{"id":713283,"date":"2026-06-19T09:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T09:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/713283\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T09:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T09:25:10","slug":"prosperity-council-likely-to-streamline-states-economic-development-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/713283\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosperity Council Likely to Streamline State\u2019s Economic Development Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project<\/a>, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.<\/p>\n

When Gov. Tina Kotek\u2019s Prosperity Council releases its final report in the last week of June, it\u2019s almost certain the panel will recommend an overhaul of Business Oregon, the state\u2019s economic development agency.<\/p>\n

The reason isn\u2019t hard to find.<\/p>\n

Business Oregon spends more than $1 billion a year on everything from funding for regional theater groups to tax breaks for multinational corporations such as Intel, Amazon, Facebook and Google.<\/p>\n

Its stated mission is to \u201cpromote a globally competitive, diverse, and inclusive economy.\u201d But by a basic measure\u2014jobs created\u2014it has failed that mission nine of the past 10 years, often by wide margins.<\/p>\n

The response to that record: lower the target. As a result, the agency cleared its goal last year\u2014by eight jobs.<\/p>\n

The Prosperity Council\u2019s verdict on the 200-employee agency is not kind. According to a confidential draft of the council\u2019s report obtained last month<\/a> by OJP, stakeholders describe Business Oregon as \u201cunderperforming relative to peer states\u201d and plagued by a \u201clack of responsiveness, limited ability to influence peer agencies, small scale of programs, and diffuse focus.\u201d In that draft, the panel recommended beefing up the agency and remaking it into a \u201cDepartment of Commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Prosperity Council\u2019s assessment lands against a backdrop of bad economic news. Oregon\u2019s unemployment rate stands at 5.2%, higher than in all but four states. A June 2025 report by the University of Oregon\u2019s Institute for Policy Research and Engagement put it plainly: \u201cBusinesses are leaving the state. Job and population growth trail national trends.\u201d<\/p>\n

That report\u2019s conclusion\u2014that Oregon \u201clacks a coordinated, comprehensive statewide economic development strategy\u201d\u2014points directly at the agency charged with providing such a strategy.<\/p>\n

Professor Bob Parker, co-author of the UO report, examined other states to see what economic development strategies are working. His conclusion: Successful states elevate economic development as a top priority for their governors and deploy a centralized, hierarchical strategy. <\/p>\n

Oregon does the opposite, Parker says, perhaps a result of a long-standing ambivalence about economic development, which goes back to the late Gov. Tom McCall. \u201cCome visit us again and again,\u201d McCall said in 1971. \u201cBut for heaven\u2019s sake, don\u2019t come here to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parker says that except for the 1980s, when then-Govs. Vic Atiyeh and Neil Goldschmidt focused on recruiting tech companies, McCall\u2019s successors have generally embraced his attitude.<\/p>\n

Oregon Business & Industry, which represents most of the state\u2019s large employers, wants Kotek and the Prosperity Council to both streamline Business Oregon and elevate its role.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor and the Legislature need to take economic development more seriously,\u201d says the organization\u2019s CEO, Angela Wilhelms. \u201cWe believe that a robust Department of Commerce could provide an overarching, consolidated structure for related functions currently split across multiple agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Prosperity Council\u2019s recommendations will likely shine a light on Business Oregon\u2019s director, Sophorn Cheang, whom Gov. Kate Brown appointed in 2021 to run the agency. Prior to her appointment, Cheang served as Brown\u2019s director of diversity, equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n

Cheang, 45, emigrated from Cambodia when she was 19. She earned a degree in finance from Portland State University and an MBA from Willamette University, and worked in real estate and then as a digital media strategist for Kroger. She left that job in 2014 to work at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, a Portland nonprofit, before joining Brown\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n

Since Kotek won election to succeed Brown in 2022, she has changed directors at the Oregon Health Authority, the Departments of Human Services, Forestry, and Transportation, and the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (twice), but not at Business Oregon.<\/p>\n

Speaking on background, several business leaders and lawmakers question why Cheang has held on to her position and whether she has the relevant skills and experience to lead Business Oregon.<\/p>\n

Business Oregon spokesman Nathan Buehler says Cheang\u2019s critics are wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond our director\u2019s diverse and well-rounded professional background (leading this agency for the past five years, a director-level position in the governor\u2019s office, leadership of IRCO, and multiple business positions prior to that), she has proven leadership abilities to run a complex agency with a complex budget,\u201d Buehler says.<\/p>\n

He adds that after taking over the agency during the pandemic, Cheang put her foot on the gas.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe oversaw a shift in our more longer-term development work to oversee fast, get-it-out-the-door funding to help businesses immediately\u2014from hundreds of projects we\u2019d do in a year to thousands in a span of months,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Two state lawmakers sit on the Business Oregon Commission as nonvoting members. Both\u2014Sen. Mark Meek (D-Gladstone) and House Minority Leader Lucetta Elmer (R-McMinnville)\u2014are small business owners who have served on the commission that oversees the agency for the past three years. Neither shares Buehler\u2019s characterization of the agency\u2019s effectiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe feedback I\u2019ve gotten is that Biz Oregon doesn\u2019t really support businesses the way it should,\u201d Meek says. \u201cThey\u2019ve finally come to the conclusion they\u2019re trying to do too many things\u2014mission creep\u2014but change happens at a snail\u2019s pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meek declined to comment on Cheang\u2019s performance. Elmer says Business Oregon does a good job helping individual companies but is hamstrung by state policies that have resulted in excessive regulation and taxation. She says blame for that goes above Cheang\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe Director Cheang was handed the necessary cards for success,\u201d Elmer says. \u201cAgencies are constrained by the policies passed by the Legislature and the whims of the chief executive [Kotek].\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the ways lawmakers judge all state agencies are performance measures that are part of agency budgets.<\/p>\n

Business Oregon has 10 key performance measures: The first tracks the number of jobs directly created by agency programs. That indicator paints a dismal picture: In nine of the past 10 years, the agency failed\u2014often by big margins\u2014to hit job creation targets.<\/p>\n

Last year, the agency exceeded its job creation target for the first time since 2015, when the target was more than twice as high.<\/p>\n

Buehler says it\u2019s unfair to place too much emphasis on the job creation measure \u2014the agency has done better on others such as job retention and helping fund capital projects. He notes that the Legislative Fiscal Office, not Business Oregon, sets the job creation target and that indicator counts only jobs created with direct cash incentives from the agency, which are just some of the jobs the agency helps to create.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the most important job creation tools the state uses aren\u2019t counted in the measure because they aren\u2019t directly financed by the agency,\u201d Buehler explains. \u201cProperty tax abatement is a large one, which is why we added that as a separate performance measure a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, Buehler acknowledges, Business Oregon could do better: \u201cWe certainly want to see this number continue to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meek is unhappy with the agency\u2019s job creation performance. \u201cI think because of the lack of awareness of what it takes to create a job, they have missed the mark and have been failing on that level,\u201d he says. Adds Elmer, \u201cIt\u2019s hard for anyone to look at these outcomes and think we\u2019re crushing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kotek\u2019s Prosperity Council will unveil its final recommendations June 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state. When Gov. Tina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-713283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}