Starting today, Portland General Electric customers are paying about $8 more per month — a 5% rate hike approved by state regulators. Pacific Power customers are seeing a 3-4% increase. It's the sixth straight year of rate increases for Oregon's two largest private utilities. The Oregon Citizens' Utility Board warned that the rushed approval timeline made it harder to scrutinize the details. Meanwhile, residential demand has grown about 1% annually over the past decade. Industrial demand, driven largely by data centers, grew nearly 70%. Oregon passed the POWER act to make utility companies charge the data centers for this instead of residential customers, but they’re just- not complying 🤷More at OPB and Oregonian

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/03/pacific-power-pge-raise-residential-electricity-rates-again-for-oregon-customers.html?outputType=amp

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/15/utility-watchdogs-accuse-pge-of-skirting-new-law-meant-to-make-data-centers-pay-for-rising-demand/

I cover stuff like this every day in a newsletter, free to subscribe

https://www.portlanddrizzle.com/

Source: https://www.oregon.gov/ode/schools-and-districts/grants/Pages/ESSER-Transparency.aspx

That fact helps explain why their union continues to swim publicly against the current in its support of one of the lowest-polling institutions in the country, data centers.

Sigh. The work will be going to the Carolinas, after 84 years of doing the work in Portland.

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OTOH, Daimler Truck said it will retain its North American headquarters on Swan Island, including a new $40 million engineering facility the company opened there this month.

Advocates of public transportation like Cassie Wilson, transportation policy manager at 1000 Friends of Oregon, said Portland’s public transit system needs to redirect the burden of cost away from everyday residents.

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It's time for another "rich people's" tax, Citizens!

Doom Loop intensifying

Excellent write up by someone who knows. Vote for anyone BUT DSA in D3 and D4.

Portland lost roughly 18,600 residents between 2019 and 2024 (a 2.8% decline). Despite fewer people to serve and tax, the city's nominal budget grew from $5.15 billion to $8.64 billion, a 67% nominal increase.

Even when we adjust that $5.15 billion for the high inflation of the past several years, the 2019 budget would only be about $6.44 billion in today's money. This means the city's budget grew by an additional $2.2 billion in real, inflation-adjusted spending.

Since the government is spending significantly more money per resident in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, have you experienced a proportional increase in the quality of city services and overall quality of life?

Sources:
1. https://www.portland.gov/policies/finance/budget/fin-186-fy-2018-19-annual-budget
2. https://www.portland.gov/council/documents/ordinance/passed/192070
3. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/portlandcityoregon

Don McKeever, who owns the impacted location, previously said he was considering closing the store due to issues like shoplifting, vandalism and the assault of employees. But Dunphy, one of three District 1 councilors representing East Portland, told KOIN 6 crime has declined in the area since the city started its new form of government.

“We’ve had much better response times from Portland police, and we’ve done a lot of public space activation, but unfortunately, corporate Grocery Outlet only… does a five-year look back and looks cumulatively over the last five years — which have been the worst five years of our city’s history,” Dunphy said. “So they were unwilling to compromise.”

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Interesting that Dunphy acknowledges that the last five years have been the worst in Portland's history.