Gov. Tina Kotek has called this Emergency Session of the Oregon Legislature to pass a funding bill for the fiscally challenged Oregon Department of Transportation. Efforts to solve ODOT’s financial woes missed the closing bell of the 2025 regular session, so Kotek has ordered legislators to summer school to finish their homework.
The Social Security Act, arguably the most important piece of domestic legislation of the past century, celebrates its 90th birthday on Thursday. While cutting the cake, it is a good occasion to crack open a decade-old mystery — what happened to that historic pen that President Franklin Roosevelt used to sign the bill into law?
TRIP. Never has a piece of legislation been more aptly named. The Transportation Reinvestment Package tripped all over itself during the 2025 Legislative Session before crashing to the pavement with a thud in the final week at the Capitol.
They say timing is everything, and for advocates of a robust transportation funding bill, timing could not be worse.
Curb cuts and ramps were part of a legal settlement finalized by the state stemming from a lawsuit brought by disability rights advocates in 2016. The original cost for delivery was estimated at $400 million over the 12-year life of the project but has quadrupled to that $1.65 billion as of today.
Almost a third of a century later, the State Capitol is still in Floyd Prozanski’s orbit. Occasional thoughts of stepping aside are always outweighed by the gravitational pull that keeps Oregon’s “iron man” lawmaker crafting public policy.
HB 3054 seeks to place tighter price controls on communities of manufactured homes by reducing the maximum rent increase to 6% per year. Regular efforts to ratchet up price control in Oregon have led to the destabilization of rent stabilization.
“You can’t go home again,” observed the famed novelist Thomas Wolfe in his iconic book by the same name. Sens. Bruce Starr (R-Dundee) and Mike McLane (R-Powell Butte) are putting that theory to the test as they return to the Oregon Legislature after a prolonged absence.
Talking to Carter was like talking to your best friend. There was no sense of superiority or privilege. We would talk about our own fishing adventures.
Thump! Thump! Thump! That was the sound heard near election offices around the state as voters soundly whacked a measure put forward by legislative Democrats to bring Ranked Choice Voting to federal and statewide offices. With counting nearly complete, Measure 117 is flaming out by well over 300,000 votes.
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