I don’t play poker and have no interest in the game, but I’m trying to understand why 39 members of the Oregon House —Â NOT including Albany’s Andy Olson — voted on Thursday to shut down and ban private poker clubs in Portland and perhaps other towns as well.
Patrolling my riverfront beat on Friday afternoon on the bike, I could not help but notice that the Willamette had risen rather sharply over the last few days. Looks like the Corps upped its releases from the upstream dams.
Here’s a first for the Albany City Council, at least in living memory: Unwilling to take a second long lecture from a man denied a permit to hold a marijuana festival in a city park, the mayor called a recess and the council walked out.
The Oregon House Wednesday approved a bill calling for “cultural competency standards” at all public universities and community colleges by the end of 2020. The bill is a model of vagueness, but its opponents fear it will lead to campus suppression of free speech and thought.
Oregon school districts won’t have to decide whether to outfit school buses with video cameras to record law-breaking drivers who fail to stop when the red lights are on. A bill to allow this has died.
Now that an Albany work group has recommended where the old Main Street church should be moved and partially restored, the hard part of this venture begins: Designing the new site and coming up with the money.
Bikes would not be stuck here
Being stuck in traffic gives you time to think about things such as: “If I was on my bike now, I wouldn’t have to sit here.”  And that means legislators working on a transportation tax package are at least partly on the wrong track.
Tags: Bike tax, congestion, Oregon roads, transportation funding, transportation policy