Beat Check with The Oregonian The Oregonian/OregonLive

The Oregonian/OregonLive is in the midst of its annual update of the Oregon Public Employee Retirement System beneficiary database.
Last week, we published an update that showed nearly 6,000 retirees tapped into the pension benefit system in 2023. In a week or so, we’ll have our database fully updated and available so readers can lookup all current retirees and their benefits.
Reporter Ted Sickinger, who has examined the system for more than a decade, joined Editor Therese Bottomly for this week’s installment of “Beat Check with The Oregonian” to talk about the challenges facing PERS and Oregon public agencies. Sickinger talks about his analysis of the new retirees and their benefits and also the outliers in the system as a whole. The conversation covers:
--How we got here and the real-life impact of the system’s shortfall
--What reforms have already been made to the system?
--What the Legislature and the PERS board can do about the shortfall?
--What’s behind some of the outsized benefits packages?
To learn more about PERS:
How did we get here? A short video
How a serial killer kept receiving PERS in prison
The Oregonian wins Pulitzer Prize for PERS editorials
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Many homeowners in Oregon are feeling the impacts of higher electricity bills and facing the prospect of yet another rate increase next year. As electricity bills have skyrocketed, causing widespread anger and frustration, many people have begun to question how and why utilities recoup money from their customers.
Last month, the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a state nonprofit group that advocates for those customers, asked Oregon regulators to dismiss Portland General Electric’s newest rate increase proposal – an unprecedented move that diverges from the state’s standard rate-setting process. Since then, the case has generated well over 1,000 comments from frustrated PGE customers.
They raise important questions: Are back-to-back rate increases fair? Why should customers bear all of the cost of infrastructure upgrades and other investments and not the utility and its shareholders? Does the clean energy transition translate into higher rates? And if clean energy is supposedly cheaper than fossil fuel-powered energy, why are rates going up exponentially?
Dain Nestel, the Director of Customer Solutions at Portland General Electric, talked on Beat Check about the reasons for the steep increases and how the company is trying to reign in costs and help its customers in an era of increasing electricity demand, extreme weather and aging infrastructure.
For a different perspective, Beat Check previously hosted Bob Jenks, the executive director of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, to address those issues from utility customers’ perspective.
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In February, elected leaders of a small town in Marion County took the extraordinary step of firing its top cop amid a series of troubling allegations.
Gervais Police Chief Mark Chase’s removal has since touched off a feud between the chief’s defenders and officials in the quiet community about 15 miles NE of Salem.
Chase, it turns out, is no stranger to controversy on the job. Leaders in Junction City, about an hour south of Gervais, fired Chase from his role as police chief there in 2016.
On the latest Beat Check, Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Catalina Gaitán talk about small town politics in the age of toxic divides.
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Oregon’s largest corporate employer has been one of the biggest boosters calling for an infusion of taxpayer dollars into U.S. manufacturing of computer chips.
Last week, Intel got its wish: an $8.5 billion check from the federal government. Mike Rogoway, who covers the chip industry for The Oregonian/OregonLive, spoke with business editor Elliot Njus about what this award means for Intel in Oregon and around the world.
He also discussed his reporting on the Oregon Employment Department, which launched long-awaited upgrade to its computer system that handles unemployment claims — but the transition doesn’t seem to have ended difficulties for Oregonians seeking jobless benefits.
Read more:

Intel wins $8.5 billion in federal subsidies for chip factories, calls for more

Computer upgrade triggers familiar problems for Oregonians seeking unemployment benefits


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Environmentalists notched what they consider a major win in the 2024 short legislative session. The COAL Act directs the state to drop about $1 billion in coal investments and to cease new investments in companies that mine and burn coal.
Proponents say the legislation aligns the state’s public pension investments with Oregon’s existing climate goals to reduce carbon emissions and transition to 100% clean energy.
Oregon isn’t the only state going this route. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns, which launched over a decade ago on college campuses, now focus on governments, pension funds, faith-based organizations and foundations, among others. To date, about $14 trillion has been divested from fossil fuels globally and commitments to divest topped $40 trillion across the world as of this summer.
Oregon’s coal-divestment legislation is based on a California law adopted in 2015 that led that state’s pension systems – the two largest public funds in the country – to divest from coal. A few other states and cities have also followed suit. Maine became the first state to pledge divesting from fossil fuels. New York City divested $3 billion of its pension funds three years ago and Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco and Pittsburgh are also moving to divest their pension funds. Even Eugene in Oregon has pledged not to invest in fossil fuel companies.
But the movement to divest also has many critics. Some labor unions fear it could threaten hard-earned retirement money. And the issue has become highly politicized, with over a dozen Republican states passing or introducing model bills that ban them from doing business with financial groups that divest from fossil fuels.
Divestment is even controversial in California, where a bill to divest the state’s pension systems from all fossil fuels was shelved again during last year’s legislative session.
On the Beat Check podcast, the chief sponsor of Oregon’s coal divestment legislation, Rep. Khanh Pham, D-Portland, talked about why Oregon’s divestment from coal will help the state reach its climate goals, how it compares with other fossil fuel divestment campaigns and what individual investors can do to divest and align their own money with their environmental values.
Pham also spoke about what the state should invest in and how programs like Portland’s Clean Energy Fund – which she helped create – and the statewide Climate Protection Program’s Community Climate Investments can help low-income communities take part in the clean energy transition and better adapt to the changing climate.
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A lack of funding and the passage of Measure 110 dealt a double whammy to Oregon drug courts. Even as fentanyl became a scourge, one of the best tools to help addicts largely faded away.
Programs in Deschutes, Benton, Polk and Multnomah counties shut down in recent months or years and others have been hit with funding problems. But in this short legislative session, the Oregon Legislature voted to increase funding to $37 million this two-year budget cycle, an increase of almost 50%.
Legislators also recriminalized drug possession, voting to creates a new misdemeanor for people caught with small amounts of illicit drugs. That might send more people into drug courts tailored to lesser offenders.
Reporter Aimee Green took a deep dive into the history of drug courts in Oregon, how they work and how people have benefited from them. She talked to policymakers, recovering addicts and judges.
Green joined Editor Therese Bottomly to talk about her article (Bottomly’s sister is a Multnomah County judge).
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