News Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith this evening introduces two versions of next year's budget. Both versions of the budget will include significant cuts owing to the $40 million decline in state revenue for PPS. But one budget—the one based on the possibility that voters will reject the local option levy in May—will make far deeper cuts. If the levy passes, PPS will have to ma...   More

News A proposal to strengthen independent oversight of water and sewer rates is circulating in Portland City Hall, but at least one city commissioner is deeply skeptical.
The proposal comes from Dave Johnson, a former member of the Portland Utility Review Board, the existing city-sanctioned volunteer panel that is supposed to offer independent oversight of Portland's water and sewer rates. PURB, the...   More

News Portland's volunteer-led Human Rights Commission has asked for more independence from City Hall.
The request comes amid changes at Portland's Office of Human Relations, which formed in 2008 under then-Mayor Tom Potter. It oversees the Human Rights Commission, which "advocates for and ta...   More

News Long before U.S. Rep. David Wu donned a tiger suit and emailed photographs of himself in the Halloween costume to staffers just days before the November 2010 electio...   More

News The Benson Polytechnic High School principal who played the awkward role of leading Benson even as his boss, Superintendent Carole Smith, worked to strip the career-focused school of many of its programs, will retire at the end of the school year.Now advocates for Benson are scrambling to make sure their voices are heard as Smith searches for Steve Olczak's replacement as the storied school's next...   More

News Portlanders for Schools, flush with cash for two campaigns to increase property taxes for schools, today launched two TV ads designed to provoke maximum sympathy for the multimillion-dollar measures. (Sidenote: The ...   More

News One part of Portland Public Schools' new two-year contract with its teachers union is supposed to save the financially starved district $4 million a year by increasing high-school teachers' workload.But that fea...   More

News In a carefully worded email to supporters late Sunday night, state Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian obliquely announced he will challenge U.S. Rep. David Wu in the 2012 Democratic primary for Oregon's 1st Congressional District."Over the past several months, I've heard from many leaders and citizens asking me to consider running for Congress - to give Northwest Oregon the tough, effective leader...   More

News Commissioner Amanda Fritz announced this morning she will seek a second term next year on Portland's City Council even though Portlanders voted last November to kill public-campaign finance, a cornerstone of Fritz's previous bids to win a council seat.Fritz, a former psychiatric nurse, will make her formal declaration at a lunchtime panel at the Oregon Nurses Association's statewide convention tod...   More

News The campaign committee supporting the two Portland Public Schools tax measures on the May 17 ballot has raised at least $1 million to urge passage of the large levies, a consultant for the campaign announced yesterday.Online election records f...   More