By Steve Buckstien, Cascade Policy Institute In November, Beaverton, Gresham, Hillsboro, and Tigard, Oregon joined Vancouver, Washington in welcoming ridesharing juggernaut Uber to operate legally in their cities. Conspicuously absent from this list was the region’s largest city, Portland, which became virtually surrounded by the smartphone app transit economy. Then, […]

By Portland Business Alliance A coalition of business and civic leaders released the latest in a series of economic studies examining how the Portland-metro region is performing compared to the U.S. metro average and other comparable metro areas. The study shows that the Portland-metro region has gained back the jobs […]

By Jabob Grier, Portland Writer Cocktail consultant, magician, blogger. Liquidity Preference Blog The announcement of more normal diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba is welcome news for many reasons, but the one that seems to spring to mind for many is that Cuba’s most famous export, cigars, may […]

By Technology Association of Oregon. Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 was passed to the President for his signature. This is a comprehensive Act that has gotten broad industry and consumer advocacy support. The Bill and now the Act has been around for a while and it has been modified in […]

U.S. Chamber of Commerce The U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed strong opposition to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) re-issuing of its “ambush election” rule, which would impose sweeping changes to the process used to conduct union elections in the workplace. “It is a shame that the NLRB would expend […]

By State Senator Doug Whitsett, It is often said that bad ideas are never truly defeated in the legislative process; they simply remain dormant until being resurrected in a different form for a future Legislature to debate. House Bill 3436 is one of those very bad ideas. It was introduced […]

Nike sues three former designers for theft of intellectual property By Oregon Small Business Association Nike has sued three of its former top designers for $10 million for violating their non-compete agreements and stealing intellectual property. The three senior designers Denis Dekovic, Marc Dolce, and Mark Miner are accused of […]

Davis Dwight & Tremaine LLP Oregon business law firm A majority of the nation’s state and territorial Attorneys General have collectively urged the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission to revisit rules and policies in ways that would help law enforcement crack down on telemarketing practices. Recently, the FCC […]

By Josh Lehner Oregon Office of Economic Analysis Blog With wage growth starting to pick up in Oregon it can be useful to figure out where wages are growing. NPR has a nice graph showing industry growth nationwide and we have been asked if we had an analog for Oregon. […]

By John Charles, Cascade Policy Institute A new report released by Cascade Policy Institute suggests numerous ways state and local governments can lower the costs of public services through judicious, targeted use of “user fees,” rather than relying on general taxation. Resurrecting User Fees in Public Finance: A Prescription for […]