In the first article in this series, I showed that Portland city government has a dismal record of representing Portlanders. Nonpartisan elections make it hard to measure the council’s ideological representativeness, but it is easy to measure the lack of racial, ethnic, gender, and geographical diversity. For example, although nearly one-third of Portlanders are people … Read more
In my previous article, I illustrated how Portland’s city council does not represent the city’s people in terms of geography, race and ethnicity, gender, wealth, and life experience. Only two people of color have ever served on the council. In 2016, the city elected Chloe Eudaly, the eighth woman ever and possibly the first renter … Read more
UPDATE June 15: The article has been updated to explain how the analysis tracks the addresses of the two council members—Charlie Hales and Nick Fish—who lived at two different addresses while in office, and to reflect the fact that Nick Fish is now a renter, after 20 years of being a homeowner in Grant Park. … Read more
Might a handful of lawsuits in the Northwest states open existing bedrooms to roommates, houses to in-law apartments, and neighborhoods to new rooming houses? It’s a question Sightline has long pondered. Today, we have part of the answer, in a legal analysis of occupancy limits’ susceptibility to judicial review. First, a review of the backstory. … Read more
“There is this very unique place on Earth, the Pacific Northwest. It’s either about to become steamrolled by coal and oil heading from North America to foreign shores, or it is going to stand up in an opposition movement and prevent those projects from happening.” Those are the words of Sightline senior policy director Eric … Read more
Northwest communities have been knocking down oil train development proposals as fast as they can spring up. In the last two years alone the region’s opposition movement has, by various means, spiked projects all around western Washington: once in Vancouver, once in Anacortes, and three times in Hoquiam. One big proposal is still under review … Read more
A little over a year ago, 195 countries signed on to the historic Paris Climate Accord to limit global warming pollution. This year, the United States pointed a loaded gun at its own foot, and President Trump pulled the trigger, announcing he will withdraw from the agreement. But the rest of the world is moving … Read more
Note: This article was originally published in 2017. We updated it to reflect the 2019 legislative session, where three bills were introduced to enact the popular vote concept in Oregon. Among its 40 sponsors, Senate Bill 870 has 13 state senators on board. It needs 16 votes to pass out of the Senate. Read more … Read more
The legislature is the people’s house, the hall of a representative democracy where representatives of the people meet to craft solutions to pressing problems. It is the body that takes people’s values and puts them into action. That’s the ideal. And when it works well, it’s golden. For example, the US Congress turned people’s growing … Read more
Editor’s note: We added three “made-in-Canada” Proportional Representation methods below: rural-urban, local, and dual member. Because of the Trudeau administration’s promise to move off of first-past-the-post voting, and BC’s impending referendum on electoral reform, Canada has been a hot bed of thinking around how to customize the benefits of Proportional Representation to the specifics of … Read more