Portland Drizzle

Surprise — it's not raining. Portland is serving up a rare February gift: sunny skies and a high of around 53°F.

Today we've got a mayor who may be quietly killing the city's own tear gas ordinance before the ink is dry, a sex trafficking conviction that should be front page news but somehow got buried under everything else, and Oregon lawmakers trying to figure out how to keep the Trail Blazers from becoming someone else's problem.

Portland City Council passed an ordinance in December to fine detention facilities for creating "nuisances" — specifically, the kind where federal agents repeatedly pepper spray protesters, seniors, children, and at least one person in a chicken costume outside the South Waterfront ICE detention center, sending chemical clouds drifting into neighboring apartment buildings. So naturally, the question now is whether Mayor Keith Wilson is quietly letting that ordinance die before it can do anything. Council members Morillo and Green sent a letter this week accusing the mayor's office of dragging its feet on enforcement, warning that the implementation framework has stalled in a way that looks less like bureaucracy and more like strategy. A federal judge has separately extended a restraining order limiting agents to using munitions only when facing imminent physical threat. The ordinance is still technically on the books. Whether it ever becomes more than a symbolic gesture appears to depend on a mayor who hasn't exactly been racing to the finish line.

A Portland man was sentenced this week to more than 24 years in federal prison for sex trafficking three teenagers. The victims were minors when the abuse began, and the case involved coercion, exploitation, and the kind of details that make it impossible to understand how this doesn't lead every newscast. It didn't. It got a brief mention. The sentence, at least, reflects the gravity of the crimes even if the coverage didn't. Federal prosecutors handled the case, and the conviction stands as a reminder that beneath every day's worth of housing scandals and stadium deals, there are real crimes against real people that deserve more than a scroll-past.

Senate Bill 1501 cleared its first committee on Thursday — a 4-1 vote in the Senate Rules Committee — moving Oregon one step closer to borrowing $365 million to renovate the aging Moda Center. Add in Portland Mayor Keith Wilson's pledge of $120 million and Multnomah County's promised $88 million, and the public tab for keeping the Trail Blazers in town now exceeds the $600 million renovation cost the team itself proposed. The Blazers, for their part, have praised the bill, sent lobbyists and Terry Porter to the Capitol, and still haven't signed the 20-year lease that is a legal precondition for any money to flow. Texas billionaire Tom Dundon, the incoming owner, has not publicly committed to keeping the team in Portland. It's a lot of public money for a franchise whose fans are being asked to trust a new owner who hasn't said much of anything. But as the mayor put it: losing the Blazers would be "a calamitous blow." In Portland, that's apparently what a binding commitment looks like.

February 28, 1944: Portland delivered its first Victory Ship — a faster, upgraded version of the Liberty Ship — from its Kaiser shipyards, then the most productive in the nation. During World War II, Portland built more ships than almost any other American city. The irony of a city that once built ships on deadline now struggling to deploy $106 million in housing funds is left as an exercise for the reader.

There you have it — a day as surprisingly pleasant as Portland's February weather usually isn't. Fifty-three degrees and sunny is basically shorts weather around here, so go outside. The mayor may be quietly defusing his own ordinance, a sex trafficker is finally heading to prison, and someone is doing drag bingo tonight for free. Dress light. Take a jacket anyway. You know the drill.