Signature gatherers behind an effort to create a new water and sewer district have received their first formal complaint—a potentially serious allegation that, if deemed true, could result in felony charges. Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown’s office received a written accusation on October 24—claims a Lloyd District petitioner offered false information about what the […]
Dirk VanderHart
I'm a news reporter for the Mercury. I've spent a lot of the last decade in journalism — covering tragedy and chicanery in the hills of southwest Missouri, politics in Washington, D.C., and other matters elsewhere.
I've been in Portland three years, love it and want to help make it better. Let's keep it amicable!
Posted inNews
Good Morning, News!
First, in a personal bit of news, there are all these damned Johnnie Walker ads all over the Internet today, and ever since reading Kafka on the Shore, I associate Johnnie Walker with horrific cat torture. So that’s the frame of mind I’m in as I write this—cat torture. If you’ve struggled to follow along […]
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Let’s Talk Municipal Finance Late on a Friday Afternoon
Ryan Alexander-Tanner So you read our story this week on municipal bonds and you got interested. Real interested. But news stories are like veins, right? You can only tap them so many times for that crucial high. You need a fresh line. (I have no idea if this lingo or information is correct.) Anyway, I’m […]
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What A Crazily Violent Halloween We Just Had
Erik Ursin Did Portland dress up as Chicago for Halloween? Even for the levels of violence Portland’s seen lately, yesterday and this morning have been insane. It began yesterday morning, when cops found 32-year-old Jose Manuel Alvarez-Madrigal dead of a gunshot in a 2002 Hyundai Elantra. Officers suspect a homicide, but are trying to figure […]
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Might Thousands of Overtime Hours Actually Be Saving the Sheriff Money?
A single employee of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office accumulated more than 430 hours of overtime from July 1 to October 1. For that work, she netted $25,589 above her regular salary. The department’s top ten workers cleared more than 3,000 overtime hours in the same time—$194,560 worth of work. In total, the sheriff’s office […]
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“We Need Him to Understand that We Do Not Love Him for a Long Time.”
I’m pretty much over the KXL-FM billboard flap, too, but this is sort of funny. The conservative news-talk station’s gaffe has inspired a bit of satire from former city council candidate Jesse Cornett. “I am going to respond to this like KXL would respond to something a ‘Democrat’ government official did wrong, whatever the reason,” […]
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Word Is Bond
Why a New Water District Might Not Save Cash: Higher Interest Rates
Why a new water district might not be a money-saving panacea: higher interest rates.
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Water District Backers Attracting Property Management, Industry Money. Not Much Else.
The political action committee trying to wrest control of Portland’s water and wastewater bureaus from city council has been billed—by us and others—as a melding of water activists and big industry. But if that’s the case, it’s not showing up in the group’s campaign money. Portlanders for Water Reform yesterday unveiled another $10,000 in contributions […]
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Good Morning, News!
Nothing official yet, everybody, but the US is considering perhaps not monitoring the phone activity of foreign leaders we call friends. Germany’s still incensed over revelations we kept tabs on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone. “The administration will reserve the right to continue collecting intelligence in friendly countries that pertains to criminal activity, potential terrorist […]
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You Ready to Vote on Legal Pot Again?
Here we go again. Backers of a new push to legalize marijuana just announced they’ve formally filed an initiative with the Secretary of State’s office. The group New Approach Oregon, already has shown robust fundraising ability—one more akin to successful efforts in Colorado and Washington than Measure 80, last year’s defeated pot legalization push in […]
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KXL is Shamed into Taking Down Its Billboard
Remember on Friday when we posted about the stupendously tone-deaf KXL billboard in Chinatown? The post set off something of a firestorm and, though KXL hasn’t answered my queries about the thing, they’ve told OPB they’ll take it down. According to a copy of their statement floating around the web, KXL says: Regarding the KXL […]
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The City’s Water Fight Intensifies
Erik Ursin Just when things were slowing a bit in the fight over Portland’s much-revered Bull Run watershed, a new challenger emerges! A group called Cascadian Public Trust Initiative unveiled a new effort last night to land a measure on the May November 2014 ballot. It’s essentially a wish list from Portland’s water activist community: […]