Blair Stenvick

CITY OF PORTLAND A high-ranking employee at Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) with ties to the far-right Vancouver, Washington group Patriot Prayer has a history of making city employees feel threatened and uncomfortable, according to city records obtained by the Mercury. Gregory Isaacson is an Analyst II—a managerial title—at PP&R, and has worked there since […]

DOUG BROWN Multnomah County will pay a $100,000 settlement agreement to a former employee who sued the county for racial discrimination and retaliation in January. The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners approved the settlement at its Thursday morning meeting. The lawsuit was filed by Karimah Guion-Pledgure, who worked for the county since 2011 as a […]

GETTY IMAGES When recent Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jim Mustian visited Portland for a story last year, the issue of split-jury convictions wasn’t on most Oregonians’ radar. Mustian was reporting for Louisiana daily newspaper The Advocate about an unusual distinction Louisiana and Oregon shared at the time: They were the only two states in the country […]

BLAIR STENVICK TriMet has started operating its first completely electric bus, marking a major step forward in the transit agency’s push to have a full non-diesel bus fleet by 2040. Officials from TriMet and Portland General Electric (PGE) unveiled the two electric buses, or “e-buses,” Tuesday morning outside TriMet’s operating facility in Beaverton. PGE will […]

GETTY IMAGES Today is Tax Day, the date by which you should have held your nose, swallowed your pride, and filed your tax return with the federal government—knowing full well that far too much of your taxes will fund the military, and far too little of them will fund education, housing, transportation, et cetera. But […]

Ami Fox, a precinct committee person with the Multnomah County Democrats, speaks in favor of a resolution calling for Sen Peter Courtney to step down as senate president. BLAIR STENVICK The Multnomah County Democrats (MCD) have passed a resolution calling for state Sen Peter Courtney to step down from his role as senate president, on […]

TRIMET Buses: you know, they’re like Lyfts, but bigger and with even more strangers. And Portland is about to get some even bigger buses than we’ve ever had before, thanks to a $87.4 million grant from the US Department of Transportation announced Tuesday. The grant will help fund a TriMet project that will connect downtown […]