By Cascade Policy Institute, Portland City Council is focusing on making it easier to build outdoor homeless shelters. This raises the question: Why not set permanent housing free? Adopting Portland’s Shelter to Housing Continuum Project would remove design review requirements from outdoor shelters. Design review is the process by which […]

By Oregon Small Business Association, The vacancy rate in Portland’s central business district hit 19.4 percent during the first quarter of 2021, while the city’s overall vacancy is 14.7 percent. But real estate officials expressed optimism for improvement in the next year or two—especially when compared with the decline of […]

Oregon Attorney General Press Release, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum today announced a crack-down on deceptive prize promotions run by car dealerships. The sweeping statewide investigation ended in settlements with four different car dealerships for sending misleading mailers and scratch-off tickets that made customers think they had won a prize. […]

By Josh Goldberg & Gabrielle Hansen Barran Liebman LLP Oregon law firm, Employers take note, on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order raising the minimum hourly wage for federal contractors and subcontractors to $15.00 and tying future automatic increases to the Consumer Price Index. President Obama […]

By National Retail Federation, Retailers filed a lawsuit today seeking to have the Federal Reserve lower its 10-year-old cap on “swipe” fees banks charge to process debit card transactions, saying the agency wrongly applied federal law and that merchants have paid billions of dollars more than intended by Congress while […]

Oregon Business and Industry, OBI Responds to Latest Round of Business Closures We absolutely share the governor’s concern about rising COVID cases and hospitalizations across Oregon. The end of this pandemic is in sight, and all of us need to continue practicing safety measures, including getting fully vaccinated, so we […]

By NFIB, Reaction to Latest Shutdown Order Business closures unfairly punish those already negatively impacted by the pandemic SALEM, Ore., April 27, 2021—From Anthony Smith, Oregon state director for NFIB, the state’s largest small-business association, on Gov. Kate Brown’s announcement today, moving 15 of the state’s 36 counties back into […]

By Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association, The Oregon House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to move forward with bipartisan legislation which would provide millions in unemployment insurance tax relief for some of Oregon’s hardest hit industries. House Bill 3389 passed the Oregon House and will now move to the Senate for […]

By Barran Liebman LLP Oregon law firm, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently issued guidance on when employers need to record adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines. OSHA’s guidance indicates adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine are recordable on the OSHA recordkeeping log if it is: Work-related; A new […]

By NFIB, The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization, issued the following statement regarding a new report that finds that repealing the stepped-up basis tax provision could significantly decrease job creation and hurt America’s small business owners. “As this study shows, repealing the […]