More frequent blackouts could result from BPA job cuts, experts say
Experts warn that job cuts initiated by the Trump administration at Bonneville Power Administration will have negative long-term impacts on the region's electricity system.
So far, more than 400 positions have been cut.
Bonneville manages 75% of the transmission lines in the region crucial to delivering electricity to more than 3 million people.
Workers at the agency need the expertise to respond to power outages and to plan for our growing power needs.
"There is a lot of important nuance that has to be done just right in order to meet our energy needs," said Greg Dotson, who teaches Energy Law at the University of Oregon.
In the long term, he told OPB that job cuts at the agency could hinder the Pacific Northwest’s desire to grow its economy and build more housing — things that need a lot of electricity.
Hal Nelson teaches a class about Bonneville at Portland State University. He said the job cuts won’t save the government money since BPA is self funded.
"The risks of these job cuts massively outweigh any benefits, much less the benefits that were claimed for the federal budget, which there are zero," Nelson said. "So to me, it's a solution looking for a problem and creating its own problems."
Nelson told OPB that the move will make it harder to keep and recruit talent in the future.
ID could update campaign finance laws in response to out-of-state contributions
This week, an Idaho House committee will begin considering a series of bills that would modernize the state’s 50-year-old campaign finance laws.
Secretary of State Phil McGrane said legislative leaders have been motivated by rapid growth in the amount of out-of-state money spent on campaigns in Idaho.
He said he’s interested in requiring faster and more frequent reporting of contributions, then posting that information on his agency’s website so that voters can learn more about who is financing campaigns.
"We have these requirements but they’re vague. Everyone’s familiar with the ‘paid-for’ disclaimer.," McGrane said. "We now have specific language the chairman highlighted to make sure that a citizen, when they get it, they can easily go to the website and look up that name and find it. Just adding some of that level of detail so that people can actually trace it back."
One bill introduced Friday would allow candidates who are the target of false claims to submit those claims to the Secretary of State’s office.
The department would investigate the claims and then perhaps highlight them as false on its website.
Outdoor recreation in the NW could be hard hit after federal firings
Federal workers across the country continue to lose their jobs under mandates from the Trump administration. Many of the people being fired in the Northwest worked in recreation.
Jaelle Downs was a wilderness ranger for the Cle Elum Ranger District in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area.
A lot of work by Downs and her coworkers was done early in the spring before trails open to the public.
"We’re the ones helping prepare those sites for the season. We do the hazard tree assessing, we pick up the trash, and we maintain those sites throughout the summer," she said.
Despite glowing reviews from her supervisor, Downs was fired last week. So were many of her friends and colleagues.
Without many of the seasonal workers the U.S. Forest Service relied on — like Downs — she worries wilderness toilets will be overflowing, trash will pile up and areas vulnerable to wildfires will not be cleaned up.
Maddi Bacon has worked for the National Park Service for the last five years. Often supporting wildland firefighting teams. But now, their job is stuck in limbo; they're not hired, or fired.
Bacon said many of the positions who support firefighting have been terminated.
"That’s logistics, that’s supply, the incident command teams, GIS, all of these other things that make wildland firefighting able to happen — those people are losing those jobs," she said.
All this could mean a more dangerous fire season to come for both firefighters and the public, Bacon said.
WSU Spokane, Fairchild formalize research partnership
Washington State University Spokane and the service members at Fairchild Air Force Base will be collaborating on future research and its real-world applications.
The university’s medical school has already done some work with Fairchild, but the agreement signed Friday formalizes the partnership.
Associate Professor Dr. Kimberly Honn told SPR News one of the most important things about this cooperation is the ability for researchers and service members to form relationships through their work.
"If we come in with, ‘Here's our knowledge and we're gonna fix everything,’ but we know nothing about what they do, it's really not going to be effective," she said. "But when we can get to know each other and they can see where our expertise lies, where we can see where their needs are, we can work together to form really effective solutions."
Honn has already collaborated with Fairchild on sleep research.
"When I'm working with, especially military operations, if I came in as a sleep researcher and just told you sleep eight hours every night, never work nights, that wouldn't go over well," she said. "That's just not a practical solution for them.
“When you have either night shifts or extended operations or long international flights, how can we anticipate what kind of mistakes people are likely to make? Can we prevent those mistakes? Can we help them to perform better or adapt more quickly?” she explained.
Honn said this partnership will hopefully allow both groups to secure more funds for research partnerships, as well as for education and training and to work more closely together to find solutions to problems faced by service members.
Legislative leaders narrow their focus after Friday deadline kills bills
The Washington legislature has focused its attention on a few hundred bills that survived a Friday deadline for passing out of their initial committees.
Among those still in the mix is a bill that would exempt Spokane’s waste-to-energy plant from participating in the state’s carbon cap-and-trade program.
State law says that plant, by the beginning of 2027, must reduce its carbon dioxide emissions below a certain level or the county must buy credits to offset those emissions.
What rankles Spokane area leaders is that landfills that create methane gas aren’t subject to that law.
Spokane County Public Works Director Kyle Twohig said some of those facilities emit more greenhouse gases than the Spokane plant.
"It is not fair or equitable to Spokane than landfills were exempted from cap-and-invest, while Spokane’s waste-to-energy plant, the only one in the state, was not," he said. "The impact of cap-and-invest on this crucial piece of infrastructure would have a significant financial impact on our local community."
Local officials say it could lead to higher garbage fees if the county is required to buy carbon credits.
Opponents of the bill say waste-to-energy plants are not required to follow the state’s rules for capturing methane, which means they hinder the state’s ability to meet its climate goals.
The bill was voted out of committee last week, but legislative leaders say it’s still a work in progress.
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Reporting by Kyra Buckley, Doug Nadvornick, Lauren Paterson and Owen Henderson