Strengthening state elections

Happy Saturday, Oregon!

The new head of Oregon’s troubled state mental hospital is out after almost a month on the job. Former Oregon Health Authority Director Sejal Hathi hired Sean Murphy, who previously worked in Washington’s state health department, to help turn around the Salem-based Oregon State Hospital after years of negative publicity over whistleblowing nurses, a high-profile death in custody, unfollowed court orders and that one time a shackled patient stole a van and wound up armpit-deep in pond muck in Portland before firefighters rescued him.

Oregon Health Authority Interim Director Fariborz Pakseresht “made a leadership change” to end Murphy’s employment this week. Jim Diegel, a well-known hospital operations strategist in Oregon who helmed the Bend-based St. Charles Health System and, has resumed serving as interim superintendent while the health authority searches for a permanent replacement.

Congress is on summer break, but before trading D.C. humidity for West Coast smoke Sen. Ron Wyden finally passed his bill exempting wildfire survivors from having to pay income taxes on their recovery settlements and attorney fees. State lawmakers passed an exemption for state taxes in 2024, and it’s most relevant to victims of fires ignited by powerlines and who have sued utility companies.

Voters in Oregon’s 6th Congressional District (that’s us, fellow Salemites!) likely won’t have a nonaffiliated candidate on their ballots this year after Jason Faler gave up his campaign. Mia Maldonado previously profiled Faler as part of a piece about Oregon’s barriers for nonaffiliated voters who want to run for office.

Shaanth Nanguneri writes that gun owners responded to voters passing a gun control measure in 2022 by buying a lot more guns before the measure could take effect. The law’s tied up in court and has yet to take effect, and researchers found that background checks to purchase guns rose 157% immediately following the election. They identified 63,000 background check requests in the 18 months following the 2022 election that they say wouldn’t have been made without Measure 114.

“There are more guns in Oregon after passing permit-to-purchase than we expected to have if it had not passed,” said Katie Bollman, an assistant professor of economics at Oregon State University.

Shaanth also reports that a federal appeals court placed on hold a lower court judge’s ruling that Oregon must presumptively place incarcerated trans women in non-male prisons. Oregon has just one women’s prison, Coffee Creek, and state officials have argued for case-by-case decisions about the roughly 120 people identified as transgender women in the state’s custody, most of whom are housed in male prisons. They argue that some of those incarcerated people aren’t out yet or don’t want to be placed in Coffee Creek, and that others could pose security threats because they’re incarcerated for violent crimes against women.

Attorney General Dan Rayfield is suing the Trump administration again, this time over a decision to overrule state laws that make banks return some of the interest generated on escrow accounts to homeowners. People with mortgages generally pay their property taxes to their lender on a monthly basis, and the lender transmits that money to the county when taxes come due. That means the money spends most of the year sitting in a savings account generating interest, and states including Oregon have required banks to pay some of that interest to homeowners.

Alex Baumhardt has a story about a dead-on-arrival recommendation from Oregon’s Quality Education Commission to hike school funding by between $2.5 billion and $5 billion. Oregon’s $11.3 billion in state funding for K-12 education shakes out to roughly $19,700 per pupil, about $1,000 more per-pupil than the national average, but outcomes haven’t followed. Oregon’s kids rank at the bottom in national assessments of reading proficiency and aren’t much better in math.

Fewer women are working in Oregon and nationally, Alex reported. Economists cited issues with wage gaps that still have men earning more on average than women, child care costs and gender norms that burden women in heterosexual relationships with disproportionate responsibility for child rearing.

And late Friday and without discussion, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission signed off on a $12,000 fine for Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, for abusing his position as director of an eastern Oregon development authority to maneuver a $66,000 raise and take weeks of paid vacation time. Smith, who did not attend the meeting, blamed structural issues with the authority’s lack of written policies and declined to take responsibility in a video he posted to social media. House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, removed him as c0-chair of a budget committee after the decision.

Our Saturday story is a national look at what states are doing to prepare for election chaos. Enjoy the weekend!