BLOGTOWN

KATHLEEN MARIE

After a five-month hiatus, e-scooters—those oft-debated, much-studied transportation devices—will return to Portland in April.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) announced Monday morning that its year-long "Shared Electric Scooter Pilot Program" will kick off April 26. This pilot follows a 120-day trial run conducted by PBOT last year, during which e-scooter companies Bird, Lime, and Skip dropped a total of 2,043 pay-per-minute e-scooters accross the city.

PBOT expects up to 15,000 e-scooters to be on Portland streets by January 2020. We don't know which brand of e-scooters those will be yet—the city's still taking applications from companies interested in participating.

“E-scooters are unquestionably fun to ride,” said Transportation Commissioner Chloe Eudaly in a press release issued Monday. “The challenge of this second pilot will be to see if it’s possible to mitigate problems while demonstrating that e-scooters can benefit Portlanders left out of the economic mainstream and advance our city’s climate goals.”

Doug Brown

“I find I cannot conclude to a moral certainty that the defendants are guilty of the crimes they are charged with,"said Judge David Rees Friday afternoon, concluding the seven-day trial. The defendants had waived their right to a jury trial, leaving the verdict in Rees' hands.

Defendants Charles McGee, former director of the Black Parent Initiative and Multnomah County Commission candidate, and Aubré Dickson, former chair of the Oregon Housing Stability Council and a vice president at KeyBank, each faced a minimum of 8 years in prison for a spate of sexual abuse charges.

Jesse Tise

Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer spoke with the Mercury after this story was published to emphasize her commitment to tenants' rights and the importance of SB 608's passage.

"[SB 608] did not go far enough, and I've always said that," Keny-Guyer said. "But we have to do things incrementally at the legislature."

She also confirmed that Rep. Paul Evans, the sponsor of HB 2540, formally asked her to withdraw his bill from committee, acknowledging that he didn't support the way tenants' rights advocates were pressuring legislators to address it.

Original Post:

In February, Oregon Democrats trumpeted the state's passage of the country's first statewide rent control bill, attracting national accolades for its novelty and necessity.

The bill, Senate Bill 608, will cap annual rent increases at 7 percent (plus inflation, raising it to around 10 percent) and ban no-cause evictions for tenants who've lived in a building for more than one year.

SB 608 is seen as the state legislature's response to housing advocates' call for stronger renter protections—in the form of rent control—during the 2017 legislative session.

However, those advocates for low-income renters weren't calling for state-controlled rent caps like SB 608 offers.