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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I'm fully of the opinion that while every politician in the PNW wants to promise high-speed rail for votes, absolutely none of them want to actually make the hard fiscal and political decisions to get the project constructed, for they will never reap the political rewards. The limbo is intentional.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

For all of the mockery California's high-speed rail has gotten, the PNW's attempt is even worse. It started in 2016, and literally nothing has been done in 10 years, even though tens of millions have been spent. It has entirely been "stakeholder engagement." www.columbian.com/news/2026/oc...

columbian.com

Plan for high-speed rail from Portland to Vancouver, B.C. advances

Washington transportation leaders are making progress on a plan that will determine the viability of building a high-speed rail line between Portland and Vancouver, B.C.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

> Also means the affordability restrictions (usually 60-99 years in Portland metro) disappear forever Not always true. There's a lot of caselaw saying that restrictive covenants that serve a public policy purpose (like affordable housing) are not "interests" that can be extinguished by bankruptcy.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I agree with some of that, we should lower the paperwork burden. But "debt buydown" implies further subsidy to compensate for...overbuilding workforce housing units through excess public subsidy. Wouldn't it be better to let the building owners go bankrupt & sell, to recapitalize the assets?

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I get that, but Portland housing policy operates in the world we have, not the world we want to have. You can't create unsupported housing for the most marginalized and expect it to just work out. Right now a lot of tax money is facilitating very dangerous conditions at 30% AMI complexes.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Portland's housing mess has made me skeptical of public funding for deed restricted affordable units. 30% AMI w/o wraparound services: Hell on Earth. Many residents can't take care of themselves or commit crime. 60-80% AMI: Market rents outcompete them if there's enough market rate housing!

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Manchin still talks about the IRA passage, even after leaving the Senate. He wrote about it extensively in his memoir! He openly lauded it as "one of the most historic pieces of legislation passed in decades" years after passage. You think he was "begrudgingly badgered" into voting for it?

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Joe Manchin did not use budget reconciliation to advance free college, free childcare, or EITC expansion. He cut that out, and what he kept was very explicitly climate, despite being a senator from a coal state. And you consider that "vanity" rather than "thank God his priority was climate?"

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The claim was that Manchin doesn't support clean energy. My point is that of all the legislation he chose to not support in Biden's agenda, he allowed the one budget reconciliation opportunity to be used expanding clean energy massively. It might not have been what you wanted, but it was huge.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Joe Manchin was the designer of the IRA and it's deciding vote, and it was the greatest clean energy legislation in US history.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I've added new features including ballot measures, state fiscal machinery, and a legislature simulator including floor votes and midterms.

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Michael Andersen @andersem.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The year is 2038. The nation is in recession but Oregon has been booming for a decade. It's my 4th term as God-Governor, the kicker is gone and single-stair is legal. Thanks to @andrewdamitio.bsky.social for making a game I've enjoyed more than any in years. andrewdamitio.github.io/oregon_polit...

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I haven't felt very creative lately, so I've been burning my excess Claude tokens building a Oregon governor political simulator in my free time. It has a Democracy series-style policy issue-web, campaign features, & random events. Try my "Open Alpha!" andrewdamitio.github.io/oregon_polit...

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Jarrett Walker @humantransit.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

When you ask voters to approve taxes for public transit, what you mostly get is a map of residential density. Here's the latest from Spokane, WA where the measure narrowly leads at the moment.

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dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

FTA requires transit agencies to obtain bilateral cooperative agreements - for review and approval processes for construction - with “critical” 3rd parties prior to start of construction. If one 3rd party (out of 50) declines to enter into contract, no dirt is turned.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Have you ever wanted to play circular chess? No? Circular chess is derived from an early version of chess in the Byzantine empire. Nobody except a sketchy mobile app developer and an early 2000s webpage offered it free to play, so I vibecoded a game. andrewdamitio.github.io/circular-che...

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I've created an interactive precinct-level map of Oregon's contested state legislative races in the 2024 election cycle. It compares legislative margins to the presidential race, as well as vote drop off from presidential to downballot. Enjoy! andrewdamitio.github.io/portland-spl...

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Consistent with a theme I've noticed in progressive policymaking, where advocates/policymakers assume that the only acceptable policy intervention is one that carries no possible tradeoffs, and that there are surely no tradeoffs associated with leaving a horrendous status quo in place.

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Fischer 🛠️🚇 @fischer.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

this is a dramatic expansion of apartment zoning in vancouver, in line with pre-wwii zoning codes that allowed apartments on a large portion of residential lots

zoning map of vancouver, showing orange medium scale zoning covering maybe a third of the city

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

New blog post from me: The state of Oregon owns a consolidated tract of 230k acres of sagebrush in eastern Oregon, receiving pennies per acre per year in grazing fees. Why doesn't the state develop massive solar farms on the land? I explore why. open.substack.com/pub/andrewda...

open.substack.com

The Solar Potential of the Stockade Block

State land in remote Eastern Oregon generates pennies per-acre for schools. Solar development could change that...but only if the state of Oregon acts decisively.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

15 years later, the failure of Solyndra continues to be brought up by both solar opponents and industrial policy opponents. But its failure was industrial policy working as intended. My latest blog post: open.substack.com/pub/andrewda...

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iain @maccoinnich.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

It's amazing what the Residential Infill Project did for affordability of new construction in Portland. Here are the single-unit properties for sale in the city completed this year; these price points were rare prior to RIP.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

It was the first rejected tax vote in Portland in 11 years!

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Brooke Jarvis @brookejarvis.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

"German utilities expressed many of the same concerns nearly a decade ago when plug-in solar started to become popular in Germany. But with more than a million systems installed, no safety incidents have been reported for customers who used the panels as instructed"

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Is "This Week in Worchester" a real news outlet?

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

The last smelter in the PNW was in Ferndale. Shut down during the pandemic, wasn't able to reopen in 2022 because there wasn't enough clean power to do it. In the 1960s, aluminum smelters in the PNW used enough energy to power 2023 Seattle three times over. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I am not so sure. Look at the electrical demands of aluminum smelters, which used to be king in the Pacific Northwest. Most of the US's plateau in electrical demand on the 2000s-10s was just de-industrialization. Industry uses a lot of energy!

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The limits on data center growth are the same limits that new manufacturing faces. The only difference being that manufacturing has far worse externalities. If the US can't bring ourselves to build data centers, we sure as heck won't be able to compete with China in industrial production.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

And thank you so much for linking that report!

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Yes, and from what I have seen, it appears to be a modest success! $10m in funds per biennium or so, and it's done fuels reduction treatment on thousands of acres, whilst training young workers. But the 1930s mass movement CCC only worked because participation wasn't entirely voluntary.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

New blog post. Growing up in rural Oregon, I was surrounded by Civilian Conservation Corps roads, trails, and campgrounds. Given the program's overwhelming success and popularity, why was it never revived? open.substack.com/pub/andrewda...

open.substack.com

Why We Can't Revive the Civilian Conservation Corps

Only Depression-era desperation and destitution made the CCC possible to implement.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

SOE, with a professionally appointed CEO. No elected positions or board. The state or relevant subnational entity funding it exerts control through the budget: if there is a dedicated source of funds, like the Ile-de-France payroll tax, then it is broad and can be changed by the elected government.

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

An underrated factor in "why don't people in wealthy societies have more kids" is changing societal norms that now expect even older kids to be chaperoned by an adult any time they are in public, and to be chauffeured by a parent as their only means of transportation

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

this is why I think publications that focus almost solely on culture war issues are so empty. The genuine economic, health, welfare etc impacts of policy are much more important than Ivy League coursework discourse but become sideshows to these people.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

This is a very weird way for you to respond to a profile piece on a colleague. The piece was not derogatory towards you or anybody else, so I don't know why you're being derogatory. Perhaps you should step away from the phone?

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I'd put decent money on tenant protections being one of the reasons. Tenant protections make it pretty difficult to kick out troublemakers, and why would anybody live in an "affordable" complex where troublemaking neighbors cluster yet can't get kicked out except for extreme cause?

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I think the opposite is the case. That article highlights how dedicated "affordable" housing developers are extremely inefficient and cannot survive once market rate housing even approaches competition with them. We should be redirecting subsidy towards supportive housing instead.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Can any of you connect me with housing policy analysts/developers based in Canada? I have questions for them regarding Canadan condo construction financing.

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Fischer 🛠️🚇 @fischer.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

what drives me insane about “centers and corridors” in US urban planning is that seemingly no professionals in the field have stopped and realized that this “best practice” has not worked anywhere it’s been tried

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Citizenportal is an AI summary of a recorded public meeting it listens to, so it's fairly close to primary source, but it can sometimes get names wrong because it misunderstands pronunciations. Very much a "trust but verify" source.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

There's no single tweak like "remove parking minimums" or "legalize single stair egress" that will allow for the dense traditional mid-rise developments Americans love to see. We need a comprehensive rewrite of building codes to simplify them, match international peers, and allow traditional devt.

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Under Portland's new single-stair laws (which only go to 4 stories, there's a maximum of 4 units per-floor, making that design impossible. Also there's a 4k sq/ft limit per floor, meaning the city's 5K sq/ft lots can't be built corner-to-corner, even w/o setbacks. www.portland.gov/ppd/codes-ru...

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

People love blaming parking minimums as to why the US doesn't build like this. It's more complicated. The lot couldn't be utilized corner-to-corner due to setbacks. The project wouldn't pencil due to space lost for the large elevator, dual stairwells, and wide hallway to meet building codes.

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Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

I keep going back to this slide shown to the Sound Transit board this month, showing how "capacity building" means consulting firms, more consulting firms, and more subcontractors.

Capacity building at Sound Transit
18 primes 248 subconsultants
[large chart showing which consultants and subconsultants the agency is bringing on]

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Andrew Damitio @andrewdamitio.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Just look at this appeal by Providence Park to the Oregon Plumbing Board of Appeals from 2014. They had to submit bathroom cleaning schedules to try to win the appeal. www.portlandoregon.gov/bds/appeals/...

portlandoregon.gov

Appeals | Portland.govarrow rightemailphone numberphone numberOregon Relay Service

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Fischer 🛠️🚇 @fischer.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

take out the marquam and you can unwind the entire east side waterfront freeway. such a huge part of our post-freeway future

google maps screenshot of portland with the marquam bridge and the east side waterfront freeway edited out

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