PODCAST · government
Sightline Institute Research
by Sightline Institute
Cascadia’s sustainability think tank brings you a feed of its latest research articles, in text-to-audio recordings. Learn how the region can advance abundant housing for vibrant communities; reform our democratic systems and elections to honor the public’s priorities, including its support for climate solutions; make a just transition away from fossil fuels and into a 21st-century energy economy; and model forestry and agricultural practices that rebuild our soils, ecosystems, and rural economies. View articles in full at sightline.org.
Episodes
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Oregon’s New Path to Inclusionary Housing: Fully Funded and Flexible
Underfunded inclusionary zoning programs, which likely slowed housing production in the City of Portland from 2017 to 2024, are on track to be illegal in the Portland area. A bill that cleared Oregon's legislature on March 4 requires jurisdictions in the area to regularly self-evaluate these...
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11% of Northwest Residents Live in Fire Country; 100% Pay the Price
As of 2023, nearly 1.6 million people in the Northwest lived in areas facing high wildfire hazard, a figure that climbed eight percent since 2018. In most Northwest states, population is growing fastest in the places most likely to burn. Yet the cost of continuing to build into fire-prone areas...
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How to Close Montana Primary Elections’ ‘Drop-and-Swap’ Loophole
It went down like a game of three-card monte, with Montana voters as the mark. Eight minutes before the June primary filing deadline, Kurt Alme, who until that day was the US Attorney for the District of Montana, put his name in the running for US Senate. Moments later, sitting Senator Steve…
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How Threats to Voting by Mail Could Affect Cascadia
How Threats to Voting by Mail Could Affect Cascadia Voting by mail has a long and proven track record. It increases turnout, gives voters more time to consider issues and candidates, and saves election administrators money. It's just as free from fraud as other methods of voting—which is to say,...
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Seattle's No-Cost Emissions Cut
Through the first decades of this century, the greater Seattle area had a secret weapon for fighting climate change: it let people choose to live closer to each other. Using a study of neighborhood-level carbon emissions, Sightline estimates that new residents to the Seattle area produced about 5...
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Fast, Affordable, Illegal
Since NW Tiny Homes opened on Columbia Boulevard in Portland, Oregon, last July, business has been good. By September, the company had already hit its sales goal for the year. It sells stylish park model RVs ranging from $49,900 to $83,000, making them great options for people who are otherwise...
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Ranked Choice Voting, the Utah Way
January 1, 2026, marked the conclusion of a remarkable experiment in American ranked choice voting. A bipartisan bill passed by the Utah legislature in 2019 led some of the state's reddest cities to adopt a ranked choice voting pilot, a program widely appreciated by their mostly Republican…
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Districts Won’t Truly Represent Deschutes County Residents
A new proposal to create districts in central Oregon's Deschutes County illustrates all the flaws of the winner-take-all election model that predominates in Cascadia and beyond. It's also a case study of how much better our elections could be. The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners recently...
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A Charter Commissioner’s Guide to Election Reform
This January, dozens of Cascadians are sitting down for the first meetings of charter review commissions across the region with the same goal in mind: improving local government. They picked a great place to start. Municipal charter reviews—during which a panel of residents suggests amendments to...
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Katie Wilson Can Be Seattle’s Climate Mayor for Renters
Seattle's new Mayor, Katie Wilson and I share more than a few things in common. We're both parents to toddlers. Scandalously, our children's grandmothers help cover a portion of sky-high Seattle daycare costs (though my daughter's 2026 daycare cost hike just swallowed my in-laws' contribution)....
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How the 2026 Washington Legislature Can Right-Size the Power Grid
One month after unprecedented floods surged across Washington, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, lawmakers will convene in Olympia to discuss climate policy. This latest climate change-fueled disaster, in an ever-extending string of them, is yet another reminder of what is…
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New Oregon Rules Will Re-Legalize Neighborhood Apartments
UPDATE, Dec. 4, 2025: The proposed rules discussed in this article were unanimously approved. This article was edited to reflect minor amendments and describe the rules as approved. Two-and-a-half years after a bipartisan bill promised "transformational" changes to Oregon's housing policy, Gov....
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Portland’s Inclusionary Zoning Program Is Finally Performing, New Data Suggests
For the first seven years of its existence, Portland's inclusionary zoning program seemed to be working like the wrong end of a magnet. Housing projects skidded, twisted, and jumped away from the city's 2017 mandate that a share of homes in most new buildings be sold or rented for less than it…
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The High Cost of Slow Permitting
Delays, delays, delays. It takes forever to build the transmission lines that carry power from where it's produced to where people use it. Idaho Power and PacifiCorp can tell you. The two utilities thought they'd be starting construction back in 2018 on the Boardman-to-Hemingway (B2H)…
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A Two-Word Fix for Alaska’s Ballot Confusion
In 2024 Alaska Democrats were understandably incensed when Eric Hafner, a convict who had never lived in their state, ran for Alaska's US House seat as a Democrat. State and federal law allowed Hafner to seek the office, and state law let him register with the party he preferred. The state...
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No More 48-Candidate Races
A surplus of candidates can ruin any political campaign, and it's happened twice in recent groundbreaking elections in Cascadia. Fortunately, neighboring jurisdictions have demonstrated the solution to this problem: raise filing fees. Alaska and Portland each recently debuted a new,...
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Will an Electoral Glitch Send a Republican to Patty Murray’s Seat in 2028?
When six-term US Senator Patty Murray is up for reelection in 2028, the Washington state leader will be 78 years old. If she does not retire on her own, she may well find herself challenged by younger Democrats, as is now happening to 79-year-old Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Gerontocracy…
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Yukoners to Weigh in on Ranked Voting
If you had a chance to overhaul your government, where would you begin? Last year, 38 Yukoners from every corner of the territory stepped up to answer that question in a citizens' assembly on electoral reform. Their recommendation? Upgrade the Yukon Legislative Assembly's first-past-the-post...
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To Build Fast, Think Small
Speed matters. And to people looking for a home today, it matters a great deal whether that home is built next year, or in ten. If Cascadia's leaders really believed in speed, then they would focus more on re-legalizing small, neighborhood-size buildings with 6 to 12 homes each. But despite…
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Time to Tune Up Washington's Primaries
On September 4, 2024, Democrats across Washington State let out a collective sigh of relief. A recount of the primary election finally confirmed that one of their own, then-King County Councilor Dave Upthegrove, would appear on the November ballot. Even though Democrats had won 270,000 more votes...
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For Oregonians, Better Elections Are Hidden in Plain Sight
In 2024, Democrat-endorsed candidates swept all seven seats on the Bend Oregon, city council - even though city elections are technically nonpartisan. Democrats certainly outnumber Republicans in Bend, but 20 percent of city voters are registered with the G.O.P., and many more are not affiliated…
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Homes on Wheels Are Filling a Big Gap in Portland
The Maine family needed a cheaper place for one of them to live. And quickly. It was 2024. Synia Maine, 56, had just developed a back injury so severe that she had to retire from her career as a hairstylist a decade earlier than planned. Suddenly, she had increased medical bills and no income.…
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How Cascadia Can Maintain Its Heat Pump Momentum
Meeting Cascadia's climate goals will require millions of households to stop burning fossil fuels for warmth. In Oregon and Washington, buildings emit more pollution than any other sector besides transportation. (The building sector is the third highest emitting in British Columbia and Idaho, and...
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Who Owns a Utility Matters Less for Climate Than the Rules They Play By
Cascadia's transition to safe, healthy, gas-free homes and businesses is not moving quickly enough, and the region's gas utilities bear much of the blame. Consider a few recent examples: In 2022 Oregon's gas utilities sued the state over its landmark Climate Protection Program, setting back...
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Seattleites Keep Their Model Campaign Finance Reform Program
With 57 percent in favor of Proposition 1 (and 150,000 ballots in; last updated August 7, 2025), Seattle voters have reaffirmed their commitment to advancing a more democratic city government. Seattle's iconic Democracy Voucher Program will have funding for another ten years. This renewal means…
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“If One Path Is Blocked, Nature Will Find Another”
Editor's introduction: John Vaillant is a Cascadian icon. An award-winning and bestselling author residing in Vancouver, British Columbia, he has written gripping tales, both fiction and nonfiction, on the nuanced interfaces between people and nature. Vaillant's 2023 Pulitzer finalist book Fire...
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Oregon Decides It Was a Mistake to Let Cities Ban Homes
Over the last eight years, a bipartisan coalition of Oregon lawmakers has led North America on a new trend: state-level zoning. As zoning restrictions spread across the continent almost exactly 100 years ago, state and provincial governments mostly delegated to cities all decisions about where…
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British Columbians Could Enjoy Better City Elections
You made it! The last contestant standing on an old-school game show. "Behind Door Number One" your charming host reveals, "a pile of rocks!" Behind Door Two, he grins, "a slightly larger pile of rocks!" And, gesturing to the last door with a glimmer of gold pouring out from beneath, "or will our...
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Seattle’s Democracy Vouchers Are Popular Across the Political Spectrum
Pop quiz: What do Bruce Harrell and Lorena Gonzalez have in common? Hint: It's something they also share with both Tammy Morales and Tanya Woo, as well as Ann Davison and Nichole Thomas-Kennedy, Cathy Moore and ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Dan Strauss and Heidi Wills, and many others besides. These...
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For Juneau, There’s a Better Way than Cascade Voting
There's a reason most experience the thrill of whitewater rafting with a seasoned guide. Rivers have forks, twists, and turns, and it helps to have someone along who can navigate them. In a tumultuous time for politics in the United States, leading election reform in a place like Juneau Alaska…
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Democracy Vouchers Are a Bargain
With a miniscule portion of the city's budget, democracy vouchers deliver a whopping impact. The program's funding is up for renewal this August, and it's a great deal. The renewal budget, $4.5 million per year in property taxes, is just 0.053 percent of the city's $8.5 billion 2025 budget.…
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In Seattle Elections, Dark Money Follows Competition, Not Democracy Vouchers
Critics of Seattle's democracy vouchers often point to one trend as evidence of the program's fallibility: a rise in local "independent expenditures." That is, dark money campaign funding vehicles like super PACs. Despite their upsides, critics say, vouchers have simply pushed millions of…
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The 1,083-Page Environmental Assessment That Ignores Climate Change and Tribes
In 2023, Washington state legislators attempted to make it easier to build long-distance power lines. Recognizing that more wires are essential to reaching 100 percent clean electricity - and that, quote: "transmission projects take a decade or more to develop and permit" end-quote, lawmakers...
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Oregon’s Zoning Reforms Are Working, But They Need Some Upgrades
Six years after a monumental rezone, Governor Kotek's HB-2138 will fill the gaps to more fully legalize starter homes. Almost six years after Oregon became the first state to re-legalize duplexes, fourplexes, and cottage clusters throughout urban areas, the effects have arrived. From Gresham to...
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How to Talk About Parking Reform - and Win
Our road-tested messaging guide to gain more great neighborhoods and the homes we need, and to kick excess asphalt to the curb. Parking policy shapes our lives. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. Today's rules chronically overprescribe far more parking than people really need. Parking is...
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Six Reasons Seattle-ites Should Be Proud of Their Democracy Vouchers
A decade in, and up for renewal in August, Seattle's model campaign funding program has blasted past even its ambitious initial goals. Money doesn't always win elections. But it sure does help. And Cascadia's biggest city has a proven tool that democratizes who gives to city-level candidates:...
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How Washington State Won Parking Reform
Lessons and strategies for parking flexibility advocates elsewhere. Last week, Governor Bob Ferguson's signature made it official: Washington has passed the strongest statewide rollback of costly parking mandates in the United States. The bill does many things, but put simply, it means that in…
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Washington Takes Statewide Zoning Reform to the Next Level
Lawmakers just passed groundbreaking bills on parking, TOD, and more. There's a healthy competition brewing between states that are taking action for housing abundance. But as of May 2025, Washington leads the pack. Its legislature just passed best-in-the-US bills on both parking and...
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A Climate Hawk's Guide to Northwest Data Centers
Data centers are the first real test of the region's climate ambitions. They might also create opportunities to achieve them. A Sightline Special Report by Sightline's Climate and Energy Program Director Emily Moore. Published on May 14, 2025. For a full list of sources, attributions, and...
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Northwest Data Centers: A Climate Test and Potential Opportunity
A Sightline report finds that - with the right policies - the region could harness data center demand for clean power to decarbonize the broader economy. Each week seems to bring a new warning about a looming, unprecedented surge in electricity demand in the Northwest, with data centers largely…
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Montana’s Housing Miracle Strikes Twice
Bipartisan efforts won a string of bills for more homes, lower costs, and less red tape for Montanans - with lessons for other states. Something big is brewing in Big Sky Country: an ongoing bipartisan revolution in housing policy. In 2023 Montana passed an ambitious package of land use reforms,...
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Whatcom County Eyes a Prime Election Upgrade
Proportional representation would deliver fairer representation for voters countywide. Can your voice be heard if you're in a small red bubble in a blue sea? Or if you see yourself as one of a handful of blue flowers in a field of red? In most of Cascadia's governing bodies, the answer is no. In...
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Republicans Skeptical, Democrats Divided on Election Reform
Understanding the partisan split on nonpartisan electoral upgrades. ... In an era where everything from electric vehicles to candy mascots seem to divide Americans largely along partisan lines, there's one thing voters across the country agree upon: the political system isn't working well....
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Washington Housing Bills to Watch in 2025
More than two dozen bills aim to unlock great neighborhoods, greater affordability, and less red tape for Washingtonians. Washingtonians from Spokane to Sequim, Washougal to Wenatchee, are struggling to afford homes and rents in their communities due to a deep housing shortage. While recent…
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Ending Subsidies for New Gas Hook-Ups Can Save Cascadians Millions
Line extension allowances are on their way out, and regulators can finish the job. Line extension allowances - the term of art for the utility customer-funded subsidies for new gas pipes - are finally, slowly on their way out of Cascadia. This is thanks to regulators who recognize the…
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Washington’s Bills to Safeguard and Upgrade Democracy in 2025
State leaders are considering measures to allow ranked choice voting and turnout-boosting even-year elections, protect voting rights, increase language resources for elections, and more. Washington State leaders are pursuing democracy and elections upgrades that would improve representation…
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The 4 Big Reasons Why States Should Ditch Parking Mandates
Parking reform unlocks more homes and great neighborhoods, while cutting red tape and excess asphalt, sprawl, and pollution. Cities, towns, and jurisdictions around the world are adopting a powerful reform that accelerates homebuilding, eliminates red tape for small businesses, reduces pollution...
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The Next Big Thing in Low-Cost Housing
Meet MDUs, a low-cost, fast-build, flexible solution for more homes now. Communities across Cascadia face a dire shortage of homes that is driving up prices and rents for everyone. From seniors wanting to downsize and age in place, to young people starting out and seeking apartments near their...
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Washington Bill Would Cap Excessive Parking Mandates Around the State
More trees, senior living, daycares, and lower-cost housing for Washington cities and towns - and less pavement. In 2023 Washington state adopted a raft of bills unlocking more home choices, at more affordable prices, in cities and towns across the state. It was hailed as the year of housing. The...
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Worried about Infrastructure Costs? Then End the Apartment Ban
Allowing more homes, in all shapes and sizes, makes it easier and cheaper for communities to tackle infrastructure challenges. Editor's note: Sightline Institute is co-publishing this article with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. View its version here. The costs of public…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Cascadia’s sustainability think tank brings you a feed of its latest research articles, in text-to-audio recordings. Learn how the region can advance abundant housing for vibrant communities; reform our democratic systems and elections to honor the public’s priorities, including its support for climate solutions; make a just transition away from fossil fuels and into a 21st-century energy economy; and model forestry and agricultural practices that rebuild our soils, ecosystems, and rural economies. View articles in full at sightline.org.
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Sightline Institute
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Sightline Institute Research currently has 60 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Cascadia’s sustainability think tank brings you a feed of its latest research articles, in text-to-audio recordings. Learn how the region can advance abundant housing for vibrant communities; reform our democratic systems and elections to honor the public’s priorities, including its support for...
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