PORTLAND, Ore. — Perhaps there's no such thing as a year free of big news, but 2023 certainly had its fair share for KGW's The Story. Coming after the 2022 general election, it was the first year for a new crop of elected leaders in Oregon — and if some of those leaders can be believed, it's a year when the ills plaguing Portland and the state at large will have reached their high water mark.
Here are some of The Story's reports that generated the most interest in 2023, ranging from stories on homelessness and Portland's economic recovery to some deep dives on the quirks of Oregon laws and prominent court cases.
The failure to thrive of Portland's central city has been a major topic of conversation among political and business leaders this year — Gov. Tina Kotek formed a whole task force on it. Since the pandemic, foot traffic in the area has been slow to recover, office workers who spent their days downtown are more likely to work from home, unsheltered homelessness and public drug use have become more visible on the streets, and some types of crime are more prevalent than they've been in recent memory.
For some businesses, it's no longer worth keeping a storefront in downtown Portland — and no event was more emblematic of that sentiment than the announcement in April from REI that it will leave its longtime location in the Pearl District by early next year.
At the time, it felt a bit like downtown Portland was going the way of the once-mighty shopping mall, gradually hollowed out as businesses decided that they'd have better luck elsewhere, if not folding entirely. With the recent surge in attention from elected leaders, is that still the case? You be the judge.
LATEST: Gov. Kotek, Portland Central City Task Force release recommendations for revitalizing downtown
In late July, Mayor Ted Wheeler heralded the opening of the first of the mass sanctioned homeless camps that he proposed earlier in the year. Originally envisioned as an outdoor space for tent camping that could accommodate about 250 people, the addition of shelter pods altered the site to something more like a large Safe Rest Village, one that was slow to reach full capacity.
Part of the neighborhood agreement governing the mass camp stipulates that unsanctioned camps are not allowed within 1,000 feet of the shelter. Nonetheless, camps quickly sprung up nearby, with no urgent effort to move or remove them. Why? Because most of them were located on the private property of Union Pacific Railroad, which has the sole responsibility for policing those areas.
Earlier this year, a woman in eastern Oregon sued the state after it denied her application for foster children due to her opposition to policies around LGBTQ+ acceptance. Jessica Bates, a single mother of five children, said that she received inspiration from God telling her to adopt two children from foster care. But Bates said that her religious beliefs do not align with state child welfare policies, which require that foster parents support and affirm children with LGBTQ+ identities.
Bates alleges that the state is discriminating against her for her religious beliefs, violating her rights under the First Amendment. The case has been unfolding in a Portland federal court ever since.
LATEST: Judge denies eastern Oregon mom's request to become foster parent over her anti-LGBTQ+ views
When Oregonians file their 2023 taxes next year, they're going to get a nice little windfall from the state: $5.61 billion, all told. That's because Oregon has a tax law unique in the country, something called the kicker rebate. But not everyone knows what it is or why it is.
It involves a bit of a gamble. Every two years, well before lawmakers adopt a biennial budget, state economists are tasked with making a prediction of how much tax revenue Oregon will take in. If they overestimate, lawmakers end up needing to make budget cuts. If they get pretty close to the mark, the legislature adopts a new budget and that's the end of it. But if revenues come in more than 2% above their estimate, all the surplus gets returned to taxpayers in proportion to how much they paid in.
It's a strange law, and not without controversy. But it's also a tough thing to change — after all, how many people want to get less money back on their tax returns?
A federal court case out of southern Oregon has the potential to reshape the way cities can enforce homeless camping ordinances across the Western U.S. — and it's drawing strange bedfellows. The case, Johnson v. Grants Pass, originated as a class action suit filed by homeless people against the city, arguing that its penalties for camping were unconstitutional. A panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the city, adding to a growing canon of law restricting how cities enforce anti-camping ordinances.
But Grants Pass has appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court — and if the high court decides to take the case, it could overturn the Ninth Circuit decisions. Numerous groups are now filing briefs on either side of the issue, and the city of Grants Pass is drawing support from conservative think tanks, Republican lawmakers in Arizona, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the city of Portland, to name a few.
Portland's daytime ban on homeless camps technically went into effect in early July. But the answer to the question "What has changed?" was just about the same a month later as it is now: not much. City officials pledged to conduct a phased-in approach to the ban, starting by spreading awareness of the new rules. At the same time, the first of Portland's first mass sanctioned homeless camps opened and slowly started taking in residents.
Enforcement of the ban was supposed to begin Nov. 13, but a judge in a class action lawsuit filed against the city by homeless people decided to block that enforcement while the case unfolds.
In November 2022, Oregon voters narrowly passed Measure 114, an initiative that would enact some of the strictest gun control regulations in the country. Lawsuits filed in both state and federal court resulted in the case being blocked indefinitely before it could go into effect, but there were murmurs that Measure 114's problems went beyond that.
The law stipulates that prospective gun owners must get a permit and undergo a federal background check conducted by the FBI. But according to the FBI's Special Agent in Charge of the Portland field office, there's some wording in Measure 114 that conflicts with federal law, meaning they will not be able to conduct the background checks if the law were to go into effect unchanged. Namely, the law allows entities other than a government agency to request a background check from the FBI, which is a no-no under something called "public law 92-544."
Over the summer, the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska proposed buying plane tickets to fly homeless people elsewhere, citing the city's lack of shelter capacity and the oncoming threat of potentially deadly winter hazards. That reminded us of a familiar topic — the idea of busing homeless people to other cities, which has been around for quite a while and comes to the surface every so often.
As it happens, Portland has been on both ends of this tactic. Hundreds of people have been bused to Portland from other cities throughout the U.S., and Portland has bused hundreds of people elsewhere — and it's still going on. Regardless, there's a common view that Portland's homeless population is somehow uniquely transient. But is it true? We looked at some of the data, and it may surprise you.
For years, St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in the southern Oregon coastal city of Brookings has provided meals to people in need. But as that need grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, the church expanded its meal service to six days a week. Neighbors weren't happy with the increased presence of homeless people in the area and lobbied the city of Brookings to put it to a stop.
Brookings City Council obliged, passing a new zoning law limiting St. Timothy's meals to two days per week. So the church sued the city in federal court, arguing that the city is unfairly preventing them from practicing their religious freedoms with the zoning law. The city has argued that the meals don't count as a religious practice.
But in a recent development, the U.S. Department of Justice weighed in on the side of the church, filing paperwork that asks the federal court to rule against the city.
Reporting on Portland admittedly makes up the core of The Story's coverage — understandably, we think, since it's our home and the largest, most populous city in the state of Oregon. That said, we hear from plenty of viewers about stories elsewhere in the state that need more attention. So this year we took a couple of trips to other parts of Oregon for in-depth series on issues that impact thousands of people. Here are two of those series, both stemming from forays in eastern Oregon.
Thousands of Oregonians in Umatilla and north Morrow counties rely on private wells for drinking water, tapping into a massive underground aquifer. But pollution has steadily contaminated that groundwater source in recent decades, turning what was once safe water into a potentially toxic supply.
The Story traveled to eastern Oregon to speak with residents and learn more about the problem. A large share of those impacted are low-income people. Many do not speak English. They may not have political power, but they share a belief that the water has made them sick — even if they can't prove it.
Nearly a dozen counties in eastern Oregon have now voted to consider seceding from the state in order to join Idaho. The "Greater Idaho" movement is a longshot effort, but it's also the symptom, we're told, of deep discontentment with the state of Oregon. So The Story's Pat Dooris took a camera crew and launched a listening tour of eastern Oregon in order to find out why.
Dooris spoke with a number of eastern Oregonians who felt that they're ignored by the more populous areas of the state, and they think the "Greater Idaho" movement offers them a more fruitful path forward. But others aren't convinced Idaho is the answer.
