A5
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 2021
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NASA chose SpaceX on
Friday to build the lunar
lander that will eventually
put the first woman and
person of color on the
moon.
Elon Musk’s Starship
— the futuristic, shiny
steel rocket ship that’s
been launching and ex-
ploding in Texas — beat
out landers proposed by
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and
Dynetics, a subsidiary of
Leidos. The contract is
worth $2.89 billion.
“We won’t stop at the
moon,” said NASA’s act-
ing Administrator Steve
Jurczyk. Mars is the ul-
timate goal, he told re-
porters.
NASA declined to pro-
vide a target launch date
for the moon-landing
Artemis mission, saying a
review is underway. The
Trump administration
had set a 2024 deadline,
but on Friday, NASA offi-
cials called it a goal.
“We’ll do it when it’s
safe,” said Kathy Lueders,
who leads NASA’s human
space exploration office.
S&P 500 hits
another record
Stocks added to their
recent gains Friday, driv-
ing the S&P 500 and Dow
Jones Industrial Average
to new highs.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4%,
led by gains in compa-
nies that rely directly
on consumer spending,
health care stocks and
banks, which benefited
from higher Treasury
yields. The benchmark
index notched its fourth
straight weekly gain.
The gains were tem-
pered by modest declines
in technology stocks,
which have been prone
to pull back when bond
yields move higher. Ris-
ing bond yields tend to
make shares in technol-
ogy companies that have
had a strong runup over
the past year look too ex-
pensive. Crude oil prices
slipped, weighing down
energy companies.
Bond yields rose
broadly after falling ear-
lier in the week. The yield
of the 10-year Treasury
note rose to 1.59% from
1.53% late Thursday. Still,
bond yields are down
from the highs they hit
earlier in the month,
when the 10-year note
traded at a yield of 1.75%.
Home construction
beats 2006 pace
U.S. housing construc-
tion rebounded strongly
in March to the fastest
pace since 2006 .
Builders began con-
struction on new homes
and apartments at a sea-
sonally adjusted annual
rate of 1.74 million units
in March, the Commerce
Department reported
Friday, a 19.4% increase
over February when
housing construction fell
by 11.3%. It was the fast-
est pace for homebuild-
ing since in June 2006
during the last housing
boom.
Severe storms raked
several regions of the
country in February, set-
ting construction back.
Economists expect
housing construction to
remain strong this year
given the record low level
of homes for sale. A new
report from mortgage
giant Freddie Mac con-
cluded that the housing
market is 3.8 million sin-
gle-family homes short
of what’s needed to
meet demand — a 52%
increase from a signifi-
cant housing shortage
in 2018.
— Bulletin wire reports
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Oregon House | COVID-19 legislation
BRIEFING
NASA picks SpaceX
for lunar lander
p
Employer jobless tax
cuts get full approval
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
The Oregon House voted
56-0 Thursday night in favor
of tax cuts that will save em-
ployers an estimated $2.4 bil-
lion over the next decade, re-
forms triggered by the sharp
rise in jobless claims during
the pandemic.
The legislation makes a
series of changes to how the
state supports its unemploy-
ment insurance trust fund.
Lawmakers say House Bill
3389, which now heads to the
Senate, will blunt the impact
of layoffs last year on what in-
dividual employers owe to the
fund and take a more relaxed
approach to keeping the fund
solvent in the future.
“This is a bill that really
does something,” said Rep.
Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, who
co-sponsored the legislation.
He described it as a salve for
restaurants, barbershops and
others that were forced to lay
off staff early in the pandemic
and would otherwise be fac-
ing a tax increase under the
state’s formula for funding
jobless benefits.
“This is a big deal for busi-
nesses ,” Holvey said.
The effort to reform unem-
ployment insurance funding
began amid a steep rise in taxes
for organizations that laid off
workers in 2020. In Oregon,
businesses that lay off the most
workers pay higher taxes to
keep the trust fund solvent.
See Tax cuts / A6
Bill extends time for
businesses to repay rent
BY JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
The Oregon House ap-
proved a bill Friday that would
give businesses until the end
of September to repay missed
rent accumulated during the
heart of the coronavirus pan-
demic.
The bill still needs approval
in the Senate but received bi-
partisan support in the House
in a 44-10 vote.
“This bill is coming a little
bit late, but we need to protect
our small businesses in this
state,” said Rep. Rob Nosse,
D-Portland, who sponsored
the legislation.
Oregon lawmakers allowed
the state’s moratorium on com-
mercial evictions to expire in
September but gave business
owners until the end of March
to repay their outstanding rent,
potentially preventing an on-
slaught of commercial evic-
tions over the last six months.
But that missed rent is now
coming due for struggling
businesses, who urged law-
makers to act quickly to extend
the grace period for them to
repay their outstanding rent.
See Rent / A6
LEGAL POT IN NEW YORK
Hemp farmers eager to expand
BY MICHAEL HILL
The Associated Press
L
egal marijuana is coming
to New York, and hemp
farmer Samir Mahadin sees it as
a potential lifeline.
Farmers dealing with
depressed prices for plants that
produce CBD are eager to take
part in a statewide marijuana
market expected to generate
billions of dollars a year once
retail sales start. They already
know how to grow and process
cannabis plants, because hemp
is essentially the same plant
with lower levels of THC,
Seth Wenig/AP
marijuana’s active ingredient.
Gail Hepworth, right, and Amy Hepworth, sisters and co-owners of Hepworth Farms in Milton, New York, relax Monday on bags
full of hemp plants .
Now they’re waiting on rules that
will allow them to switch seeds.
“I would love to get a license to
grow cannabis. My wife and I love
working with this plant. I believe in
its ability and power as a medicine,”
said Mahadin, who runs Breathing
Web Farms in the Finger Lakes with
his wife. “And it could save my farm
because what happened with the
hemp has been catastrophic.”
Last month, New York became the
second-largest state to legalize rec-
reational marijuana after California,
with retail sales expected to begin as
early as next year.
Existing medical marijuana busi-
nesses in New York are expected to
play a major role in the new adult
market, but lawmakers wrote in
provisions to mitigate market dom-
inance. Half of the licenses are sup-
posed to go to “social and economic
equity” applicants, which would in-
clude financially distressed farms.
Regulators are likely months
away from answering market-de-
fining questions such as how many
licenses will be made available and
how much they will cost. High prices
for cultivation licenses, for instance,
would freeze out some smaller farm-
ers from the market, said Allan Gan-
delman, president of the New York
Cannabis Growers & Processors As-
sociation.
And while commercial marijuana
is often grown in highly controlled,
indoor settings, Gandelman expects
regulations to allow farmers to grow
outdoors.
Gandelman, who runs Head &
Heal CBD products, is among about
700 hemp farmers in the state. Many
of them are motivated to move into
marijuana not only because of their
familiarity with the flower, but a
crash in commodity prices driven by
oversupply. Even growers who have
succeeded in the retail market for
CBD, like Gandelman, see marijuana
as integral to their future.
New Frontier Data estimates the
legal production of smokable flower
in New York will surge to 1.3 million
pounds by 2025, all of which would
have to be grown within the state.
“If you’re a cannabis grower, you
should be able to grow cannabis, pe-
riod,” said Gail Hepworth, CEO of
Hempire State Growers in the Hud-
son Valley.
Hepworth grows hemp at the large
organic farm she runs with her sister
in the Hudson Valley and they sell
CBD products retail and wholesale
through their Hempire business. She
said keeping farms like hers from the
marijuana market would be like tell-
ing a tomato farmer, “You can only
grow beefsteak. You can’t grow cherry
tomatoes. It just doesn’t make sense.”
She’d like to follow the same inte-
grated business model for marijuana
that they have for CBD, though
the law sets limits on most licensed
growers from running retail dispen-
saries.
One exception would be a “micro-
business” license that would allow
“limited” growing and selling. Gan-
delman compared it to New York’s
farm brewery program, but with
customers coming to picturesque
farms to buy craft buds instead of
craft beer.
The idea would link cannabis to
rural New York’s tourism industry.
“Something I could envision for
the northeastern states, and New
York is no exception, is for example
leaf peeping tours in the fall where
you tour a cannabis farm and then
you go wandering in the Adiron-
dacks,” said John Kagia chief knowl-
edge officer of New Frontier Data.
Less than 25% of workers have returned to offices
BY ROGER VINCENT
Los Angeles Times
People had started showing
up to the office again in greater
numbers, but fled for home as
the recent coronavirus surge
shook the Southern California
region, fresh data show.
Still, employers and land-
lords are betting that workers
will want to return as vaccina-
tions increase and virus fears
recede, even though demand
to rent space in office buildings
continues to shrink.
“By the stats, it’s not that en-
couraging,” said broker Todd
Doney of real estate services
company CBRE. “We certainly
have work ahead of us to get
through this. … But when the
governor (of California) an-
nounced no more COVID re-
strictions on June 15, that’s light
at the end of the tunnel for me.”
An average of 24% of em-
ployees in 10 major U.S. cities
were back to the office as of
April 7, down nearly a full per-
centage point from the week
before, according to Kastle Sys-
tems, which provides keycard
entry systems used by many
companies and tracks patterns
of workers’ card swipes.
In Los Angeles, the average
at Kastle’s 148 buildings was
22.1% and, like the national
average, took a significant dip
during the winter COVID-19
surge, but had been rising
again before the latest virus re-
surgence. Although beneath
the U.S. average, L.A.’s offices
were more full than five other
cities tracked by Kastle, includ-
ing San Jose at 16.7% and San
Francisco at 13.4%.
Uber, Google, Facebook
and Microsoft are among the
companies that have reopened
offices or are on the verge of
doing so, according to media
reports. And recent surveys
have shown that many com-
panies and their workers are
eager or at least willing to get
back to the office.
A February survey commis-
sioned by software company
Eden Workplace found 85%
of office workers are looking
forward to being back at work,
with many of them saying that
they miss socializing with their
colleagues. A customer poll
by marketing data provider
ZoomInfo in February found
that more than half plan to be
back in the office by June, with
IT firms leading the way.
A big unknown is how busi-
nesses will configure their office
space in a post-pandemic world.
See Offices / A6