A2
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2022
IN BRIEF
Cannon Beach man runs for state
House as unaffi liated candidate
A Cannon Beach man is running for state House Dis-
trict 32 as an unaffi liated candidate.
Frederick “Rick” Gray Jr., originally from Virginia, is
gathering signatures to get on the November election ballot.
He said he hopes eventually to form a new centrist
political party that focuses on the environment and con-
fronting climate change.
He has taught high school, practiced law and served
as secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
He has put $3,000 toward his campaign, according to
the Oregon Secretary of State’s Offi ce website.
Low-income residents eligible for water
and wastewater help in Warrenton
WARRENTON – The city has signed an agreement
with Clatsop Community Action and the Oregon Hous-
ing and Community Services Department that will assist
low-income households with drinking water and waste-
water services costs.
The City Commission unanimously approved the
agreement at Tuesday’s meeting.
Households at or below 60% of state median income
are eligible. Clatsop Community Action will determine
eligibility. The program only covers water- and waste-
water-related costs.
The funding can only be received one time by an eli-
gible household during the funding period, which will
extend through September 2023 or until funding is
exhausted. Additional funding may be available for a
one-time crisis situation.
Coast Guard aids man
in distress on cruise ship
A man who was bleeding internally while aboard
the Disney Wonder about 180 miles off Grays Harbor,
Washington, was fl own ashore for treatment on Wednes-
day, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
That night, a Sector Columbia River helicopter crew
airlifted the 71-year-old cruise ship passenger to Astoria,
where he was then fl own to to Portland.
As of Thursday, the man was in stable condition, the
Coast Guard said.
— The Astorian
Voters soundly reject
Ocean Beach school bond
LONG BEACH, Wash. — Voters have overwhelm-
ingly rejected a $96.2 million bond proposed by the
Ocean Beach School District on Tuesday.
With 4,421 ballots counted by the Pacifi c County
Auditor’s Offi ce as of Wednesday, support for the bond
sat at just 22.7%, with 77.3% in opposition. Support
from a supermajority of voters, 60%, is needed for bonds
to pass in Washington state.
The bond would have funded a number of construc-
tion projects at the school district, headlined by the con-
struction of a new, tsunami-safe K-5 elementary school in
Ilwaco that would also lead to the closure of Long Beach
Elementary and Ocean Park Elementary as schools. In
eff ect, the addition of the elementary school in Ilwaco
next to Hilltop Middle School and Ilwaco High School
would have created a unifi ed K-12 campus.
Other notable projects that would have been funded
include seismic retrofi tting and signifi cant operational
upgrades at Ilwaco High School, the replacing of the
deteriorating and earthquake-vulnerable stadium as well
as making other outdoor athletic improvements, and
replacing and relocating the school district’s makeshift
bus garage that would have also housed the maintenance
and technology departments.
— Chinook Observer
MEMORIAL
Saturday, May 7
Memorial
SCHULTZ, Mark Lloyd — Celebration of life at
1 p.m., Lewis and Clark Bible Church, 35082 Seppa Lane.
ON THE RECORD
Theft
County in September.
On
the
Record
• Aaron
Thomas
DUII
Posey, 27, of Astoria,
was indicted on Tuesday
for fi rst-degree theft and
second-degree theft. The
crimes are alleged to have
occurred in September.
• Beau Aaron Roll-
ings, 31, of Santa Rosa,
California, was indicted
on Tuesday for fi rst-de-
gree theft and second-de-
gree criminal mischief.
The crimes are alleged to
have occurred in Clatsop
• Thomas William
Niesche, 31, of Astoria,
was arrested on April 23 at
the intersection of Colum-
bia Avenue and W. Marine
Drive for driving under the
infl uence of intoxicants.
• Spenser Black-
well, 34, of Astoria, was
arrested on April 19 on
Bond Street in Astoria for
DUII and reckless driv-
ing. He allegedly struck a
parked vehicle.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
MONDAY
Seaside City Council, 6 p.m., special meeting, executive
session, City Hall, 989 Broadway.
Astoria City Council, 7 p.m., City Hall, 1095 Duane St.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
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The Astorian
Oregon voters are pessimistic about
the state’s economy, despite big gains
By DIRK VANDERHART
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Oregon voters aren’t happy
about much these days, so it’s
no surprise that a survey com-
missioned by Oregon Public
Broadcasting showed deep
misgivings about the condi-
tion of the state’s economy.
Nearly two-thirds of vot-
ers rated Oregon’s eco-
nomic conditions as “poor”
or “very poor” in the survey,
and nearly as many said they
expect things to get worse.
Those opinions are partly
informed by voters’ personal
politics — Republicans were
far more apt to report the
economy was in bad shape
than Democrats, who have
largely controlled the state
for decades. Even so, almost
half of Democrats surveyed
reported they feel the econ-
omy is lagging.
That pessimism has been
picked up by candidates in
this year’s highly competi-
tive governor’s race, some of
whom are pledging to loosen
regulation on businesses and
take a major swing at eas-
ing the state’s rising housing
costs.
Talk to Oregon econo-
mists, though, and the dour
mood is harder to fi nd. After a
calamitous plunge at the out-
set of the COVID-19 pan-
demic, many key indicators
of the state economy are surg-
ing back.
“In our lifetimes — in our
parents’ lifetimes — we never
saw an economy as bad as
2020,” said Christian Kaylor,
an economist with the Oregon
Employment
Department.
“And the good news is: In our
lifetimes we’ve never seen an
economy as good as 2021.”
Kaylor rattled off facts that
have helped him reach that
conclusion.
The state’s unemployment
rate sits at 3.8%, not too far off
the 3.5% level of just before
the pandemic, and a far cry
from the devastating 13.3%
unemployment rate in April
2020. After getting a slower
start than some other states,
Oregon added jobs at a faster
clip than nearly any other
state last year. The Portland
region, which accounts for
more than half of the state’s
economy, also outperformed
most other large metro areas
in jobs added.
Economists now expect
the state’s economy will
have made a full recovery
by the end of this year. And
at the end of that recovery,
the wages of many Orego-
nians will be well higher than
they were at the pandemic’s
outset.
John Notarianni/Oregon Public Broadcasting
After spiking in 2020, Oregon’s unemployment rate is now
nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.
‘The economy is
overheating’
But those indicators don’t
account for the pain people
are feeling. Kaylor and other
economists say the super-fast
rebound from the pit of reces-
sion amounts to an “overheat-
ing” economy. Many Orego-
nians — and Americans in
general — have ample discre-
tionary money to spend and
an appetite to buy, they say.
That ready cash, combined
with supply chain snarls and
old-fashioned corporate greed,
has helped lead to a nearly 8%
increase in prices in the last
year, the biggest jump in four
decades.
“There’s just a lot of peo-
ple with a lot of capacity to
spend money right now,”
said Tim Duy, an econom-
ics professor at the Univer-
sity of Oregon and director of
the Oregon Economic Forum.
“The economy is overheating.
We’re seeing that in the rate of
strong wage growth, but over-
all we’re seeing it in infl ation
as well.”
Price increases brought on
by infl ation have begun to out-
strip higher wages, meaning
the average worker eff ectively
took a pay cut last year despite
making more. The hospitality
industry, severely hurt by the
pandemic, is still lagging. A
tight housing market has led to
higher rents and bidding wars
for limited homes on the mar-
ket. Portland has trailed peer
cities in its recovery. The price
for fi lling up at the pump has
become more and more pain-
ful — and the Russian inva-
sion of Ukraine has not helped.
Despite the good things
happening in Oregon’s econ-
omy, voters like Penny McCa-
rthy are more often feeling the
bad.
“Gas prices are up, food
prices are up, real estate is
totally out of control,” said
McCarthy, a 68-year-old Leb-
anon resident who labels her-
self a progressive Democrat.
“It’s unreal.”
McCarthy lives off of
Social Security benefi ts, and
her husband, a disabled vet-
eran, also receives payments.
With their rising rent threat-
ening to eat up more of their
checks, the couple struggled
to fi nd a manufactured home
that would off er more stability.
They fi nally got lucky, McCa-
rthy said.
“We live in a 1985 manu-
factured home that we fought
to purchase,” she said. “We
had to work for a year to fi nd a
house we could aff ord because
rent is just horrible. I don’t
know how people can aff ord
that, and it’s only going to get
worse unless something hap-
pens to rein it in.”
McCarthy has plenty of
company. More than 60%
of voters in Oregon Public
Broadcasting’s survey deemed
the cost of living in the state a
“very serious” issue, putting it
in the realm of violent crime,
homelessness and addiction
as a leading concern. And
while early on in the pandemic
younger Oregonians were
most likely to express worry
about their personal fi nances,
polling shows that older Ore-
gonians like McCarthy now
lead the way in worrying
about money.
“That dynamic is chang-
ing in a way that I think will
be electorally powerful,”
said John Horvick, of DHM
Research, which conducted
the poll , noting that older
voters are more likely than
younger ones to participate in
the May primary.
Voters, of course, are well
known for weighing their
pocketbooks while casting
ballots. But as the state pre-
pares to elect a new gover-
nor this year, economists sug-
gest that the forces at play in
Oregon are often the result
of larger trends that even the
state’s top executive has little
power to sway.
“The standard economic
data look pretty darn good
aside from infl ation,” said
Josh Lehner, an economist
with the state’s Offi ce of Eco-
nomic Analysis. “There’s not a
lot you can do at the state level
about infl ation.”
Duy, at the University of
Oregon, agreed, saying that
many forces battering Ore-
gonians are driven by busi-
ness cycles that play out on
the national level. “You often
have limited capacity around
them,” he said.
‘Boom-bust’ scenario
Curing infl ation is a job
left largely up to the Federal
Reserve, which has begun
raising interest rates in order
to cool the economy but risks
sending the country into a
recession if it moves too
strongly.
State economists now say
such a “boom-bust” scenario
is a plausible alternative to
their baseline assumptions that
steady, but slower, economic
expansion will most likely
continue in coming years.
Under such a scenario, laid out
in the state’s most recent eco-
nomic forecast, rising inter-
est rates would result in a
“relatively long-lasting reces-
sion” beginning early next
year, costing the state roughly
100,000 jobs.
Lehner cautioned that such
a scenario is far from certain.
“Our advisers think that
is the most likely alternative
scenario,” he said. “Does that
mean we need to be worried
today? No.”
In fact, Lehner’s predic-
tions have more frequently
been sunnier, as when he
wrote at length in December
about how fully Portland is
likely to recover from a down-
turn brought on by the pan-
demic, political violence and
growing homelessness.
“The outlook is bright,”
Lehner wrote. “Already the
region has caught up eco-
nomically to other large metro
areas despite local social chal-
lenges and public perception.
However, the key question is
whether or not Portland will
reclaim its perch among the
highest fl iers around the coun-
try, which remains to be seen.”
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