A11
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2021
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BRIEFING
Brown appoints
diversity chief
Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown said Wednesday
she will appoint Sophorn
Cheang to run the state’s
economic development
agency after two years
leading Oregon’s office
of diversity, equity and
inclusions.
Pending confirma-
tion by the state Senate,
Cheang will take over
for acting director Chris
Cummings, who has led
Business Oregon since
Chris Harder quit nearly
15 months ago. Harder’s
tenure was marked by
allegations of discrim-
ination and misman-
agement; investigators
hired by the state found
only “low morale” at the
agency.
Before 2018, Cheang
was director of the Asian
Family Center for the
Immigrant & Refugee
Community Organiza-
tion. She has a bachelor’s
degree in finance from
Portland State University
and an MBA from Willa-
mette University.
“Her combination of
experience will serve
the agency well as we
look to recover Oregon’s
economy from COVID-19
and make our state a
more inclusive place
for all people and busi-
nesses,” Brown said in a
written statement.
Amazon to fund
affordable housing
Amazon has an-
nounced $2 billion in
loans and grants to se-
cure affordable housing
in three U.S. cities where
it has major operations,
including a Seattle sub-
urb where the online
retail giant employs at
least 5,000 workers.
Amazon said it would
give $185.5 million to
the King County Hous-
ing Authority to help
buy affordable apart-
ments in the region and
keep the rents low, The
Seattle Times reported
Wednesday.
The agency is ex-
pected to pair bond
funding with the $161.5
million in loans and $24
million in grants from
Amazon to fund its re-
cent purchase of three
apartment buildings,
including 470 units in
Bellevue, about 10 miles
west of Seattle.
In the latest effort by
Amazon, money also
was directed to Arling-
ton, Virginia, and Nash-
ville, Tennessee, where
it has hubs. Company
officials projected the $2
billion would preserve or
create 20,000 affordable
housing units over the
next five years.
Grants aid battle
against pests
Four western states
have received nearly $24
million in USDA grants
to target pests ranging
from Asian giant hornets
to potato cyst nema-
todes.
Overall, the agency
gave nearly $70 million
to support 383 projects
in 49 states, the District
of Columbia, Guam and
Puerto Rico.
USDA provides the
funding under the Plant
Protection Act Section
7721, according to the
USDA Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Ser-
vice.
Washington received
$3.5 million, California
received $17.1 million,
and Idaho received
roughly $1.57 million.
— Bulletin wire reports
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Pacific Power rates drop
for irrigation customers
BY GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — Oregon
regulators have approved
lower electric rates for Pacific
Power customers in 2021,
thanks in part to cheaper fuel
and tax credits from wind and
solar energy, according to the
utility.
That comes as welcome
news for irrigators already
struggling financially with the
coronavirus pandemic and wa-
ter shortages due to extreme
drought.
Most of Pacific Power’s
615,000 Oregon customers
will see a 5.2% rate reduction,
including an estimated 3.5%
reduction for agricultural
pumping. The utility has 7,984
irrigation customers statewide,
about half of whom are in the
drought-stricken Klamath Ba-
sin.
Ben DuVal, power commit-
tee chairman for the Klamath
Water Users Association, said
the group is pleased with the
outcome following months of
deliberations.
See Power / A12
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Few businesses heed
call of mayor of Sandy
to defy restrictions
JAMIE HALE
AND JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
Sandy Mayor Stan Pull-
iam has kept busy this winter,
playing pied piper to Oregon
businesses that want to defy
the state’s restrictions during
the pandemic — but it doesn’t
appear he has succeeded in
sparking broad resistance.
While a handful of vocal
objectors have made head-
lines refusing the state’s di-
rectives, the vast majority of
businesses appear to be com-
plying with Oregon’s restric-
tions and closure orders. And
regulators appear to be tak-
ing a light touch with most of
those who are not.
See Sandy / A12
MIKE HASSON
1954-2020
BOEING IN WASHINGTON STATE
Founder of
Portland’s
Hasson Co.
real estate
dies at 66
Mike Siegel/
The Seattle Times
One of two
25-by-90-foot
autoclaves at
Boeing’s Ad-
vanced De-
velopmental
Composites
research center
in Seattle.
BY JANET EASTMAN
The Oregonian
STORIED CENTER
FOR MANUFACTURING
R&D SET TO CLOSE
F
p
BY DOMINIC GATES
The Seattle Times
rom outside the Boeing secu-
rity fence, the giant windowless,
box like building across the road
from the Museum of Flight looks un-
remarkable, if mysterious.
For decades, drivers passing by
have wondered what exactly goes on
inside such a large structure. Soon, the
answer will be: nothing at all.
In yet another sign of Boeing’s
shrinking local footprint, managers
told affected employees just before
Christmas that in the next four to six
months the facility, known as the Ad-
vanced Developmental Composites
center, will be shuttered.
Just 10 years ago, Boeing expanded
the facility and portrayed it as a hub of
future innovation for in-house manu-
facturing capabilities.
Though relatively few people work
at the facility right at this point, its
symbolism will add to worry about
the future of the jet maker in this re-
gion. This is where for decades Boe-
ing conducted its most important and
secretive manufacturing research pro-
grams, both military and commercial.
Key technologies for building crit-
ical pieces of the B2 Stealth bomber
and the 787 Dreamliner were devel-
oped here. The facility features two
massive high-pressure ovens known
as autoclaves, used to bake carbon
composite materials to hardness, and
robotic equipment for fabricating
large composite structural pieces.
Boeing, on a drive to sharply reduce
its real estate holdings while it grap-
ples with the drastic downturn in its
business due to the pandemic, down-
played the significance of the closure.
“This is one of several steps we’re
taking to streamline our operations
and make more efficient use of our
facility space,” the company said in a
statement, adding that some noncom-
mercial airplane work will continue in
the building “for the time being.”
With Boeing commercial airplane
work at a low point, the number of
people directly affected by the closure
is relatively small at this point. The
Society of Professional Engineering
Employees in Aerospace union said it
has only 29 members currently work-
ing at the center.
Yet union spokesman Bill Dugovich
said news of the closure is worrisome
and the union is seeking more infor-
mation from the company.
“We are certainly concerned about
this, not only for the loss of the exist-
ing work, but also for upcoming work
on any new future airplanes,” he said.
Boeing denied that moving work out
of the region is part of the motivation.
Its statement said the development
of advanced composites for future
products currently completed at the
center will continue, but “will transi-
tion to other Boeing facilities, mostly
in the Puget Sound.”
A storied history of secret work
In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Boeing workers inside the Advanced
Developmental Composites center fab-
ricated large composite parts of the B-2
Stealth bomber, and in the mid-2000s
the wings for the F-22 Raptor jet fighter.
In the early 2000s, it’s where engi-
neers perfected the methods used to
fabricate the wings of Boeing’s last all-
new jet, the 787 Dreamliner — and
trained visiting engineers and me-
chanics from Japan and Italy to do the
production work.
In 2004, Boeing Vice President Frank
Statkus, then head of manufacturing
technology on the 787 Dreamliner pro-
gram, took reporters on a rare tour of
the facility — no cameras allowed — to
show off the first prototype tooling for
that incipient all-composite airplane, at
the time known as the 7E7. That day,
he declared that “nobody in the world”
could match the technology on display.
See Boeing / A12
Mike Hasson, the son of
a Portland grocer and a self-
taught salesman who founded
one of Oregon’s most successful
independent real estate compa-
nies, died Dec. 31 from meso-
thelioma, a cancer that affects
the lungs. He was 66.
The Lake Oswego resident,
civic leader and former CEO
and founder of Hasson Com-
pany Realtors was diagnosed 10
years ago with a malignant tu-
mor caused by inhaled asbestos
fibers, according to his family.
Michael Hasson was born
Oct. 16, 1954, in Portland to
Bob Hasson, a World War II
vet and vegetable seller, and
Marilyn Hasson, who would
later help manage her son’s real
estate offices.
Mike Hasson received his
real estate license in 1977, and
in 1983, Hasson and two part-
ners founded Handel, Hasson
& Jones, a residential real estate
firm in Lake Oswego.
In 1991, he started Hasson
Company Realtors with 12
carefully selected real estate
agents and a saying that he
didn’t know the “magic sauce,”
except that people and connec-
tions mattered.
Mike Hasson never compro-
mised quality over growth, said
Steve Studley, whom Hasson
named CEO three years ago.
And yet it succeeded.
In 2020, the company had
$2.2 billion in sales among 165
agents in offices in Lake Os-
wego, Northwest and Northeast
Portland, Vancouver, Clack-
amas, Wilsonville, Cannon
Beach, Hood River and Bend.
Since its founding, the com-
pany has transacted more than
$26 billion in total sales and
has ranked in the top 10 real
estate companies in the nation
and in the top five in the Pa-
cific Northwest, according to
Studley.
DOJ, federal court system hit by Russian hack
BY ERIC TUCKER AND
FRANK BAJAK
Associated Press
The Justice Department and
the federal court system dis-
closed on Wednesday that they
were among the dozens of U.S.
government agencies and pri-
vate businesses compromised
by a massive, months-long cy-
berespionage campaign that
U.S. officials have linked to
elite Russia hackers.
The extent of the damage
was unclear.
The department said that
3% of its Microsoft Office 365
email accounts were poten-
tially affected, but did not say
to whom those accounts be-
longed. There are no indica-
tions that classified systems
were affected, the agency said.
Office 365 isn’t just email but
a collaborative computing en-
vironment, which means that
shared documents were also
surely accessed, said Dmitri
Alperovitch, former chief tech-
nical officer of the cybersecu-
rity firm CrowdStrike.
Separately, the Adminis-
trative Office of U.S. Courts
informed federal judicial bod-
ies across the nation that the
courts’ nationwide case man-
agement system was breached.
That potentially gave the hack-
ers access to sealed court doc-
uments, whose contents are
highly sensitive.
The Justice Department
said that on Dec. 24 it detected
“previously unknown mali-
cious activity” linked to the
broader intrusions of federal
agencies revealed earlier that
month, according to a state-
ment from spokesman Marc
Raimondi.
Separately, the court office
said on its website that “an ap-
parent compromise” of the U.S.
judiciary’s case management
and electronic case file system
was under investigation.
The Department of Home-
land Security was scouring
the system, it said, and cited a
particular risk to sealed court
filings, whose disclosure could
jeopardize a lot more than ac-
tive criminal investigations.
“The potential reach is vast.
The actual reach is probably
significant,” said a federal court
official who spoke on condi-
tion of anonymity because they
were not authorized to disclose
the information. The official
confirmed that the scope of
the compromise was national
but it was not clear how wide-
spread.
See Hack / A12