THAT DIDN'T LAST LONG.
No sooner had the Mercury written about a proposal that would allow police agencies to shield the name of officers in last week's issue, than the bill—which had cruised through the Oregon House—essentially died.
Don't thank us. Senate Democrats, preoccupied with weighty matters like the minimum wage and affordable housing policies, decided they didn't have the bandwidth to take up a complicated police transparency matter.
"It's probably not going anywhere," said Rick Osborn, a spokesman for Senate Democrats.
It's unclear what that means for the state troopers who shot Oregon occupier LaVoy Finicum in January. The bill was crafted hurriedly to ensure the officers' identities weren't released to Finicum's nutjob cohort. DIRK VANDERHART
AS THIS YEAR'S short session in the Oregon Legislature winds to a close, a host of minimum wage proposals have been pared down to just two. First, there's the bill Governor Kate Brown plans to sign into law. It will carve Oregon into three regions, assigning different minimum wage increases to each. Here in Portland, that'll mean a $14.75 wage by 2022.
The bill's success prompted a labor-backed ballot proposal to set the wage at $13.50 to call it quits this week, but a separate ballot initiative is still working toward a vote in November. At least for now.
15 Now Oregon, the group that's been pushing a $15 statewide minimum wage, is taking stock of its backing now that Oregon's on the verge of the highest statewide minimum wage in the country (in the most rural district, it'll be $12.50 by 2022), says activist Justin Norton-Kertson.
"We're going to figure out whether we have the support now, or whether we should think more long term," he says. DVH
