Murmurs: Momentum Builds for Vaccine Mandate

MOMENTUM BUILDS FOR VACCINE MANDATE: The health care giant Kaiser Permanente announced Aug. 2 it will require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19—including its 13,500 employees in Oregon, where a 1989 law exempts health care workers from employers’ vaccine mandates. Nonetheless, Kaiser is proceeding. “We will act to apply the vaccination requirement in the Northwest region,” reads an email from Jeff Collins, Kaiser’s Northwest president. “We are taking steps, including working with the Oregon Health Authority and the governor, to support vaccination to the fullest extent permitted by law and any future guidance.” What that means: Beginning Aug. 23, unvaccinated workers will be required to be tested twice a week. Under a policy that allows religious and medical exemptions, the “target date” for workers to become fully vaccinated is Sept. 30. Pressure on Gov. Kate Brown, including from the Kaiser announcement and the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems’ push for employer mandates, has been building. State Reps. Lisa Reynolds and Maxine Dexter, both doctors and Democrats from Portland, have publicly endorsed changing the law to allow health care employers to mandate vaccines. And last week, the politically powerful long-term care industry group, the Oregon Health Care Association, came out in favor of changing the law. Multiple sources say they expect an announcement from the governor as soon as Aug. 4, though it’s not clear what she will decide.

BURGERVILLE CLOSES SHOP IN LENTS: Yearlong tensions over homelessness and policing in the Lents neighborhood took a surprising turn Aug. 3, when fast food chain Burgerville announced it would temporarily close its restaurant at Southeast 92nd Avenue and Powell Boulevard. The company cited employee concerns about increasing vandalism and crime around the storefront. Burgerville CEO Jill Taylor said in a statement, “While it saddens me to temporarily close this Burgerville, I will always put the safety and security of our employees first.” A company spokesperson told WW: “The environment around the restaurant has deteriorated seriously. Police are now being called daily. Burgerville employees have found weapons, drug paraphernalia, and human waste on the property.” No police reports have been filed about any of the incidents, according to the spokesperson.

CEO RESIGNS FROM HOMELESS BOARD: Cindy Adams, CEO of United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, abruptly resigned from the executive board of A Home for Everyone on July 25, saying in an email to agency director Marc Jolin she felt “unable to have an impact in the current governance structure.” Adams was one of just three private-sector representatives on the eight-member board, which oversees Multnomah County’s spending on homelessness. Adams provided feedback in an April board survey that nodded to tensions around the county’s allocation of funds from its share of a 10-year, $2.5 billion supportive housing services measure. In that survey, she said A Home for Everyone’s board was dysfunctional and needed to “maintain a sense of urgency, and hold ourselves accountable to the public.” In an email to Adams, Jolin expressed surprise and regret at her resignation, while acknowledging that Adams’ concerns were “consistent in many respects with what we’ve heard in other discussions.” In a statement, Adams said United Way will continue to work with the county on homeless issues. “I was honored to serve on AHFE’s executive committee,” Adams said. “A key takeaway for me is we also need to make investments in innovative ideas and approaches to address our housing crisis.”

PRESCHOOL STRUGGLES TO FIND NEW HOME: The city’s largest preschool, threatened with eviction from a Southeast Portland church amid a shortage of early child care providers citywide, says it now has half a new home. Executive director Crystal Gwyn wrote to parents July 16 that Childswork Learning Center would operate on two different campuses beginning in the fall. One of those locations has come through—the Harmony Montessori School building near Interstate 205—but the other one, Gwyn tells WW, is now uncertain. Childswork was set to move into three classrooms at Portland Community College’s Southeast campus, but Gwyn says the property manager told her on July 24 that HVAC upgrades were needed first. Gwyn says this uncertainty about having adequate space for students is “absolutely what preschool providers are facing all over the city.” PCC spokesperson James Hill tells WW that “PCC is working on a contract with Childswork and does not expect to have the facility ready for them until [Sept. 27]. In the meantime, the HVAC systems across the college are currently being tested, balanced and certified in preparation for safe in-person operations for the new academic year.”