August 2022 - Page 5

 Former state Sen. Betsy Johnson prepares to submit 17 boxes with 48,214 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.  By JULIA SHUMWAY/Oregon Capital Chronicle SALEM — Betsy Johnson’s months-long campaign to make it on the November ballot culminated Tuesday with volunteers stacking 17 boxes of signature sheets in a set of wire cage shelves at the Oregon Secretary of

By PETER WONG/Oregon Capital Bureau Oregon Chief Justice Martha Walters is planning to remove all the members of the Public Defense Services Commission, the state panel that oversees legal representation for indigent criminal defendants. Walters disagreed with the outcome of commission proceedings last week that left Stephen Singer as executive director of the Oregon Office of Public Defense Services, which

By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle  Concerns that a new map showing wildfire risks across Oregon will lead to property insurance hikes are unfounded, state financial regulators said Friday. Insurers have not filed the paperwork to raise rates for high-risk properties and have told officials at the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, which regulates property insurance, they do not

 Many emergency rooms, like the one at Oregon Health & Science University, are packed. (Christine Torres Hicks/OHSU) By LYNNE TERRY/Oregon Capital Chronicle The hospital crisis in Oregon is playing out in emergency rooms around the state. Patients in pain wait in lobbies for hours. Some end up on gurneys in hallways while waiting for a room. After they’re treated and

 Initiative & Referendum Campaign Management Services used Craigslist to hire petition circulators for Betsy Johnson’s campaign for governor.  By JULIA SHUMWAY/Oregon Capital Chronicle Betsy Johnson has counted on her “Betsy Brigades,” groups of volunteers circulating petitions, to gather the nearly 24,000 signatures she needs as a nonaffiliated gubernatorial candidate to make it on the November ballot. But she also paid