data on STR business licenses and prominent STR websites shows a lot of people are ignoring the ordinance.
According to information obtained from the city in response to a public records request, there were 42 active STR business licenses as of Dec. 1, 2022. However, a review of just two high use STR websites, Airbnb and VRBO, turned up 75 STRs with Lake Oswego addresses.
Separately, AirDNA, a STR marketing firm, reported that as of Dec. 8, 2022 there were 90 active STRs in Lake Oswego, with 88% being entire home rentals and 12% private rooms.
Of the 90 STR’s counted by AirDNA, 96% had internet access and 8% had pools. Although some Lake Oswego properties are quite expensive, the average daily rate is just $170, generating average revenue per property of $2,682 during Jan -July 2022. The highest average monthly revenue was $3,333 in July 2022.
Of the 90 STRs, 69% were listed on Airbnb, 17% on VRBO and 14% on both.
The Lake Oswego STRs that pop up include everything from a $75-a-night cottage and $47-a-night private room to a “Modern, kid-friendly, walkable”$405-a-night 3-bedroom home and a $1467-a-night massive luxurious estate with 8 bedrooms and a pool.
It’s not possible to identify the addresses of all the properties without trying to book them one by one. Website maps, reveal, however, that they are spread all over Lake Oswego.
Clearly, a lot of people in Lake Oswego are cheating, diminishing themselves, feeding a culture of dishonesty and disrespecting their neighbors.
If a STR is found to be in violation of City Code, the City may suspend or revoke its business license, if it has one. The property owner may also be cited and have to pay a fine or appear in Municipal Court.
It’s time for city government to lay down the law.
The election’s over, and Measure 26-231, an appalling proposal to let non-citizens vote in Multnomah County, lost 52.79% – 47.21%. But the fact it even got on the ballot should worry us all.
What in heaven’s name would have propelled a group of citizens to advocate undermining their constitutional rights with such an alarming proposal? And the fact the measure got 163,163 votes is a distressing reminder that the idea of non-citizen voting is in danger of being normalized.
“We need to stop pretending like this is okay or normal because it’s not,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) said earlier this year, “Non-citizen voting is explicitly un-American and disrespectful to those who fought and died for the preservation of our freedoms and democracy.”
A Charter Review Committee appointed by state senators and representatives who represent districts in Multnomah County initiated the proposal.
The committee members, all appropriately listing their She/Her, She/They, They/Them, He/Him pronouns on the committee’s website, were a cabal of overzealous progressives akin to a left-leaning social justice advocacy non-profit intent on remaking the body politic to advance their agenda.
Samantha Gladu (She/They) was described as“…committed to addressing power inequities by building representative and progressive anti-racist leadership.”
Ana I. González Muñoz (She/Her)“…works at Latino Network as the Director of Community Engagement & Leadership Development” and her “… professional and personal commitment revolves around serving her community to advocate for equity, inclusion, and social justice.”
Jude Perez (They/Them)“…is the Grants Manager at Seeding Justice…an organization that practices community-led grantmaking to distribute funds to grassroots groups that are working towards long-term, systemic solutions, and community-centered strategies to dismantle oppression in Oregon.”
The civic groups that supported the measure[1] deserve to be admonished as well.
The ACLU of Oregon made the illogical argument that the measure advanced its commitment to the civil liberties and civil rights fundamental to our democracy, ignoring the fact it would mean one less benefit to be gained from becoming a citizen and erode the integrity of America’s democracy,
The Oregon Food Bank exceeded its mandate when it endorsed Measure 26-231 because it would “extend voting rights to more local residents who are affected by county policies.”
Measure 26-231 was not just an example of progressive overreach, but of moral rot. It was a sign not of appreciation, but of contempt, for liberal democracy. At its root, it was a progressive attempt to enlarge their base.
The idea made a mockery of citizenship, removing the long-standing linkage between the responsibilities of citizenship and voting rights.
Before the Nov. 8 election, Ricardo Lujan-Valerio, a policy director to Portland City Commissioner Carmen Rubio and former policy associate at ACLU of Oregon, told OPB he estimated the committee’s proposal “…could potentially affect up to 100,000 people if the final definition of ‘noncitizen’ includes the roughly 22,000 undocumented residents living in Portland.” It’s not clear if that estimate included not just undocumented people in the county illegally, but also people admitted to the US legally, but not yet US citizens.
That many non-citizens added to Multnomah County’s voting rolls would have resulted in a substantial dilution of the power of the county’s citizen voters.
Justice Ralph J. Porzio, a State Supreme Court justice on New York City’s Staten Island, raised the dilution issue when, on June 27, 2022, he struck down a law that would have allowed non-citizens to vote in local elections in New York City, saying it violated the State Constitution.
“This Court finds that the registration of new voters will certainly affect voters, political parties, candidate’s campaigns, re-elections, and the makeup of their constituency and is not speculative.,” the judge said in his ruling. “The weight of the citizens’ vote will be diluted by municipal voters and candidates and political parties alike will need to reconfigure their campaigns. Though the Plaintiffs have not suffered any harm today, the harm they will suffer is imminent, and it is reasonably certain that they will suffer their claimed harm if the proposed municipal voters are entitled to vote.”
“Voting is of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure…The addition of 800,000 to 1,000,000 non-eligible votes into municipal elections significantly devalues the votes of the New York citizens who have lawfully and meaningfully earned the right to vote pursuant to constitutional requirements.”
The Charter Review Committee’s non-citizen voting proposal would have devalued the votes of citizens in Multnomah County and run counter to the values of our constitutional republic. May it rest in peace.
[1] ACLU of Oregon; Adelante Mujeres; APANO (Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon); Center for Migration, Gender, and Justice; Coalition of Communities of Color; IRCO (Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization); Latino Network; Next Up; Oregon Food Bank; Oregon Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice.
Sure, Harvard University admitted only 3.2% of the 61,220 people who applied to join the fall 2022 class, but Harvard’s not typical.
According to U.S. News & World Report, college acceptance rates average 68%. Pew Research Center found that over half of U.S. universities have an admissions rate of at least 67%.
Then there’s Oregon.
Can you breathe, fog up a mirror? If yes, just submit an application and you’ll probably be accepted at some of Oregon’s public universities.
Acceptance rates at Oregon’s seven public universities are unusually high. For the 2022-2023 academic year, they ranged from a high of 98.43% at Portland State University (PSU) to a low of 89.21% at Oregon State University (OSU):
School Acceptance Rate (%)
Portland State University 98.43
Eastern Oregon University 97.68
University of Oregon 93.00
Western Oregon University 91.57
Oregon Institute of Technology 90.62
Southern Oregon University 89.70
Oregon State University 89.21
Not only are acceptance rates high at Oregon’s public universities, but they’ve been going up.
At the University of Oregon, for example, the average acceptance rate over the past 10 years is 79.89%, but it has been fairly steadily increasing from 72.96% for the 2012-13 academic year to 93.00% for the 2022-23 academic year.
So hang in there high school seniors. If you want to go to an Oregon public university there will probably be a spot for you.
UPDATE (Aug. 12, 2022): In a late move on Friday, Aug. 12, 2022, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, executed layoffs at outlets across the country. While no official tally was available, journalists at the Salem Statesman Journal (Oregon), Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald, (South Texas) Caller-Times, Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, Ventura County Star, St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times, Monroe (Louisiana) News-Star, Billerica (Massachusetts) Minuteman, (Milwaukee) Journal Sentinel, Panama City (Florida) News-Herald, Gainesville Sun (Florida), The Athens Banner-Herald (Georgia) The Des Moines Register (Iowa), Burlington Free Press(Vermont), Beaver County Times (Iowa), MetroWest Daily News (Mass) and the (Kentucky) Courier Journal all reported layoffs at their publications. Friday’s layoffs also affected non-journalists. A reporter at the Pueblo (Colorado) Chieftain tweeted that the paper’s only customer service representative, who had been making less than a dollar above minimum wage, had been let go after working there for 16 years.
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The decline of Oregon’s local newspapers is set to continue with cutbacks by Gannett Co.
Gannett, the owner of the Statesman Journal in Oregon’s capital, Salem, The Register-Guard in Eugene and the Daily Journal of Commerce in Portland, is planning a “significant cost reduction program” amid a “challenging economic backdrop marred by soaring inflation rates, labor shortages and price-sensitive consumers.”
A message to all of its employees on Thursday from Gannett’s president of news warned of “painful reductions to staffing, eliminating some open positions and roles that will impact valued colleagues.”
The Statesman Journal, the second-oldest newspaper in Oregon, was sold to Gannett in 1973. Currently listing 16 reporters on its website, it has been steadily shrinking in staff and as a reliable news source.
The Register-Guard, formed in a 1930 merger of two Eugene papers, the Eugene Daily Guard and the Morning Register, was acquired by GateHouse Media in 2018. At the time, the paper had 240 full-and part-time employees. The newspaper has been owned by Gannett since Gannett’s 2019 merger with Gatehouse. The paper’s current website lists just 8 reporters.
Founded in 1872, the Daily Journal of Commerce (DJC) provides comprehensive resources and reporting on the Portland, Oregon building and construction market. Owned by Gannett through its BridgeTower Media division, the paper has a circulation of 1,966.
Gannet, which owns over 100 daily newspapers and nearly 1,000 weekly newspapers in 43 U.S. states and six countries, reported on Thursday a net loss of $53.7 million in the second quarter, compared with a net income of $15.1 million the same period a year earlier. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) totaled $50.9 million, down 56% from the prior-year quarter, with declines driven by a decline in print revenue and inflationary pressures.
“We are not satisfied with our overall performance in the second quarter,” Gannett CEO and Chairman Michael Reed said in a release, noting the results reflect “industry-wide headwinds” in digital advertising and tightening across the economy.
Anticipated cutbacks at Gannett’s Oregon papers would track declines in locally focused daily newspapers across the United States.
The total combined print and digital circulation for locally focused U.S. daily newspapers in 2020 was 8.3 million for weekday (Monday-Friday) and 15.4 million for Sunday, among the lowest ever reported, according to the Pew Research Center. Total weekday circulation is down more than 40% and total Sunday circulation has fallen 45% in the past seven years. Local newspaper advertising and circulation revenue has also been dropping precipitously.
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