On Jan. 28, officials in Oregon and across the country reacted with alarm after being shut out of the reimbursement system for Medicaid, the federal and state health care program for low-income Americans. (The federal government contributes about 70%; states pay the other 30%.) NEW: My staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down […]
Nigel Jaquiss, Oregon Journalism Project
New Data Shows Oregon Has the Nationโs Second-Tightest Housing Market
This month, the state began acting on the results of a long-awaited Oregon Housing Needs Analysis, hoping the trove of data will help policymakers solve Oregonโs housing shortage. Lawmakers dug right in, inviting economists from the consulting firm ECOnorthwest to brief both the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness and the Senate Housing and Development […]
Kotek’s Gift to Trade Unions Contradicts ODOT’s Analysis
Gov. Tina Kotek issued an executive order last month that will make highway projects more expensive, reduce bidding competition and benefit a relatively small number of workers โ who happen to be strong supporters of hers โ at the expense of many Oregonians. Who says so? Kotekโs own agency, the Oregon Department of Transportation. On […]
Wyden Decided Against Protecting the Owyhee, and Now Oregonians May Not Get Another Chance Soon
Dr. Julie Weikel, a retired large animal veterinarian, has been fighting to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands in Southeastern Oregon for a long time. How long? โMy daughterโs name is Owyhee, and sheโs 43 years old,โ she says. Weikel, 78, now lives about 30 miles south of Burns in Harney County but treated animals from all […]
Empire For Sale
Efforts are underway, the Oregon Journalism Project has learned, to unwind one of the great timber fortunes in the state โ at the order of the federal government. On Dec. 26, Dr. Robert Pamplin Jr., 83, settled a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Labor to resolve allegations he treated his company’s pension fund […]
The Damned Deschutes
MAUPIN, Oregon โ Alysia Littleleaf and her husband, Elke, make their living as fishing guides on the lower Deschutes River, near the Warm Springs Reservation. A major tributary of the Columbia River, the Deschutes irrigates farmland, generates electricity and is the lifeblood of Central Oregon’s biggest industry, tourism. The river and its high desert landscape […]

