Data center politics and the week's news

Happy Saturday, Oregon!

We’re down to 45 days until Election Day, and campaigning is in full swing. The week started with welcome news for election officials and everyone who votes by mail from the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected the president’s attempts to upend mail voting by having the U.S. Postal Service decide who gets ballots. Despite that victory, election officials here still recommend that voters use ballot drop boxes, not mail slots, to return their ballots this year.

New polling showed Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan slightly leading Gov. Tina Kotek, though Drazan’s 2-point lead was within the 4-point margin of error. Kotek shifted this week to sharing her policy priorities for a second term. But the Democratic Party of Oregon is keeping the focus on Trump with a statewide tour and the latest ad Kotek dropped yesterday is a return to a strategy that worked in 2022: highlighting Drazan’s opposition to abortion.

We won’t have clear recommendations from Kotek’s data center advisory committee before the election, but Alex Baumhardt looked at the many questions the panel surfaced. Oregonians have about six weeks to comment on the committee’s work.

Mia Maldonado continues to cover the state’s troubled transportation network, including news that we’re not on track to meet transportation emissions goals and that Oregon has one of the worst maintenance funding gaps in the country. For train enthusiasts, Amtrak-Cascades’ shiny new fleet will start phasing in Sept. 30. They’re just replacing old trains, not adding to the schedule, and they can’t travel any faster than the existing 79mph speed on the privately owned tracks.

Shaanth Nanguneri has some good news on the public defense front: Through increased state funding and a patchwork of solutions, the Oregon justice system is violating far fewer criminal defendants’ constitutional right to counsel than it was a year ago. We’re down to about 1,100 people facing criminal charges without a lawyer, from more than 3,200 last August. The U.S. and Oregon constitutions both say people accused of crimes are entitled to legal representation, and the lack of attorneys has led to people waiving their rights to resolve cases, waiting in limbo for months and judges dismissing cases because of the lack of counsel.

Mia got records from the Oregon Department of Human Services showing that the most expensive fire season also cost at least $44,000 in replacing food bought by SNAP recipients who had to evacuate, lost their power or lost their homes. And Shaanth covered a state audit that found duplicate identification codes led the Oregon Health Authority to overpay up to $4.1 million for Medicaid recipients’ treatment. It’s a small fraction of the state’s Medicaid budget, but comes as the program faces budget cuts and increased scrutiny from the federal government.

Our Saturday story returns to data center politics, with a national look at the issue that quickly became a flashpoint. Enjoy it, and enjoy the weekend.