slides: GoLocalPDX’s Top 14 News Stories of 2014
Monday, December 29, 2014
GoLocalPDX News Team
GoLocalPDX's top stories in 2014 covered a wide range of issues, from the 100 best high schools in Oregon, to knowing the most important facts about legal pot in Oregon.
See Slides Below: GoLocalPDX's Top 14 News Stories of 2014
Whether it was exposing the best Portland and Oregon have to offer -- or uncovering the worst of it -- GoLocalPDX wrote about it.
Here's a look at what dominated the news cycle -- and Portland's attention -- this past year.
Related Slideshow: GoLocalPDX’s Top 14 News Stories of 2014
#14
Most Dangerous Roads and Intersections in Oregon 2014
From clogged highway and freeway interchanges to city and county roads throughout Oregon, danger for drivers lurks at many corners.
GoLocalPDX analyzed data on high-crash intersections and stretches of road in the state using data provided by the Oregon Department of Transportation to find out what roads posed the most danger to Oregon drivers.
The state data provides the number of crashes, crash rate and severity of crashes in a master list aimed at determining where resources should be allocated. GoLocalPDX crunched the numbers and focused on four areas - total number of accidents, fatalities, injuries, and property damage only.
GoLocalPDX sifted through data from roads and intersections across the state. These roads accounted for 3,468 crashes, 55 fatalities and 1,841 injuries in 2013.
The three most dangerous intersections in Oregon are all in Portland: No. 1 is an interchange on U.S. Highway 26.
#13
Coal Export Terminal Rejected Amid Collapsing Global Market
The Oregon Department of State Lands (ODSL) rejected an appeal by the state of Wyoming to restart a coal export terminal in Boardman, but some say a collapsing global coal market may do more damage to the industry than any government agency or green advocate ever could.
In August, Oregon environmentalists celebrated when the state ruled against a coal export terminal proposed for the Port of Morrow. Located along the Columbia River in East Oregon, the Coyote Island coal export terminal at the Port of Morrow in Boardman would have transferred nearly 8 million tons of Powder River Basin (PRB) coal from Montana and Wyoming onto barges bound for Asia.
The project was financed by Australian coal company Ambre Energy, which claimed the Morrow-Pacific project would create “thousands” of jobs.
#12
PSU Student Says School Failed to Properly Investigate Rape Complaint
Eden Paul, a 20-year-old Portland State University student, claims the school failed to properly investigate and pursue her rape complaint. After filing a rape allegation with campus police in June, the University’s internal judicial process took over.
Paul said while the University was good about ensuring she had access to information on the case during the school’s internal investigation, she felt uneasy about the whole process.
“It was hard to know what the school’s agenda was,” she said. “It didn’t feel like the school was really on my side at all. It was hard for me to understand. I thought that I did what I was supposed to do and it ended up being a much more difficult process.”
#11
20 Large Oregon Employers That Will Still Test You For Pot
Oregon may have legalized marijuana in the 2014 midterm election, but many of the state’s large employers will still test their employees for drug use.
Measure 91, which will go into effect on July 1, 2015, legalized recreational marijuana use in Oregon for adults 21 and older. It was passed by 55 percent margin.
Although state law makes the drug legal, federal law still gives employers the right to fire or not hire someone based on marijuana use.
#10
Bitcoin ATM Opens in Pioneer Place
Bitcoin has become so mainstream in Portland that there's even a Bitcoin automated teller machine in the Pioneer Place Mall. The machine was installed in November and is one the first ATMs of its kind in Portland to allow people to convert their digital currency into U.S. dollars.
#9
EXCLUSIVE: Kitzhaber Faces New Questions
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber didn't list his fiancee Cylvia Hayes in a 2013 ethics document that required him to name lobbyists he had a relationship with.
In a Statement of Economic Interests document obtained by GoLocalPDX and filed with the Oregon Ethics Commission, Kitzhaber stated that his household received income from two companies, Energy Foundation and Resource Media, that had contracted with Hayes' consulting firm E3 Strategies.
But under a section that required him to disclose “any compensated lobbyist who was associated with a business with which you or a member or your household was associated during 2013” Kitzhaber simply put “N/A” or not applicable.
#8
Governor’s “First Lady” Claim is Legal Fiction
A state ethics investigation into the actions of Cylvia Hayes were complicated by the fact that her role as a public official and as “First Lady” of Oregon is nowhere to be found in Oregon State law.
After the state GOP filed an ethics complaint, Cylvia Hayes was the focus of a state ethics investigation to determine if she, as First Lady, broke rules governing the behavior of a public official. The problem is, there’s no such thing as a “First Lady” under Oregon state law.
#7
Ten Things You Need to Know Now That Pot is Legal in Oregon
Even though supporters are celebrating the state's legalization of marijuana, Oregon (probably) won’t evolve into a pothead’s utopia any time soon.
People who freqently use the Schedule I drug may not be ready to abide by the law's 86 sections-worth of regulations, clarifications and restrictions that will determine the landscape of legalization.
The familiar long-held concerns for marijuana users are slowly being replaced with a new curiousity: what’s it going to be like now to be a pothead in Oregon?
#6
The 50 Most Violent Towns and Cities in Oregon
The Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual report tracking the nation’s violent crimes. The data is broken down on a state-to-state, city-to-city basis and includes all reported murders, aggravated assaults, robberies and rapes.
The report stated that the national crime rate decreased by 4.4 percent overall compared to 2012.
The information has been released since 1930 and is often referred to as an indicator for how much funding a given law enforcement agency may require, but is generally not used to make decisions pertaining to how an agency prevents crime.
The city that had the highest amount of violent crime in relation to its population was Medford. Police Chief Tim George, who calls himself a "numbers nut" and said he reviews his department's monthly crime reports frequently, doesn't agree with the data - which shows larger cities than Medford reporting relatively similar rates of aggravated assault.
#5
Online Hackers Target Portland Police Officers
Portland's social activists and some hackers have "targeted" 22 police officers for their activity on social media.
The officers were named as targets for an upcoming release of their personal contact information, according to individuals affiliated with Anonymous - a politically-influential collective of activists, social organizers and hackers. The reason the officers were targeted was for allegedly having shared a photo on Facebook of a Portland Police badge covered with a wristband that read “I am Darren Wilson” across the front. Some of the officers targeted on the list were included because they chose to “like” the photo, sources said.
Darren Wilson is the former Ferguson, Mo. police officer who wasn't charged for shooting and killing 18-year-old Mike Brown Aug. 9.
#4
Biden Lauds Oregon Senator Who Resigned Amid Sexual Harassment Claims
During a speech to women in September, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden praised former U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, the Oregon Senator who resigned in 1995 amid numerous accusations of sexual harassment, Business Insider reported.
During a Democratic National Committee's Women’s Leadership Forum meeting, Vice President Biden held up Packwood as an example of Republicans who previously championed issues now mostly favored by Democrats, such as raising the minimum wage.
#3
The Top 100 High Schools in Oregon
GoLocalPDX revealed its top 100 high schools in Oregon with Lake Oswego Senior High leading the pack.
GoLocal’s Top High Schools in Oregon ranking for 2014 is based on a formula developed at Babson College in Massachusetts. The rankings were determined by calculating how the schools faired on a set of national and local benchmarks. The criteria included whether or not schools met state standards in core curriculum, average SAT testing scores, spending per pupil, and graduation rates.
GoLocalPDX ranked 156 of the state's 193 high schools, or those schools for which complete data was available.
#2
Portland's Most Dangerous Neighborhoods
Portland’s most dangerous neighborhoods*, ranked by crime, fire emergencies and the presence of dangerous intersections, are disproportionately clustered in east Portland, according to a GoLocalPDX data analysis.
Taking five years of police and fire data from the city, and combining it with the Oregon Department of Transportation’s ranking on the city’s 60 most dangerous intersections, GoLocalPDX crunched the numbers to see where the dangers lay.
Taken together, five east Portland neighborhoods - Hazelwood, Lents, Powellhurst-Gilbert, Centennial and Montavilla - topped the ranks of most dangerous neighborhoods due to their nexus of high crime, fires and the fact that they are home to some of the city’s deadliest intersections.
#1
5 Oregon Towns More Dangerous Than Portland
Five small towns in Oregon have more violent crimes per person than the city of Portland, according to a GoLocalPDX analysis of FBI crime data.
Many would think the state’s most populous city, Portland, where police say gang violence is on the rise and 20 murders occurred in 2012, is the most violent city in the state of Oregon.
A look at the sheer number of violent crimes reported to the FBI in Portland, when compared to other cities in the state, dwarfs other cities by the hundreds.
While Portland topped the state for the total number of violent crimes in 2012 with 3,093, a handful of Oregon towns had more violent crimes per capita (per person) than the Rose City.
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