The Year's Winners and Losers - The Source

The end of a year is an ideal time to look back, reassess and think about what we could do better in the new year. With that, we present some of the winners and losers of the year 2025. Let’s start with the Losers.

Losing locally

–Oregon’s budget. Federal decisions and executive orders are bringing plenty of budget cuts and uncertainty locally. Those in charge of Oregon’s budget have difficult decisions ahead about what stays and what goes.

–Hawthorne Bridge. City councilors earlier presented an elegant pedestrian bridge design to span the Parkway and the railroad tracks. Thanks to budget constraints, that design got swapped for a choppier look that will still make a “statement” about Bend for locals and visitors — just maybe not the statement we were hoping for.

–Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center. There’s certainly demand to expand the place — but rising staff and capital costs mean we may not get an expansion anytime soon. The way the budget is looking, we’ll be lucky to keep the status quo.

–Freedom City?! Deregulation enthusiasts pegged Deschutes County as a possible site for a new city that bucks state and local regulations. We haven’t seen much movement on this idea since we wrote about it earlier this year. Do we lose more if it’s built, or if it’s not?

–Road diets. We’re all for building a city that encourages more people to get out of their cars — but the way the City of Bend has rolled out its “road diet” designs on Greenwood Avenue, Olney Avenue and Franklin Avenue, with several key streets closed or under construction at the same time, has caused lots of backups, and perhaps upset some of the same people who might otherwise support improvements aimed at active commuting.

–Local wildlife. With the current effort to remove the wolf from the Endangered Species list, and the efforts to extract lithium in a critical sage-grouse habitat, some of Oregon’s most vulnerable species — which act as indicators of the overall health of the greater ecosystem — could be in danger. Economies including Central Oregon’s were once extractive in nature, and have moved into the booming recreational economies that we see today. Why are we moving backward?

The federal losers of 2025

Losing this year on a massive scale are DOGE’d federal workers, Medicaid and Oregon Health Plan recipients set to lose their benefits. Also, those on the insurance marketplace whose premiums are skyrocketing, the immigrants without criminal records being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. citizens being rounded up because they “look Mexican,” and the entirety of the American people, who are saddled with a yawning federal deficit thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Winners on the local scene

–E-bikers on mountain trails. Fine, you win. See you on the singletrack — but donate to the trail organizations, all right?!

–Deschutes County Sheriff’s office. After allegations of corruption from longtime sheriff Shane Nelson, and documented lying and chicanery from Kent van der Kamp, the guy elected to replace him, taxpayers may be pleased to know that Ty Rupert is aiming to rise above all of that. Consider us cautiously optimistic.

–Courthouse workers and visitors. OK, so 2025 may have been the year of annoying construction noise, but when the Deschutes County Courthouse expansion is done, it’s going to greatly improve the experience in our local halls of justice.

–People in Prineville, for resisting a biomass facility. With massive data centers looming over the town, generating more power is a big deal in Prineville. But residents showed up en masse to say “no” to an urban growth boundary expansion for a biomass facility. Score one for the environment.

–Amazon’s inflatable costume division. For a time, blow-up frogs and other inflatable costumes were hard to come by, due to Portland’s penchant for bringing the weird and wonderful, even to protests at the ICE facility. By bringing the silliness to an otherwise serious scene, Oregon’s biggest city got back some of the mojo it lost when it was Tent City, USA. As much as locals might want to fight it, Portland’s economy is tied tight to Central Oregon’s, and a win for Portland is a win for the whole state.

–Marijuana producers. Giving a thumbs-up to a Trump executive order feels akin to saying “yes” to a root canal, but this week the president signaled a desire to take marijuana off the list of the most dangerous drugs. With countless weed growers waiting for the day when Oregon’s green can be shared with the rest of the world, we say a move toward sane marijuana policy is a win for a state that’s long trafficked in the best bud around. We’ll hold our breaths while we puff-puff-pass.

This article appears in the Source December 25, 2025.