May 19 2021
Legislature clears ballot measure championed by the late Mitch Greenlick for November 2022 on a party-line House vote.
Northwest Portland s Mitch Greenlick may achieve in death what he was unable to do during his 17 years in the Oregon House.
A vote in the House cleared the way for Oregon voters to decide in November 2022 whether health care should be considered a right in the Oregon Constitution. The House passed Senate Joint Resolution 12 on a 34-23 vote along party lines on Wednesday, May 19. The resolution does not require the governor s signature.
Greenlick, a Portland Democrat, was in his ninth and final term when he died a year ago at age 85. As leader or co-leader of the House Health Care Committee for more than six cycles, going back to 2007, he sponsored and the House passed similar resolutions four times. All of them died in the Senate, although his final attempt had reached the full Senate before the Legislature abruptly adjourned its 2020 regular se
May 13 2021
The pilot program is underway in Lents, and members of the Portland City Council are split on what to do next.
In 2019, the Portland City Council created a new branch of first responders called Portland Street Response. Instead of sending armed police officers to 911 calls involving a houseless person experiencing a mental health crisis in a public space, the city sends out a team of mental health specialists who will try to connect the person in crisis to the services they need.
But Mayor Ted Wheeler, with Commissioners Mingus Mapps and Dan Ryan, want the pilot to play out, and for researchers at Portland State University to study how well or poorly it worked, before expanding the pilot elsewhere.
Agency gears up for more unemployment benefit claims April 28 2021
But acting director says he does not expect new lockdowns to result in an influx similar to pandemic onset.
The Employment Department is gearing up for an increase in benefit claims as a result of pandemic-prompted lockdown orders that will close or curtail some Oregon businesses.
Fifteen of Oregon s 36 counties covering seven of the state s 10 largest cities have been returned to the extreme risk category for the COVID-19 virus. Indoor dining is barred, and other activities are curtailed, for one to three weeks starting Friday, April 30. We know that this change in risk levels may mean layoffs across counties and different business sectors, acting director David Gerstenfeld told reporters in a weekly conference call on Wednesday, April 28.
Prescription would no longer be needed for pseudoephedrine April 28 2021
Oregon House passes bill that would require people to show photo ID and obtain it behind the counter.
Oregon would no longer require a prescription for medicines containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine under a bill that has cleared the House.
House Bill 2648 went to the Senate on a 54-4 vote on Wednesday, April 28.
The requirement for a prescription was written into law in 2005, when people were buying medicines containing pseudoephedrine a precursor chemical for use in making methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant that is illegal. Oregon was the first state to do so.