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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 2017
Pot is producing jobs, revenue in states where it’s legal
Whitney, who has been
involved in several marijuana
businesses and has advised
state government, estimates
that workers in the marijuana
industry in Oregon earn a
total of $315 million per year.
That’s based on workers earn-
ing an average of $12 per hour.
He noted that the wage scales
vary widely, with harvesters
earning less than processors
and chemists. Their wages are
pumped back into the local
economies.
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
SALEM — The states that
have legalized recreational
marijuana — a multi-bil-
lion-dollar business — don’t
want to hear the federal govern-
ment talk about a crackdown.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown says
she wants Oregonians left alone
to “grow these jobs.”
In Oregon alone, that’s
roughly 12,500 jobs, said econ-
omist Beau Whitney of Port-
land, adding that he is making
a conservative estimate. Ore-
gon’s attorney general said she
would be duty-bound to fight
to protect the state’s marijuana
industry.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions has said his depart-
ment is reviewing a Jus-
tice Department memo that
gives states flexibility in pass-
ing marijuana laws and noted
“it does remain a violation of
federal law to distribute mar-
ijuana throughout any place
in the United States, whether
a state legalizes it or not.”
White House spokesman Sean
Spicer predicted stepped up
enforcement.
Underscoring how the mar-
ijuana industry is pushing job
Push back
AP Photo/Andrew Selsky
A harvester examines marijuana buds from a trimming machine near Corvallis. In Or-
egon, at least 12,500 jobs are attributed to legal recreational marijuana and in Oregon,
Washington state and Colorado, marijuana tax revenues totaled $335 million in 2016.
growth in Oregon, the Oregon
Liquor Control Commission,
which regulates and licenses
the state’s recreational mari-
juana industry, says it has over
12,640 applications for mar-
ijuana worker permits. It has
also received 2,174 marijuana
license applications, with over
half coming from would-be
producers and the rest mostly
from those seeking to set up as
retailers, processors, wholesal-
ers and laboratories. It had acti-
vated 943 licenses by Tuesday.
‘Successful industry’
Marijuana shops are prev-
alent in many Oregon cit-
ies. In the countryside, mar-
ijuana greenhouses are not
uncommon.
“We now have a nascent,
somewhat successful indus-
try,” Brown said in an inter-
view Tuesday with The Asso-
ciated Press and a freelance
journalist. “These are good
paying jobs. It’s a pretty
diverse business community.”
In January alone, recre-
ational marijuana sales in Ore-
gon were over $20 million,
with medical marijuana gener-
ating about $2.8 million more,
the OLCC said.
In Oregon, Washington
state and Colorado, marijuana
tax revenues totaled at least
$335 million in either the last
calendar year or the last fiscal
year.
If the Trump administration
moves against legalized recre-
ational marijuana, it would be
going against its own objec-
tives, Oregon’s governor said.
She noted that citizens in
several states have voted to
make pot legal. Oregon legal-
ized recreational marijuana in
a 2014 ballot measure.
“This administration very
clearly wants to grow the econ-
omy and create jobs, and the
other piece that they want is
to have the states be the labo-
ratories of democracy,” Brown
said. “There is no better type
of laboratory than the initia-
tive process, and voters in Ore-
gon and Washington and Cali-
fornia and Alaska and Nevada,
and there’s a few other states,
have voted to legalize mari-
juana. On the West coast alone,
that’s 49 million people.”
Her message to Washing-
ton: “Let our people grow
these jobs.”
Oregon Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum indicated she
would go to court to protect
those jobs. Currently, the Cole
Memorandum, which provides
guidance for federal mari-
juana enforcement, restricts it
to a few areas, including pre-
venting distribution to minors
and preventing marijuana from
being transported from pot-le-
gal states to other states. Under
the Cole Memorandum, states
where marijuana is legal have
been largely been left alone.
“If the Cole memoran-
dum is pulled, or replaced with
other guidance, we would eval-
uate it immediately,” Rosen-
blum said in a recent inter-
view with AP. “Possibly if we
felt we had a basis, we would
push back against that, because
we have a burgeoning indus-
try here, very successful so far
with some bumps in the road ...
so that would be important for
the attorney general to take a
stand.”
Bill would use phone fund to pay for rural broadband
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — State Rep. E.
Werner Reschke, R-Klamath
Falls, says he lives “at the end
of the internet.”
Reschke’s district is located
in south central Oregon, which
has comparatively low use rates
when it comes to high-speed
internet, according to a 2014
survey conducted by the state’s
public utility commission.
A bill before the Oregon
Legislature would allow a fund
currently dedicated to ensuring
access to landline phone ser-
vice in underserved areas to be
used to provide access to high-
speed internet.
The definition of broadband
changes as technology accel-
erates. These days the Federal
Communications
Commis-
sion’s standard for minimum
download speeds is 25 mega-
bits per second.
Top of the heap
Compared to other states,
Oregon is at the top of the
heap when it comes to access
to broadband, but there are still
significant disparities between
broadband adoption in urban
and rural areas.
In 2014, Oregon’s Public
Utility Commission conducted
a study on the issue. While
85 percent of people in Port-
land used broadband, only 67
percent did in eastern Oregon
and 69 percent in south cen-
tral Oregon. Generally, a uni-
versal service fund is intended
to make sure people in under-
A universal service fund is intended to
make sure people in underserved areas have
access to utility services at ‘reasonably
affordable’ rates
served areas have access to
utility services at “reasonably
affordable” rates, according to
the public utility commission.
The universal service fund,
established in 1999, essentially
provides money for compa-
nies to set up communications
infrastructure in low-popula-
tion areas where the costs of
doing so can be expensive and
benefits to the company can be
relatively low.
There has been some dis-
agreement as to whether it is
appropriate to use the landline
surcharge money for other ser-
vices, said Brant Wolf, a lobby-
ist for the Oregon Telecommu-
nications Association, which
supports the bill. The issue
was the subject of a public
utility commission docket last
year. Under a PUC stipulation
the amount in the fund will be
capped by 2021 to $21.6 mil-
lion, Wolf said.
State law currently says
companies can only use the
money for basic telephone
services. The proposal would
loosen that requirement
to include broadband.
An amendment to the bill
limits the surcharge rate on
retail
telecommunications
sales to 8.5 percent.
Digital Divide
Nationally, the disparity
between urban and rural access
to broadband is referred to as
the “Digital Divide.”
Proponents say that high-
speed internet access is a boon
for business development and
public safety.
Some also say it’s an issue
of equity as more of daily life
requires internet access.
“Broadband is, by all
accounts, and certainly in our
opinion, an essential utility ser-
vice at this point,” said Samuel
Pastrick, a consumer advocate
for the Oregon Citizens’ Util-
ity Board.
Businesses evaluate inter-
net speeds when choosing
locations; some small commu-
nities in Eastern Oregon want
to encourage economic devel-
opment by luring young peo-
ple working in the tech sector
elsewhere to work remotely
and enjoy the perks of access
to outdoor recreation.
The city of John Day even
has an internet task force,
which is studying ways to
bring faster and more afford-
able internet to the area.
Lawmakers examine impacts of rent control, just-cause eviction
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — As the Legis-
lature considers passing rent
control and restrictions on
no-cause evictions this year,
lawmakers are trying to sift
through how the differing pol-
icies are working.
“Oregon is facing a hous-
ing crisis, and the speaker is
hopeful that the Legislature
will pass meaningful solu-
tions this session,” said Lind-
sey O’Brien, a spokeswoman
for House Speaker Tina Kotek,
whose constituents have expe-
rienced mass evictions in North
Portland.
The bill dominating discus-
sion, and which will receive a
public hearing today, would
outlaw no-cause evictions and
lift the statewide preemption
on rent control in local jurisdic-
tions. The legislation is more
stringent than an ordinance
passed last month in Portland
and is missing exemptions such
as those in San Francisco that
are meant to prevent discour-
agement of new construction of
residential buildings.
Legislators are deliberating
these measures under increas-
ing political pressure from ten-
ants who have experienced
skyrocketing rents. Meanwhile,
landlords are pushing back on
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the proposed legislation, argu-
ing it is overbearing, will have
unforeseen consequences and
will fail to solve the state’s
affordable housing shortage.
Economists overwhelm-
ingly agree with the landlords’
perspective. A survey of econo-
mists by the University of Chi-
cago Booth School of Business
found that 81 percent disagreed
that local ordinances that limit
rent increases have had a posi-
tive impact in the last 30 years
on the amount and quality of
affordable housing.
The science is settled: Rent
control “stifles turnover and
shrinks supply,” said Portland
economist Eric Fruits during a
meeting of the House Human
Services and Housing Commit-
tee Tuesday, Feb. 28.
Fruits, who also is an
adjunct professor at Portland
State University, said property
owners are more likely to sell
homes than to rent them out
when there are draconian rental
regulations. And developers are
less motivated to build residen-
tial units, he said.
The proposed rent stabil-
ity measures in Oregon would
equate to a “self-inflicted hous-
ing shortage.”
Stephen Barton, former
director of the Berkley Hous-
ing Department and member of
the Berkley Rent Stabilization
Board, said rent stabilization
polices haven’t brought rents
down, but they are the “abso-
lute best program to reduce
forced displacement.”
The average rent in the nine-
county Bay Area in California
was $2,502 in 2016, accord-
ing to Real Answers, a research
firm in Novato, Calif.
California law allows
municipalities to set a limit on
rent increases, but once a tenant
vacates a unit, the landlord is
free to set the unit’s rent at mar-
ket rate, Barton said.
In San Francisco, rent
increases limits are tied to infla-
tion. Exemptions to the rules
are given to newly constructed
LISTINGS
A - Charter Astoria/ Seaside - L - Charter Long Beach
residential units, anything built
after June 13, 1979, in order
to encourage new construc-
tion. All single-family dwell-
ings also are exempt. Oregon’s
proposed law includes none of
those exemptions.
It’s unclear whether the
Oregon bill will be revised to
include some of those excep-
tions, or whether there will be
enough votes in the two cham-
bers to pass it. The initial public
review of academic research on
the bill is scheduled for today.
Kotek has been meeting
with developers, landlords,
housing advocates and tenants
to learn their concerns, O’Brien
said.
Evening listings
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