Assignment: Portrait of John Tapogna, incoming President of the Oregon Business Council
Setting: Standard Plaza, Portland
Highlights: In his landmark 2025 interview for the Oregon Journalism Project, John Tapogna pointed to five emerging trends affecting Oregon’s economic future: a housing shortage; poor K–12 school performance; surging wildfires; over-reliance on income taxes; and ambivalence about growth. The combined effect is a dramatic slowing of the state’s historic growth rate, a sharp departure from fifty years of rapid growth and prosperity.
In this complex and dramatically different economic picture, John Tapogna and the state’s fiscal strategists hope to bring clarity and fresh policy recommendations, and a strong sense of Oregon’s individuality, to a search for solutions.
On his first day as Oregon Business Council’s new President, John surveyed Portland’s skyline- and Oregon’s future- from the 16th floor of the Standard Plaza.
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