Good Morning,

Oregon expands tax credits for new manufacturing jobs, Portland’s Centennial Mill to be demolished today, KinderCare lowers future outlook, US job market is losing workers, Providence Health Insurance to shutter Medicare Advantage program, Port of Seattle to start $131M renovation.

— Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here —

Let’s Rip

Key Events This Week (KL)
1. July Housing Starts data - Tuesday
2. July Pending Home Sales data - Tuesday
3. Fed Meeting Minutes - Wednesday
4. August Philly Fed Manufacturing Index - Thursday
5. August S&P Global Services PMI data - Friday
6. August S&P Global Manufacturing PMI data - Friday
The S&P 500 is now up +13.5% year-to-date.

PNW Rip partners with G.A. Rogers for professional and executive hiring in the Pacific Northwest. If you’re in the area (or moving here), check them out here.

Need a side hustle? G.A. Rogers pays for successful referrals - reach out to learn more.

What Happens When the Most Powerful Law Enforcement Officer in a Rural County Goes Rogue? (WW)

“Curry County Sheriff John Ward faces allegations of misconduct, including mismanagement, potential financial fraud, and failure to supervise his deputies.

GOLD BEACH — In this windswept fishing mecca of 2,417 people, where the Rogue River rushes headlong into the Pacific Ocean, the hot-button issue is the fate of Sheriff Johnnie Lee “John” Ward, Curry County’s top lawman for the past 12 years.

Ward, 68, has been accused of lining his own pockets with public dollars; failing to supervise a deputy who went on to shoot two people in Gold Beach in separate incidents; allowing another deputy to defraud the Oregon Marine Board; and using uncertified police dogs, which put arrests and public safety at risk.

On top of those allegations, Ward has for 10 months defied a court order to share his agency’s financial and administrative records with the Curry County Board of Commissioners.

And now a just-completed investigation, dated July 20, found that the sheriff has for years abused his power: “Ward engaged in deceit, dishonesty, misrepresentation of facts, omission of material information, and subversion,” the report said.

The question Curry County now faces is what to do when a top cop thinks he’s above the law.

Ward’s case is extreme, but it illustrates a structural problem across Oregon: County sheriffs are independently elected, answerable only to voters who often reelect them by default. They are also largely immune from oversight by the boards of commissioners that set their budgets.

For many county residents, however, it’s hard to know what’s going on. Bryan Grummon, a retired tech executive who has served on numerous local boards, says the public discourse has shed more heat than light.

“We don’t have a lot of facts,” Grummon said, “but we have a lot of hard feelings.”

Here are some of most serious allegations in the report:

Fraudulent boat inspections: The Oregon State Marine Board pays Ward’s office $182,000 a year to patrol the Rogue River and inspect boats. But there is ample evidence that Curry County deputies were doing neither, according to the Marine Board.

“I noticed that [your office] has 0 hours of water patrol on the Rogue River/Gold Beach area for the month of August though there are hundreds of boaters on the waterway during the peak boating/fishing season,” Brian Paulsen, the Marine Board’s boating safety manager, wrote to Ward in an Aug. 12, 2024, email.”

Bargaining stalls over wages between classified staff workers and Oregon’s public universities (OPB)

“Contract negotiations between Service Employees International Union, Local 503 and Oregon’s public universities are breaking down. And the main issue for both sides is affordability.

SEIU declared an impasse in negotiations on Aug. 7, after nearly seven months of bargaining. The union represents about 4,400 classified staff — ranging from academic support and dining hall workers to janitors and public safety officers — at all of Oregon’s seven public universities.

The institutions had initially proposed no yearly salary bumps, noting that classified staff who are eligible for step increases see an average boost of 4.6%.

Nearly all of Oregon’s public universities are either currently undergoing or recently finished multimillion-dollar budget cuts and layoffs. The institutions’ budgets are pinched by declining enrollment, shifting federal funding priorities, increasing personnel costs and flat state support.
But a white paper, compiled by SEIU and released this week, complicates the universities’ narrative on workforce costs.

The report used university payroll data and financial audits to find that personnel spending growth for top administrators has outpaced classified staff at some institutions, including Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. The paper also found that administrators accounted for about $510 million in salary expenses across all seven public universities last year. It estimated that classified staff made up $292 million in personnel expenses.”

Send us News

Work with us

Follow on X

Keep Rippin’