Mike sits down with Curtis Robinhold to unpack the Oregon Prosperity Council’s just-released report: 66 listening sessions, 25 communities, 400+ pages, and a mandate to figure out why Oregon’s business climate isn’t competitive — and what to do about it.

About Curtis Robinhold

Curtis Robinhold is the Executive Director of the Port of Portland, where he’s overseen major projects including the newly completed PDX airport terminal. Earlier in his career, he worked in BP’s renewable energy business in Europe and served as chief of staff to Governor John Kitzhaber. This spring, Governor Kotek tapped him to co-chair the Oregon Prosperity Council alongside former Intel president Renee James, leading a six-month, statewide effort to diagnose what’s holding back Oregon’s economic competitiveness and chart a path forward. He’s also an award-winning environmentalist, a longtime soccer fan who’s lived in Germany and London, and the youngest of three brothers.

In this episode

• Curtis’s path from Eugene to BP’s renewable energy business overseas, to John Kitzhaber’s chief of staff, to nearly a decade running the Port of Portland (and overseeing the newly finished airport terminal)

• How the Prosperity Council came together with co-chair Renee James (former Intel president) and why they deliberately stayed narrow in scope

• The bad news: Oregon ranks 49th in job growth, has a tax burden that surprises people once you look at the data, and a permitting/regulatory environment that businesses say is harder to navigate than neighboring blue states

• The “spaghetti” of Oregon’s workforce development system — and why community college credits don’t even transfer between community colleges

• Real stories from the road: Hill Meats in Pendleton, Salt & Straw’s Kim Malik on why she’s not expanding in Oregon, and Fort George Brewing’s infrastructure struggles in Astoria

• The land use debate — Senate Bill 100 at 55+ years old, and whether it’s time for a “grown-up conversation” about adjustments

• A Hamiltonian-vs-Jeffersonian detour on centralized power, abundance politics, and why big public projects (like the airport) get done when insulated from election cycles

• Cap-and-invest, statutory vs. rules-based climate policy, and why Curtis thinks it’s time for the legislature to act instead of the executive branch

• Oregon’s real strengths: food and beverage, athletic apparel, mass timber, semiconductors — and the “second paycheck” of quality of life

• Rapid-fire World Cup predictions: France over Argentina in the final, Mexico over England in the quarters (whoops!), and strong opinions on Pilsners

Where to find the full report: Oregon Prosperity Council recommendations, released end of June 2026.

Mayor Wilson sent out a letter doubling down on the city’s $120 million pledge and going after the councilors and critics who’ve raised concerns about the deal. Less than two hours later, Multnomah County held its first public hearing on its own $100 million-plus ask — and commissioners spent most of it asking a questions to nobody because Representatives from Dundon and the Blazers couldn’t be bothered to show up. It’s NBA lottery night after all!

Preamble before my reaction: I want the Blazers to stay. I’m willing to support spending public money to make that happen. But the price tag is closing in on a billion dollars, for a team a ne’er-do-well billionaire just bought for $4.25 billion, and three things from Tuesday tell me the people pushing this deal don’t think it can survive public scrutiny.

1. Dundon is treating elected officials as an obstacle to manage, not a partner to convince. He's headlining the Chamber event the day after skipping the county meeting where actual accountability questions were on the table. That's not a scheduling accident — it's a strategy of applying donor-class pressure on commissioners rather than answering Singleton's, Moyer’s and Brim-Edwards' direct questions. You don't avoid the room with the hard questions if you think your case can survive them.

2. The information asymmetry is the real scandal, not Krolewicz’s presence. The only published numbers on this nearly billion-dollar deal come from a volunteer with no government access, while the city, county, state and team — the parties with the actual financial models — have offered nothing comparable. Wilson’s energy should go into rebutting Krolewicz’s analysis if it’s wrong, not attacking him for filling a vacuum nobody else would fill.

3. Personal attacks on a critic are a tell, not a rebuttal. When an elected official with a strong factual position gets challenged, the move is to show the math. Wilson reaching for “Brooklyn-based tech bro” instead of “here’s why his numbers are wrong” suggests he doesn’t have a confident answer to the substance — and it’s beneath the office regardless.

Here’s where I land: if the case for this deal is good, somebody please make it, with numbers, in public, to the people asking. Sell it. Show us what we’re missing. Lead - don’t lash out at people who are honestly skeptical or who are asking the same questions we would expect of them for any deal of this magnitude.

(Source: Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, The Oregonian, “Portland mayor lambasts critics of Moda Center deal as county questions investment.”)

One thing I’ve noticed happening on social media is the proliferation of people essentially regurgitating other outlets’ reporting and giving you their take on it. And honestly, I kind of like it — it’s a quick way for me to consume a news story, and someone else giving me their immediate reaction helps me reflect quickly on how it might impact me or things I’m interested in. We all have those friends or trusted interlocutors whose opinions and takes help us make sense of something more quickly, and who sometimes bring out aspects of a story that we ourselves might gloss over. I see this happening nationally all the time, but not locally. So here’s my attempt at being that person for you: I’ll read a story and give you my immediate reaction. They might not always be well thought out reactions, and I reserve the right to change my opinion or understanding as I go throughout my day and interact with other people who may see it differently. But what I hope to accomplish is spending a little more time on a local story you might have otherwise breezed past, or thinking a bit harder about how it might impact you or your community. So, let’s see!

This week’s pick: a KGW/KPTV report on the Clackamas County DA’s Office clearing sheriff’s deputies of criminal negligence in the in-custody death of 47-year-old Gerlinde Spring Lynch, who died in February shortly after being booked into the Clackamas County Jail.

The story: Lynch was arrested twice in one day — first for trespassing and uprooting plants, then hours later for a disturbance at a fast-food drive-thru where she was incoherent, covered in soil and leaves, and resisting officers. After a struggle to remove her from the patrol car and place her in a restraint chair, she became unresponsive during booking and was pronounced dead about an hour after arriving at the jail. The DA’s office concluded her death resulted from a “perfect storm” of methamphetamine toxicity, physical restraint, obesity, and cardiovascular disease — insufficient to meet the bar for criminal negligence. Notably, Lynch had been released from prison just days earlier after serving a two-year sentence for first-degree criminal mischief.

My reactions: I won’t second-guess the DA’s call without seeing the evidence myself, but three bigger-picture issues jumped out at me:

1. How often people in mental health crisis die after contact with the justice system,

2. The double standard where prison’s high recidivism rate never gets called a “failure” the way treatment court setbacks do, and

3. The conflict of interest in having the sheriff’s office investigate its own deputies — which is why I think independent review agencies, like Washington state’s, are worth pursuing.

Here’s the article I read, so you can read for yourself if you’d like. If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments.

Source: KGW.com – DA: No criminal negligence in death of woman at Clackamas County Jail

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This is the rebuttal.

City Councilor Angelita Morillo — First term District 3 representative and proud DSA member, comes into studio to respond. She doesn’t just push back on the argument. She makes her case, point by point, with data, personal experience, and insight into the day to day of actually doing the work.

This is our Season 2 finale. And if you’ve been with us from the beginning, thank you. More on that below.

About Councilor Morillo

Angelita Morillo represents District 3 on the Portland City Council. Born in Paraguay, she came to the U.S. at age four, moved to Portland in seventh grade after her mom Googled “what’s the rainiest state,” graduated from Lincoln High School, and earned her degree from PSU. Before running for office, she worked in Commissioner Hardesty’s office doing constituent services and tribal liaison work — which is where she first saw how disconnected people were from the systems meant to serve them. She built the PNW Policy Angel platform on TikTok and Instagram to close that gap. She joined the DSA after taking office. On purpose. In public.

In her first term, she passed Portland’s first ban on rent-setting algorithms, expanded Portland Street Response as a co-equal first responder, passed the city’s first-of-its-kind fee on ICE detention facilities, is a fierce proponent of social housing, and co-authored the city’s data and privacy ordinance. She’s running for re-election in November.

What We Cover

• How Portland’s affordability crisis tracks directly with the homelessness crisis — and why the “back to basics” conversation has to start there

• The origin of the PNW Policy Angel account and why she built it

• Democratic socialism: movement, moment, or both?

• NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “sewer socialism,” and why Jon Isaacs calling him “just a good politician” doesn’t hold up

• The tax flight myth — and why the data from Multnomah County, and 45 million national tax records tells a different story

• Mike’s parallel story: Jordan Schnitzer at the Arlington Club, a bowl of soup, and the demand that he hire auditors off a handpicked list

• Why the Metro Chamber isn’t actually pro-free-market

• The social housing fund fight during the budget cycle — an attempted Albina district compromise that could have made everyone a winner, and why it failed

• Charter reform, the “mod squad,” and the case that what looks like dysfunction is actually democracy working more transparently than it ever has

• What it means to carry your passport as a naturalized citizen right now — and why she’s not going anywhere

• Her re-election campaign and how Portland’s small donor match system works

Season 2 Milestones

One year. Two seasons. 25 episodes. Over 100 Substack subscribers in the last five months. Our first episode to crack 1,000 downloads. None of that happens without you. Thank you for making this show worth making.

Season 3 is coming. We’ll be up on video! Guests and topics are already being lined up. Stay subscribed — announcements are on the way.

If you have ideas for guests or shows in season 3 - send them our way. Some of our best shows have come from your ideas!

Support Councilor Morillo’s Re-Election

Morillo is running for re-election in District 3 this November. Portland’s small donor elections program matches the first $25 of any donation 10-to-1. Regular people, competing with big money. That’s the point.

👉 Angelita For PDX Campaign Link

Follow Councilor Morillo on Instagram and Tik Tok

📱 @PNWPolicyAngel / @CouncilorAngelitaMorillo

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Ryan Haas spent more than 20 years in journalism, including 12 years at Oregon Public Broadcasting, where he served as Managing Editor of News. Last year, he left OPB after watching what he describes as a broader pullback from ambitious, investigative reporting — a pattern he sees playing out across institutional media. He and his co-founder Leah Sottile launched The Western Edge, a reader-supported investigative outlet focused on the communities — rural, small, and underserved — that legacy media has all but abandoned.

In just a few months, they’ve already broken news no one else was touching, including a deeply reported story on worker deaths at Amazon’s Troutdale fulfillment facility.

Mike and Ryan get into all of it:

• Why Ryan left OPB — and what the slow retreat from investigative journalism looks like from the inside

• The Western Edge’s mission — bringing long-form, narrative investigative journalism to communities outside Portland that have been left in a media desert

• The Amazon story — what it took to report it, why long form investigative journalism is not at risk of being replaced by AI - and the depth of nuance that actually communicates more than “just the facts”

• What Mike saw as DA — salacious headlines with the more mundane story hidden behind the paywall, editors promising cover stories for take down quotes from sources, and the real-world policy consequences of gotcha journalism on our public institutions

• The “right to clean information” framework — why Mike argues that the same logic behind clean air and clean water standards should apply to the information ecosystem

• Solutions worth taking seriously — an organic certification model for trusted journalism outlets, a bar-like licensing framework for journalists, media vouchers, and Ryan’s proposal for an AmeriCorps for journalism

• AI and the threat to accountability reporting — including the Peter Thiel-funded “Objection AI” tool being used to discredit independent journalists

• What media literacy actually requires — and why the collapse of local news isn’t a left or right problem - it impacts us all

Ryan’s closing line says it all: Scroll less, savor more.

Subscribe to The Western Edge at thewesternedge.media. Reader support is how investigative journalism survives.

And if you enjoyed this show, subscribe and follow for more, tell a friend, share it on social media. Help us get the word out so more people can consider and engage with the issues that Portland is talking about.

A year ago this week — May 14th — the first episode of The Schmidt Show dropped.

The premise was simple, maybe even a little defiant: take a political campaign designed to stoke fear in voters and fear in politicians, while denigrating the city we love and flip it. Build something that celebrated the good people and the real stories that make Portland a …

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Let’s start th…

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Marisa Lysinger is the host of Vendor Besties — a show for event industry professionals that is equal parts business school and chaos therapy. Four event vendors, zero filters, and enough horror stories to keep you from ever ghosting your caterer again.

Michael Jonas is the host of All American Why — a show about why things in America don’t work, tackled one episode at a time. Think civic deep dive meets Seinfeld dinner table. Michael is also a business and nonprofit attorney over at Narwhal Law.

We talked about how each of us got into podcasting, what it actually takes to make a show, and why the progressive side of the media landscape keeps leaving points on the board. Plus — legal tip (not actual legal advice) of the episode — stop using the word “deposit” in your vendor contracts. Marisa said it, Michael confirmed it. Use “non-refundable retainer.” You’re welcome.

Local Podcast Shoutouts:

• 🎙️ The Apprenticeship Way with Mark Schelsky — Gen X energy, great for people who haven’t written off God but aren’t thrilled with how he’s being represented lately

• 🎙️ News With My Fiancée — DJ Ambush and Morgan Jones doing news, pop culture, and hot takes. Somewhere in their archives are the lost Schmidt-Krasner tapes. Release them.

• 🎙️ Progress Portland — Kip Silverman and Kat Mahoney doing the long-form local politics work that voter guides can’t

• 🎙️ Portland for All — Not a podcast - but honorable mention for organizing people who thought Portland’s progressive values were self-sustaining. They’re not. Go find them.

Dream guests: Marisa wants Danielle Rothweiler (East Coast wedding planner, threads legend). Michael wants Zoran Mandami. I want Ron Funches. If any of you are listening — you know where to find us.

Bonus content: I took my kids to Darlingtonia State Natural Site on the Oregon coast over spring break. It is one of the largest carnivorous bogs in the country. It eats insects. The boardwalk is fine. Do not fall in.

Find our guests:

• Vendor Besties: wherever you listen to podcasts

• All American Why: wherever you listen to podcasts

• Marisa Lysinger / Century Decor Studios

• Michael Jonas / Narwhal Law

Some fights you don’t choose. They choose you.

On March 19th, 2026, a New York Times investigation alleged that Cesar Chavez had sexually abused girls in the farm worker movement and assaulted Dolores Huerta, his own partner in the struggle. For Portland’s Latino community that had fought a multi year battle to rename a street in his honor — a community that pushed through the racist attacks, broken promises, and a brutal bureaucratic process — the news landed like a gut punch.

And almost before they could process it, elected leaders were calling for the street renamed - to come down.

This episode is about what happens next.

Today I sit down with Marta Guembas and former Portland Mayor Tom Potter, two people who understand in their bones what it means when a community has to fight just to be seen. Marta was co-chair of the original Cesar Chavez Boulevard campaign. Mayor Potter shepherded that effort through a bruising, years-long political battle beginning in 2007. Together, we dig into the history that most Portlanders don’t know — the false starts, the broken promises, the commissioner who changed his vote, and the three years of pain it took to turn 39th Avenue into Cesar Chavez Boulevard in 2010.

And then we talk about how the original committee has been forced out of retirement to organize once more: to come back to the arena, tired and grieving, and how they found something extraordinary in the hard work of separating an icon from an ugly truth. A new name. Campesinos Boulevard. Not a name that can be taken back. A name that honors not the man but the movement — the farm workers, the families, the hands in the fields and the voices in the streets who built everything.

Mayor Potter put it simply: when he heard it, he thought it was brilliant. So did I.

In this episode:

• Marta describes the moment she realized the NYT report was true — and the deeply personal process of taking down a framed portrait of Chavez she’d kept for years, eventually cutting it into 39 pieces

• Mayor Potter reflects on navigating the original renaming battle and what he’d tell today’s city council

• Why the community felt immediate calls to rename the street were disrespectful — and what they needed instead

• The story behind Campesinos — and why it may be the first street in the United States named for farm workers collectively

• Which local organizations have already come forward in support, and how you can too.

Take action. This one matters.

The community has spoken. Now it’s Portland’s turn.

📖 Read the full story — OPB’s deep dive on the renaming effort and the community behind it: Portlanders consider the future of Cesar Chavez Boulevard

📞 Call your City Council representative and the Mayor’s office. Tell them you support a swift, dignified resolution — one that honors a community that has already waited long enough and fought hard enough to be seen by this city.

✍️ Support Por La Causa and their petition to rename the street Campesinos Boulevard. This effort is being led by community members, not politicians — exactly as it should be.

Enjoying the show?

We are so close to hitting 100 Substack subscribers — and when we get there, we are planning something special to celebrate. If you’ve been on the fence, now is the time. Subscribe at Substack, like the episode, follow the show, and tell someone else about it. This kind of storytelling only reaches as far as the people willing to pass it along.

As always — keep showing up for Portland. 🌹

To the twelve of you who have become paying subscribers on Substack—not for perks, just out of generosity—I appreciate it more than you probably realize. I’m not sure this quite qualifies as a “benefit,” but I hope you’ll get something out of it… or at least help keep me accountable.

I’ve always meant to keep a journal and never quite stuck with it. So here’s the experiment: once a week, I’ll pick a moment from the past few days and turn it into a journal entry. To make it a little more interesting (for me, at least), I’ll dictate the entry and have AI render it in the voice of a writer I admire.

Tonight’s entry is in the style of William Styron, whose Sophie’s Choice was one of the first books that made me care as much about the prose as the story itself.

These entries will live behind the paywall—so this really is just for a small group. If you find it interesting, or even just mildly entertaining, let me know.

My souvenir - Governor Barbara Roberts signed this photo taken several years ago.

April 28, 2026

There are evenings that arrive without particular fanfare and yet manage, in the slow accumulation of their hours, to deposit something lasting in the sediment of one’s memory. Tonight was such an evening. Eddie Passadore, with the easy generosity that defines him, had opened his home for a fundraiser, and it was there — in the warm, crowded geography of that living room — that I found myself seated beside Barbara Roberts, the former Governor of Oregon, who is eighty-nine years old and who carries those years the way certain old trees carry their rings: not as burden, but as evidence.

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Two guys with a website and zero budget noticed — and built a case that’s now showing up on KGW and landing in city council chambers.

Jonathan Pulvers is a lifelong Portlander, hardcore Blazers fan, and co-creator of RipCityNotRipOff.com. We sat down the day of Game 3 — Jonathan was taking his six-year-old to the nosebleeds — to dig into whether Portland is on the verge of the worst arena deal in NBA history.

What we get into:

• The relocation threat is a bluff. The NBA just expanded to Las Vegas and Seattle. There’s nowhere to go — and the math doesn’t work anyway. Dundon would face a $400M relocation fee, hundreds of millions in litigation, and would walk away from whatever subsidy he’s already been promised.

• The real price tag is $1 billion. State bonds + City of Portland’s $400M + Multnomah County’s $88M. Dundon’s contribution: zero. No rent, no naming rights, no private capital.

• Nobody knows where $600M came from. The Blazers’ own consultants produced the number. No independent review. Comparable renovations have run $150–200M.

• The love bomb era that wasn’t. Two weeks in: no playoff t-shirts, the team masseuse had no hotel room, two-way players were left home, and staff waited in lobbies because checkout had to happen by 12:30 PM. What happened to dinner and a drink first?

• Co-owner Mark Saar runs Blue Owl Capital, which recently sold a warehouse in Pennsylvania to ICE. Reported in the New York Times. Portlanders can weigh that.

• What a real deal should look like: $150M+ private capital contribution, 30-year lease, meaningful relocation penalties, PILOT payments, naming rights revenue share, free TriMet to the games, street pricing, community benefits, and labor standards. All of it exists in other NBA deals. Portland is the only city being asked to give everything and get nothing back.

We close with a live round of Would Dundon Cut It? — the game show built for this episode.

Find Jonathan: ripcitynotripoff.com · @RipCityNotRipOff on Bluesky · Reddit

Pro-deal? The invitation is open — come make the case.

Enjoying the show? Subscribe on Substack and consider chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the mics on and the conversation independent.

Subscribe now

A personal note from Mike:

This episode was taped just hours before our heartbreaking Game 3 loss — and I have to give Jonathan credit for nearly nailing the exact final score.

I’m posting this having just come home from Game 4, which was its own kind of heartbreak. Things looked so good in the first half. And then the better team showed up in the second half and reminded us where we are in this rebuild. That’s okay. It stings the way playoff losses are supposed to sting — but underneath it, there’s something genuinely impressive about what this team just did. They overperformed. They fought. And the future, assuming it doesn’t get squandered, is looking bright for this young squad.

Also — Wemby is just unreal. I don’t know what else to say about that.

Photo credit: me. I was there. I hope you enjoy some of the shots.

Buckle up - this is a conversation that will have you cheering, jeering or both! Portland is at an inflection point — economically, politically, and on the streets. This week on SchmidtShow PDX, we talk to two guests with very different vantage points on the city’s challenges: a seasoned political strategist now advocating for Portland’s business community, and a frontline service provider working to restore basic dignity to people living without shelter.

Jon Isaacs — Executive Vice President of Public Affairs, Portland Metro Chamber

Jon Isaacs has spent 30 years in Oregon politics — from the state Senate Democratic minority caucus to Jeff Merkley’s 2008 Senate campaign to his current role as VP of Public Affairs at the Portland Metro Chamber. He’s watched extremes take over parties and watched the backlash follow. He’s here to say he sees it happening again — and Portland should be paying attention.

Mike and Jon cover a lot of ground: the new city government’s structural flaws, the DSA’s national platform and what it means for Portland, the Chamber’s actual role in the region, and whether Portland can square its progressive values with the reality of a three-year recession. They also rip baseball cards live on air.

What We Cover

The Backlash Thesis. Jon watched Oregon Republicans implode under their own extremism in the late 90s and helped engineer the Democratic takeover that followed. He sees the same ingredients forming now — and argues the backlash isn’t just likely, it’s predictable and we should be worried.

An Unlikely Alliance that Worked. Mike had the plan, Jon made the calls, and together with then-Councilor Rene Gonzalez — someone Mike agreed with on almost nothing — they built a coalition that dropped Portland’s vehicle theft rate from third in the nation to its lowest since 2012. Sometimes unlikely alliances are what it takes to get things done.

Portland’s New Government. Twelve seats, no mayoral veto, a never-before-tried combination of ranked choice voting and multi-member districts, implemented in a year. Jon calls it a design disaster — built less around good governance than around producing predetermined political outcomes.

The DSA’s Actual Platform. Jon walks through the national DSA agenda — including the chair’s plenary on abolishing the traditional family as a “gateway to capitalism” and calls to defund CPS — and argues that if Portlanders understood it fully, many would be alarmed. His case is economic as much as cultural: Portland needs families and in-migration, and Jon claims that the DSA’s national goals run directly counter to that.

The Revenue Math. Half of Portland’s city revenues and half of Multnomah County’s revenues come from business income taxes. If you want government to fund progressive priorities, you need thriving businesses. According to Jon, that’s not ideology — it’s arithmetic.

The two things the Chamber says need to happen to achieve a prosperous and progressive Portland. Two things: restructure Oregon’s tax system toward a broad-based low-rate consumption tax that actually funds the basics, and shift housing policy from spending to incentivizing private investment. Carrots, not sticks.

📊 Read the Metro Chamber’s State of the Economy Report: portlandmetrochamber.com

Dr. Sandra Comstock — Hygiene for All (H4A)

Hygiene for All operates a hygiene and health hub under the Morrison Bridge, where community joy, connection, and access to basic services are the foundation of their model. By providing hygiene facilities and health services, they work to address both the civic and public health dimensions of Portland’s homelessness crisis. hygiene4all

We talk with Dr. Comstock about:

• Hygiene for All’s mission and the essential services they provide to Portland’s unsheltered community

• The recent fires and setbacks that have disrupted their operations — and what that means for the vulnerable people they serve

• A direct call to action: H4A needs your financial support right now to restore hygiene services. Please donate. And if you have time, volunteer — from offsite inventory and laundry support to onsite service — many hands make light work. hygiene4all

• The deeper question: after three consecutive Portland mayors making homelessness their signature priority, why does a durable solution still feel out of reach? What are we missing?

🚿 Donate or volunteer with Hygiene for All: h4apdx.org/join-us

Support the Show

SchmidtShow PDX is independent, community-funded civic commentary. If you find value in these conversations, here’s how you can help keep them going:

• ⭐ Subscribe wherever you listen

• 👍 Like and share this episode with someone who cares about Portland

• 💬 Leave a comment — we read them

• 💵 Become a financial supporter if you’re able — every contribution makes a real difference

  Schmidt Show PDX is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week I sat down with Marina Kaminsky, Research Director at the North Star Civic Foundation, to get past the political spin and into the real numbers. Marina has spent years researching Oregon’s fiscal health — what local governments owe, what they collect, and what happens to communities when the math doesn’t add up. She brought receipts.

Here’s what we covered:

The 59th percentile. When you account for the full picture — income taxes, property taxes, utility charges, fees, and the fact that Oregon has no sales tax — Portlanders land in the 59th percentile for total tax burden compared to 150 similarly sized cities. That puts Portland around 80th on that list. Not first. Not worst. Solidly in the middle. That stat comes from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and it’s post-Preschool for All and Supportive Housing Services. If someone’s telling you a different story, ask them what they’re leaving out.

The income tax nuance. Yes, Oregon taxes people in the $4,000–$70,000 income range at one of the highest rates in the country for income taxes alone. But Minnesota charges a comparable income tax rate and a 6% sales tax on top of it. When you look at total state tax burden, Oregon’s no-sales-tax policy changes the picture significantly — especially for working families who spend most of what they earn.

The migration question. New research from Reed College economist Professor John Roarke tried to isolate the impact of Preschool for All on high-income migration. The findings: some high earners have left the county. But the data is noisy — PFA launched in the middle of a pandemic, a homelessness crisis, and racial justice protests. Separating the tax signal from all that other noise is genuinely hard. The immigration numbers into the county have held steady.

What the surveys don’t yet show. Marina’s team at North Star is launching a public survey in mid-April to understand how Portlanders actually perceive their tax burden, the quality of services they receive, and their appetite for future investment. The data doesn’t exist yet — and that’s exactly why this survey matters.

👉 Take the survey here

The cost of cutting. Rising PERS obligations are squeezing budgets statewide — this isn’t only a Portland problem or even just an Oregon problem. Public employee retirement promises made in the 1980s and 90s, premised on investment returns that never materialized, are now coming due everywhere. Understanding that context matters before blaming current elected officials for budget pressure that was baked in decades ago.

The bottom line: Be skeptical of anyone who gives you a one-number answer to a complicated question. Oregon’s tax system is a full basket — income taxes, property taxes, utility fees, charges, and the absence of a sales tax. When someone pulls out a single rate and says we’re the worst in the country, ask them what they’re not showing you. And when you hear that taxes should be cut, ask what services disappear with them — because that cost is just as real, even if it doesn’t show up on a balance sheet.

Links & Resources

• Portland 2026: Your City, Your Choice Survey

• North Star Civic Foundation: northstarcivic.org

• Our Next 20 (Oregon fiscal health research): ournext20.org

• Stumptown Stats (civic data dashboard): stumptownstats.org

• Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (city tax comparison data): lincolninst.edu

• Episode sponsor: theliferecording.com

Found this useful? Share it with a friend! That’s how we build an informed city.

Subscribe for free to SchmidtShow PDX on Substack. Or consider signing up to support the show with $5/month or $50/year - your financial support keeps the lights on — the studio, the software, and the prep that makes every episode worth your time. Shoutout to Anthony and Adrian, our two newest paying subscribers!

Whether you’ve experienced Oregon’s criminal justice system firsthand, worked inside it, or just watched it from the outside wondering how any of it actually works — this episode is for you.

This week on the SchmidtShow PDX, I sat down with Professor Aliza Kaplan — Director of the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic at Lewis & Clark Law School, co-founder of the Oregon Innocence Project, and one of the most consequential criminal justice voices in this state — to dig into a system under serious strain. We’re talking about a constitutional crisis, judicial races in a primary most voters will skip, and a local power struggle that raises some uncomfortable questions about who’s really in charge of justice in Multnomah County.

We covered a lot of ground. And I want to give you the full picture before you listen, because this stuff matters — and it’s more connected than it might look at first glance.

The Right to a Lawyer. It’s Not Optional.

In February of this year, the Oregon Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling in State v. Roberts. The holding was simple: if the state fails to provide you with a court-appointed attorney within 60 days on a misdemeanor or 90 days on a felony, your charges must be dismissed.

The case traces back to a Multnomah County man named Allen Rex Roberts, charged with driving a stolen vehicle in 2021. His case was dismissed in 2022 — no public defender available. Prosecutors refiled in 2024. Dismissed again — still no lawyer. The Supreme Court said, plainly: this is a constitutional violation. Oregon violated his right to counsel.

The fallout from the ruling was enormous. More than 1,465 criminal cases statewide became eligible for dismissal. Over 900 of them were here in Multnomah County. The charges weren’t all minor — drug trafficking, weapons offenses, felony DUII, strangulation. By late February, the DA’s office had reviewed roughly 772 cases and dismissed 623 of them.

Here’s what I want you to sit with: prosecutors have known about this crisis for years. They’ve watched the unrepresented docket grow. They’ve continued filing cases — bragging very recently in fact, about how many cases they charge — while fully aware that a significant percentage of those defendants had no lawyer waiting for them. You don’t get to hold the fire extinguisher behind your back and then cry fire in the theater. The Supreme Court didn’t create this problem. They just said Oregon can no longer pretend it’s acceptable.

The Legislature passed a $707 million public defense budget in 2025 — a nearly 15% increase, 180 new positions. And still, as of the Roberts ruling, roughly 2,500 Oregonians charged with crimes had no attorney. That’s a system failure with a lot of authors. Prosecutors are among them.

Aliza has been watching this up close — through the lens of her clinic, her clients, and her years fighting for a fairer system. She helped build the Community Law Division at Metropolitan Public Defender. She knows what it looks like when the system works, and she knows what it looks like when powerful actors let it fail. I wanted her perspective on what the ruling means for real people, and what a real solution requires.

Judicial Races. Please Pay Attention.

Oregon’s May 19, 2026 Primary includes judicial races. And I know — I know — many people will skip the primary elections altogether - or that when they get to the judicial section of their ballot, they either skip it or flip a coin.

Please don’t do that this year.

Judges decide what evidence a jury hears. They shape the culture of a courthouse — how defendants are treated, how victims are heard, how the law is actually applied day to day. These races matter. They’re just really hard to vote on because candidates are limited in what they can say publicly.

Aliza walks us through how to think about judicial candidates — what to look for, what questions to ask, and why judicial independence is not an abstract concept right now. It’s being tested in real time, right here in Portland.

The Standoff Brewing

Here’s the story I think deserves more attention than it’s getting.

DA Nathan Vasquez has directed his prosecutors not to send serious felony cases to Judge Adrian Brown’s courtroom. He’s effectively sidelining a sitting, elected Multnomah County Circuit Court judge from the county’s most high-stakes prosecutions.

This grew out of an internal memo cataloging eight rulings by Judge Brown that the DA’s office found problematic, backed by a May 2025 affidavit from one of his prosecutors. Under Oregon law, a party can seek to have a case reassigned by claiming they can’t get a fair trial — but using that mechanism as a blanket boycott of an elected judge is something else entirely. It’s rare. And law professors who’ve looked at this aren’t confused about what it is: an aggressive use of prosecutorial power to neutralize a sitting judge the DA doesn’t like.

Here’s what I know about Judge Brown: a veteran who served as a Judge Advocate in the Air Force, a former federal prosecutor who spent 13 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney focused on civil rights enforcement, elected to the bench in 2020.

Presiding Judge Judith Matarazzo has been quietly reshuffling court calendars behind the scenes to keep the standoff from boiling over. That workaround keeps things moving, but it leaves a serious constitutional question sitting on the table: how long can a prosecutor’s office effectively nullify an elected judge — and who holds them accountable when they try?

I asked Aliza to help us understand what the law actually allows here, what the ethical limits are, and what it means for all of us when prosecutorial power is used to sideline the judiciary. In a moment when we’re watching the federal executive branch wage war on judges across the country, this local story hits differently.

Why This Episode

I made this episode because I want people to be informed. Not alarmed — informed.

When you understand how the public defense system actually works — and why it’s failing — you can have a real conversation about solutions. When you know what’s at stake in judicial races, you can make a real choice at the ballot instead of skipping the page. And when you understand what it means for a prosecutor to sideline an elected judge that you likely voted for, you can talk to your neighbors about it, ask hard questions, and hold people accountable.

The courts aren’t a partisan issue. The right to a lawyer isn’t a partisan issue. Judicial independence isn’t a partisan issue. These are the foundations that everything else rests on — and they work better when more people understand them.

Aliza Kaplan has dedicated her career to making sure those foundations hold. I’m grateful she joined me for this conversation.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. And if this episode informs you — share it. Talk about it with your neighbors. Show up and vote in May. The courts belong to all of us.

— Mike

Read more

We sat down with two elected officials who are both doing real things for real people — and both navigating campaigns where opponents would rather traffic in vibes than engage with substance. We’re not doing that here.

Mitch Green | Portland City Councilor

The Portland Housing Bureau keeps finding money. Millions of dollars. And most Portlanders have no idea it exists, where it comes from, or where it’s going. Councilor Mitch Green joins us to unpack all of it — how these funds work, what they can legally be used for, and what it would actually take to deploy them in ways that bring down housing costs and get more of our neighbors stably housed. This is the conversation the city should be having out loud.

Support Mitch and his campaign! Click Here

Nafisa Fai | Washington County Commissioner, Candidate for County Chair

Commissioner Nafisa Fai is running for Washington County Chair — and some people would rather define her by association than engage with her record, her vision, or her qualifications. We’re not interested in that. We talked about her background, her experience, what she believes Washington County can and should be, and what her plans actually are. We also tackled the endorsement question head on — what it means when I endorse a candidate.

Support Nafisa and her campaign! Click Here

Community Spotlight: PDX Saints Love

A special shoutout to Kristle Delihanty and the incredible team at PDX Saints Love. We attended their gala and left inspired. Hearing directly from community members whose lives were changed by this program — and who are now paying that love forward — is exactly the kind of thing that reminds us why this work matters. Positivity breeds positivity. Check them out and support if you can.

Thank You to Our Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Leif Olson and The Life Recording — theliferecording.com. We are grateful for his continued support of this show. Go check out what he has to offer.

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Damon Motz-Storey is a climate and environmental justice advocate with the Sierra Club’s Oregon Chapter, where they work at the intersection of clean energy policy, racial equity, and community power. They have been a consistent voice in Portland’s ongoing debates over how climate dollars get spent — and who gets to make those decisions.

Jami LeBaron is a program director at the Friends of Leach Botanical Garden, the nonprofit working to preserve and sustain one of Southeast Portland’s most beloved green spaces. She brings years of experience in community engagement and environmental stewardship to the fight to keep Leach alive and accessible to all Portlanders.

Segment 1: The Fight Over Portland’s Clean Energy Fund

Guest: Damon Motz-Storey, Sierra Club

Portland’s Clean Energy Fund was born from a grassroots vision — a first-of-its-kind tax on large retailers that would direct millions toward climate action, green jobs, and environmental justice for frontline communities. But a recent court ruling has thrown open a door that many of its original champions never wanted unlocked.

A judge has cleared the way for the Portland Police Association to collect signatures for a ballot initiative that would dedicate 25% of PCEF dollars toward law enforcement funding. For advocates like Damon Motz-Storey of the Sierra Club, the implications are serious. That’s not a small slice — it represents hundreds of millions of dollars over time that could be redirected away from the climate and equity work the fund was specifically designed to do.

Damon joins us to break down what the ruling means, why the Sierra Club and other environmental justice organizations are pushing back hard, and what Portlanders who care about climate action need to know before this potentially lands on the ballot. We also dig into the broader question this fight raises: when a community-built fund becomes a target, what does that tell us about who has power in Portland — and who gets to define what “public safety” really means?

🔗 Learn more & take action: Oregon Sierra Club — Portland Clean Energy Fund

Segment 2: The Garden at the Edge of Closing

Guest: Jami LeBaron, Leach Botanical Garden

Tucked away in outer Southeast Portland, Leach Botanical Garden is one of the city’s quiet treasures — 16 acres of native plants, old-growth trees, and a history rooted in the remarkable botanical legacy of Lilla and John Leach. But this beloved community space is facing a threat that could silence it for good.

Jami LaBaron sits down with us to talk candidly about the financial pressures and organizational challenges that have put Leach Botanical Garden’s future in jeopardy. The nonprofit that supports the garden has been working to sustain programming, education, and community access — but the road ahead is uncertain, and the window to act may be closing faster than people realize.

This is exactly the kind of story that gets lost in the noise of bigger headlines, which is why we think it matters. A botanical garden isn’t just a pretty place — it’s a living classroom, a community gathering space, and in Portland’s case, a living tribute to two pioneering naturalists who spent their lives cataloguing the plants of the Pacific Northwest. Losing it would be a loss felt for generations.

Jami talks about what the garden needs, what community members can do right now, and why she still believes Leach can be saved — if enough people show up.

🔗 Support Leach Botanical Garden: leachgarden.org

A Word From Our First-Ever Sponsor 🎉

We are so proud to introduce Word Is Bond as the very first sponsor of SchmidtShowPDX.

Word Is Bond shares our belief that words matter — that the stories we tell, the commitments we make, and the way we show up for our communities define who we are. Their support makes it possible for us to keep doing this work, and we couldn’t be more grateful to have them in our corner. Please show them some love and check them out. When an organization puts their name behind a show like ours, that means something — and we don’t take it lightly.

🔗 Check out Word Is Bond

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SchmidtShowPDX is dedicated to amplifying the community builders and civic stewards who make Portland worth fighting for. Thank you for listening, for caring, and for showing up.

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In this episode, we cover:

• Who the Portland Frog Brigade is and how you can too!

• Why street theater works when speeches don’t

• De-escalation, safety, and keeping actions grounded

• The Gray Panthers’ long view: organizing across generations

• How to turn frustration into action without burning out

• Why local politics is where the leverage lives

Learn more:

• Portland Frog Brigade:

https://www.portlandfrogbrigade.com

• Portland Gray Panthers (Facebook group):

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/166228307381091

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If you enjoyed this episode, share it with one person, and follow/subscribe wherever you listen. Ratings and reviews help more than they should in a civilized society, but here we are.