Two weeks after its first February meeting was canceled due to unsafe road conditions due to snow, the Ashland City Council takes up business Tuesday, Feb. 17, it had expected to handle on Feb. 4. Its Feb. 3 study session, however, which was also canceled, is still pending as Monday, Feb. 17, was Presidents Day.
About 150 people rallied on Ashland Plaza on Monday, part of a series of nationwide protests on Presidents Day, most organized by the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement,” in a response to what organizers describe as “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration.”
Oregon House Republicans painted a dire picture of Oregon’s high cost of living, homelessness and faltering schools on Thursday, while offering few specific proposals to fix those problems. During a 25-minute press conference, House Republican Leader Christine Drazan said she hears every day from Oregonians who are dissatisfied or frustrated with their government.
Oregon’s cities will push the state Legislature to give them more money for roads, water and sewers, more power to remove homeless camps and more flexibility to spend hotel tax revenue on basic services. City officials from around Oregon laid out those goals during their biannual City Day at the Capitol earlier this week.
Oregon is suing the Trump administration after it ordered an abrupt freeze of many federal payments, leaving state agencies unable to access reimbursements for Medicaid and child care programs and sending state officials scrambling to determine the total effect.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, has sponsored a legislative effort that would seek to enshrine a clean, safe and healthy environment amendment in the Oregon Constitution. Senate Joint Resolution 28, the “Right to a Healthy Environment Amendment,” is backed by a number of senators and representatives, including Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland.
Days before President-elect Donald Trump was set to take office, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced that he joined other Democratic states in court filings to preserve federal gun control rules. Rayfield and other attorneys general also intervened to protect the ability for some undocumented immigrants to enroll in health care plans through the Affordable Care Act and weeks after the new attorney general convened a group of advisers and named a top Justice Department lawyer to lead federal litigation.
In an auditorium on his alma mater’s Salem campus on Monday, Jan. 6, Tobias Read took his oath of office as secretary of state with a promise to spend the next four years working to make Oregon better.
From a historic election to record wildfires to drug recriminalization, 2024 was a big year for state government and political news in Oregon. Here’s a roundup of the most notable stories and trends the Capital Chronicle covered this year.
The amount of reporting produced in Oregon has been declining for decades — a fact that is likely unsurprising to Oregonians who have seen their newspapers thin and local coverage shrink. It’s a trend that has been playing out across the country as the business of producing journalism has faltered alongside the rise of the internet.
Councilor Dylan Bloom answered questions on a number of topics, including pickleball, the homeless shelter, expansion of park lands and the future of Ashland.
Through two days of the NAIA Opening Round, the Southern Oregon softball team is acting like it has been here before. The Raiders took over the driver’s seat in the Ashland Bracket on Tuesday and are a win away from their seventh World Series berth in eight years.
Catty Corner: Studies have revealed the importance of companion animals to those in the unhoused community, and — whether cats, dogs, birds or other animals — an Ashland shelter is committed to keeping families together.
Coffee drinkers stopping by Ashland’s Walker Avenue Starbucks for a Wednesday morning pick-me-up were met with temporarily shuttered doors following a union strike by Starbucks workers held earlier in the day.
Recipients include the Ashland Community Food Bank, which will put the money toward expansion of the nonprofit’s home delivery program for Ashland and Talent residents with health, mobility or transportation challenges.
Heather Yandell: “We deserve better than spending the rest of our lives in a tent. The thought of dying on the street terrifies me, and so I am doing everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
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