Oregon Capital Chronicle

11/14/2024

Western wildfire survivors are calling on Congress to stop playing political football with a bill that would relieve them of federal income taxes on recovery settlements and lawyers fees.

Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, vowed at a Portland town hall to pass a relief bill by the end of the year, possibly Thanksgiving.

11/12/2024

State Rep. Jeff Helfrich will not seek reelection as minority leader in the Oregon House.

The Hood River Republican, who represents the 52nd House District in the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood, made the announcement late Monday in a news release, indicating he wants to spend more time with his family.

“This week, as I laid my father to rest, I found myself contemplating what truly matters in life. For me, it’s the unwavering love of family,” Helfrich said.

Read more

11/12/2024

Oregon’s state geologist is pitching the state Legislature on an idea to use the region’s rocky basalt layer – born of lava that flowed millions of years ago from cracks in the Earth’s crust – to be a bank for storing planet-warming carbon dioxide.

he volcanic layers in the Northwest could hold megatons of planet-warming emissions but the infrastructure needed for that is new and costly.

11/01/2024

Clackamas County election officials face backlog of tens of thousands of ballots due to a machine breakdowns. The machine, the first step in the vote counting process, scans the signature so election workers can verify it. Only then can the votes be counted. County clerk, Catherine McMullen is confident the county will catch up with the backlog in coming days. https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/11/01/clackamas-county-faces-ballot-processing-backlog-following-machine-breakdowns

Clackamas County election workers face a backlog of several tens of thousands of unprocessed ballots due to the machine breakdowns.

10/31/2024

Oregon Department of State Lands officials today inked a deal with the company Anew Climate to put the 83,000-acre Elliott State Forest into the voluntary carbon market - the first such agreement on state-owned lands in the western United States.

The Oregon Department of State Lands signed an agreement with Anew Climate to put the first state forest in the West into a carbon market.

10/31/2024

First case of bird flu in pig discovered on small Oregon farm

State officials announced Wednesday that a severe form of bird flu has been detected for the first time in a pig on a small farm in Crook County in central Oregon.

The farm, which was not identified, is a noncommercial operation that had an outbreak of bird flu last week in its flock of poultry, including ducks, geese and guinea fowl. Three pigs on the property that roamed with the poultry initially tested positive for bird flu in pooled oral swabs. Officials euthanized the pigs and tested tissue samples from the animals in the state veterinarian lab. Those showed that one of the pigs had the virus throughout its body.
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/10/30/first-case-of-bird-flu-in-pig-discovered-on-small-oregon-farm/

10/30/2024

When Shannon Isadore applied for Emerge Oregon’s 12-week class, she had no intention of becoming a politician.

Founder and CEO of the Oregon Change Clinic, an addiction and mental health treatment provider for people of color, she planned to begin a Ph.D. program in international leadership at the end of the year. But a friend told her Emerge helped women build networks so she signed up.

Now, she’s headed to Salem, after being picked to temporarily fill an open Portland-based legislative seat. She’s just one of the organization’s success stories. Emerge Oregon is the premiere training organization for Democratic women in the state. https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/10/28/electable-you-a-political-powerhouse-emerge-oregon-trains-women-democrats-to-run-for-office/

10/28/2024

Someone used an incendiary device early Monday morning to ignite a ballot box outside the Multnomah County Elections office, but most ballots were unscathed, according to the county elections office and the Portland Police Bureau.

Someone used an incendiary device early Monday morning to ignite a ballot box outside the Multnomah County Elections office.

10/27/2024

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of a network of newsrooms covering state and national races, with more than 200 journalists in all 50 states – us. Follow our DECISION 2024 coverage for the news that matters in your community.

https://www.newsfromthestates.com/rising-trend/decision-2024

10/25/2024

A judge dismissed a case this week against the Oregon Department of Forestry brought by the Jewell School District in Clatsop County, which argued that a plan to reduce logging on state forests to protect threatened species would also cost the district, which relies on timber money.

The judge ruled that the Jewell School District failed to make the case that the state was violating a funding law by reducing logging.

10/24/2024

A small but growing number of government agencies that manage public forests are finding a compromise between conservation and logging by putting some acreage into carbon markets, where they earn revenue from promising to leave more trees intact.

More agencies that rely on revenue from logging public forests are agreeing to scale back logging in exchange for money from carbon credits.

10/23/2024

Responding to, and living with, megafires is among the many ways the public pays for the high costs of climate change and ongoing greenhouse gas pollution. Modeling shows the most effective way to decarbonize is to charge polluters. Unlike many other countries, U.S. Congress has not passed repeated proposals to do it, so carbon markets have filled in.

Carbon markets struggle to prove they’re a solution to climate change, but they place what supporters say is a needed price on pollution.

10/22/2024

Carbon companies are pitching small forest landowners in Oregon on the benefits of entering carbon markets to preserve their forests as a matter of legacy and to fight climate change. The average small forest landowner in the state is 65-years old, and many family forests have been sold off to industrial timber in recent decades.

Carbon brokers are attempting to combine patchworks of small family forests so they can collectively generate and sell carbon credits.

10/21/2024

Forests in Oregon’s Coast Range absorb and store more planet-warming carbon dioxide per acre than almost any other forests in the world, and could play a larger role in emerging carbon crediting markets and the fight against climate change. Read the first in our series:

Two dozen forests in Oregon have been entered into carbon credit markets in the last decade, generating big money and global interest.

10/16/2024

Several parents in the Salem-Keizer School District last night picked up their phones to a surprise call from Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, thanking them for getting their kids to school amid rising and concerning rates of chronic absenteeism.

The calls were part of a campaign to stem chronic absenteeism, which Gov. Tina Kotek said needs to be addressed “urgently”

10/15/2024

Oregon leaders today approved a plan that will soon put all 83,000 acres of the Elliott State Forest - the largest research forest in the U.S. - into the voluntary carbon crediting market, where it can potentially generate millions in revenue.

Oregon will be the second state after Michigan to dedicate an entire state forest to storing emissions and selling carbon credits for revenue

10/14/2024

Meet state Rep. Dacia Grayber, the only firefighter in the Oregon Legislature. She's a mom and dog lover and is often on the front lines.

When Dacia Grayber was 10 years old, the chimney on her family’s home caught fire. She watched in amazement as firefighters climbed onto the roof to put the fire out. “I want to be a firefighter someday,” she told one. She still remembers his reply. “Oh, sweetheart,” she recalled him sayin...

10/11/2024

Shrub and grass fires have burned more acres and property in the West than forest fires this year and for the last 30 years. Nevertheless, Oregon's Republican representatives in Congress are promoting a wildfire funding bill that would scale back environmental regulations and allow more logging on federal land as a way to prevent fires.

Republicans back a proposal to scale back environmental regulations to “thin” forests while Democrats want to fund community preparedness.