Which then-Portland City Council candidate said in the November 2004 Oregon Voters' Pamphlet that he would "fight tax/fee increases?" Why, none other than now-Commissioner Sam Adams, who this week began floating local tax and fee increases as options to pay for road repairs in Portland. Adams, the city's commissioner in charge of transportation, says he's now considering new local taxes and fees because he tried—and failed—to get the Legislature to increase the state gas tax for those repairs. Says Adams: "I feel now I have no choice."

Will November 2008 ever get here? Last week, Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani rolled into town for a private fund-raiser. On Tuesday, June 26, Elizabeth Edwards takes her turn to tap Oregonians' political wallets. She'll be at a $75-per-person reception at the Benson Hotel for her husband, Democratic candidate John Edwards. In April, John Edwards placed second behind Republican Mitt Romney in presidential fund-raising for the first quarter in Oregon, raking in $60,000.

U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith may have to find somewhere else to get smokes and month-old hot dogs. According to convenience store-industry website Convenience Store News (csnews.com/csn/index.jsp), Plaid Pantry president Chris Girard is ticked at Smith for favoring increases in state and federal cigarette taxes. A June 13 letter to Smith from Girard states that he will "no longer support you either financially or personally." You can't expect support from death-dealing corporations and tax them. They think it's rude.

In a rare instance of the little guy defeating insurance companies (with help from the not-so-little Oregon Trial Lawyers Association), state legislators blasted a $25,000 cap on damages recoverable by victims of an auto accident in which a family member was driving (see "Relatively Dangerous," WW, March 7, 2007). Injured family members can now recover the full benefits established in the policy, according to the measure, which Gov. Ted Kulongoski is expected to sign. Sen. Brad Avakian (D-Northwest Portland) said in a statement that the bill, House Bill 3086, "provides fairness to families that is absent in current law."

The so-called "fixie solution" had the brakes slammed on it after Sen. Ginny Burdick (D-Portland) sent a bill back to committee and stripped it of language concerning fixed-gear bikes. The bill, Senate Bill 729, would have let brakeless bicycles cruise the streets of Oregon as long as they could stop within 15 feet going 10 mph. The bill sponsor, Sen. Jason Atkinson (R-Central Point), says people don't understand "how safe [fixed-gear, brakeless bikes] really are."

Powell's Books' "It's for Kids" Program has contributed nearly $500,000 over the past decade to Portland and Beaverton public schools. But store owner Michael Powell and the Oregon Education Association disagree on a proposal that would let the state's Common School Fund earn millions of dollars annually from gift cards that go unused for more than three years. Powell called legislators to express his opposition to Senate Bill 460, which would let the state treat the unused cards as unclaimed property. "If you buy a book and don't read it, it's still your book," he says by way of explanation. But Powell says he finds "amusing" any notion that he helped to sideline the bill, now languishing in committee. And he's unapologetic about opposing the OEA on the bill, saying that Powell's counts on revenue from unused gift cards—about 5 to 10 percent of those sold—for promoting and administering the cards.