Category OREGON NEWS

Rosenblum announces $698 million settlement for environmental damage
Monsanto will pay the state a $698 million lump sum after decades of contamination with PCBs.

Oregon’s overreliance on tuition to cover rising college costs hurts the economy, report finds
Oregon students pay disproportionately high tuition, hindering enrollment and depriving the economy of trained professionals in key sectors.

Two-thirds of Oregon voters participated in 2022 midterm election
Oregon again had the highest voter turnout of any U.S. state, with the highest turnout rate among registered Republicans.

Harney County judge blocks ban on large-capacity firearms magazine sales
The preliminary injunction will stay in place while the case goes to trial.

Port of Morrow agrees to new state regulations limiting nitrogen pollution
The Port of Morrow will invest more than $150 million in treating wastewater to reduce nitrogen levels and to limit where and when it is applied to farmland.

Gov. Brown fires state director who pleaded guilty to child assault
The governor fired Reginald Richardson from his post running the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission more than a week after Salem Reporter first asked about his employment status. Richardson was convicted in October for shoving an eight-year-old into a wall during a Salem after-school program.

As universal free lunch takes hold in schools, Oregon will shift how it measures student poverty levels
The growing movement to provide free school lunches for all students has also made it increasingly difficult both to pinpoint what percentage of students in a given district are living at the poverty level, and to precisely target the money and services intended to help them.

Oregon’s addiction care rollout plan puts peers in a precarious position
Without adequate funding for detox facilities for withdrawal management, residential treatment and recovery housing, people inside Oregon's addiction treatment system say the state’s burgeoning peer workforce amounts to a pipeline that often leads nowhere.

Kotek names interim director for the Oregon Health Authority
James Schroeder, CEO of Health Share of Oregon, has 20 years of clinical and executive health care experience.