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MORE MOTOR VOTER WOES: The state’s motor-voter automatic registration system is more flawed than state officials admitted last month when they acknowledged the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Oregon Driver & Motor Vehicle Services erroneously added 1,259 noncitizens to voter rolls. Officials say just nine of them actually may have voted. On Oct. 8, the DMV said it had identified a total of 302 more people who were improperly registered to vote—123 of whom were registered under an data-entry glitch identified earlier; one who was identified when he went in to exchange an out-of-state license for an Oregon license; and 178 people born in American Samoa who were added to the rolls because of a flawed policy WW brought to the DMV’s attention last week. (The agency’s manual incorrectly states that people born in American Samoa are U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to vote.) Gov. Tina Kotek and Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade have suspended Motor Voter registrations as of Sept. 30 and ordered an independent outside audit. “Any error that undermines our voting system must be taken incredibly seriously and addressed,” Kotek said.
LEADING CANDIDATE TERRENCE HAYES RACKED UP DEBTS: Terrence Hayes, a leading candidate for the Portland City Council running in District 1, has a history of unpaid debts, court filings obtained by WW show. In August 2023, Hayes and his graffiti abatement company were sued by a small business lender in Nassau County, N.Y., for $63,000 in delinquent loan payments. The following month, Hayes and his wife were sued by a former landlord who alleged $10,000 in apartment damage. Hayes has also been sued for delinquent credit line payments. Hayes says he’s paying down his debts and has learned from his financial woes. “I’ve had to learn my hard lesson about business loans and debt. Please be reminded that I did not come from wealth and the knowledge that most families teach their children,” Hayes said in a statement. “Please don’t forget my story is not one of privilege and wealth but of hardship and work.” Hayes is a unique candidate for a number of reasons, including that he spent 12 years in prison after a 2004 jury convicted him of attempted murder when he was a teenager. Hayes is a staunch supporter of law enforcement and scored an endorsement from the Portland Police Association, which represents the city’s sworn police officers.
IT’S THE FENTANYL, STUPID: The huge increase in overdose deaths in Oregon has had little to do with Measure 110, the 2020 referendum that decriminalized illegal drugs, and everything to do with the arrival of fentanyl, the souped-up opioid that makes heroin look like lite beer. That’s what researchers at Brown University conclude in a new paper on Oregon’s overdose crisis, published in JAMA Network Open. A team led by Brown researcher Brandon del Pozo, who worked as a police officer for 23 years, plotted the percentage of fentanyl in drug supplies in 48 states against fatal drug overdoses there and determined that deaths were strongly correlated to the prevalence of fentanyl. “It was a very tight relationship,” del Pozo said in a statement about the study. “The more fentanyl that was recovered and tested by the state, the higher the fatal overdose rate in that state.” Fentanyl came along at exactly the wrong time for proponents of drug decriminalization. Measure 110 went into effect in February 2021, just as the drug swept into Oregon and “dominated the state’s unregulated opioid supply, increasing their risk of overdose,” the study says. Bowing to public pressure, Oregon legislators re-criminalized drug possession this year, levying misdemeanor charges on offenders starting on Sept. 1.
DEFLECTION CENTER NOT BEING NEIGHBORLY: Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson stoked the ire of inner eastside businesses and residents on Oct. 7 when she pressed ahead with a plan to open the county’s drug deflection center without inking a “good neighbor” agreement guaranteeing the conduct of operations there. County officials have been meeting with community members in the neighborhood every week to hammer out a pact on how the county will keep people stopped for drug possession citywide from lingering around the new facility on Southeast Pine Street and Sandy Boulevard after they are discharged. Carolyn Holcomb, executive director of the Central Eastside Industrial Council and a party to those meetings, said the Good Neighbor Agreement Committee has been “very clear” that it can’t support opening the center without an agreement in place. In a Monday letter to the committee, obtained by WW, Vega Pederson asked for patience. “We recognize that despite good faith efforts, it is very unlikely that we’ll have a good neighbor agreement finalized for a while and that this is likely to feel unsatisfactory to you,” Vega Pederson wrote. “Still, we come to you with a request: That you stay at the table and continue the development of the good neighbor agreement even as the center opens and becomes operational.”
INDEPENDENT STUDY SUGGESTS PAY HIKE FOR HOME CARE WORKERS: A new study is recommending the state vastly increase spending on care for the elderly and people with disabilities. On Oct. 7, the Oregon Department of Human Services distributed a preliminary version of the anticipated “wage and rate study,” which was requested by the legislature last year and performed by health policy consulting firm Burns & Associates. The study recommends substantial increases across the board in payments for elder care and disability services, including 30–45% increases in in-home attendant care and a 13% increase in rates for memory care facilities. This is all despite the fact that Oregon pays workers in this industry more than almost any other state (20% more than the national average, according to one of the study’s authors, Stephen Pawlowski). The state is now requesting public comment on the findings prior to publishing a final version of the study at the end of the year.