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If you wanted to start life over in a new place, would you choose somewhere with a chronically high unemployment rate and struggling schools, or one that’s known as a haven for slackers? The latter is one way to describe Portland, Oregon.

It seems like everyone is talking about Portland these days. Part of that has to do with the success of Portlandia, a sketch comedy show that pokes fun at Portland’s young hipster crowd. As one character explains, “Portland is a city where young people go to retire.”

But not everyone who moves to Portland is a twenty-something slacker. The city still draws out-of-state transplants, including highly educated professionals.

More than half of all Oregon residents were born somewhere else. As part of our Changing Gears project, reporter Chris Lehman introduces us to two families who moved to Portland from the Midwest.

Lehman met up with Marie Montalbano and Ted Layman. Layman is a social worker and Montalbano teaches special education students in the Portland Public School district.

Before they were married, Layman was living in small town Athens, Ohio. Montalbano was living in Chicago. Montalbano thought Athens was too small. For Layman, Chicago was, “A great place to visit and enjoy, but the noise, the congestion of people,” was too overwhelming.

“So we knew we would have to find a place that was a good compromise and a good fit,” says Montalbano.

That place was Portland, with big city amenities and a small-town vibe. The emphasis on local food, the mild winters, and the proximity to mountains and the ocean appealed to them.

Layman says they didn’t necessarily see all that when they first visited Portland, but, “We did see a woman with her turtle on a leash walking it across the street. And that definitely had this like, oh my god, this is so Portland.”

But unconventional pet care wasn’t the deciding factor. For that, we turn to Forest. He’s Layman’s 15-year-old son and in the end, it was Forest who played a key role in getting the family to move to Portland.

Forest takes his education seriously.

“I have very strong ideals about how children and kids and students should be equally respected and given more broad aspects in like learning and being able to pursue their own interests,” he says.

He figured the local public school system back in Athens, Ohio wasn’t going to cut the mustard. So he launched a nationwide search for the perfect high school. Two of his top choices were in Portland.

He carefully crafted an application essay. It was good enough to land a spot in the exclusive Metropolitan Learning Center. It’s a public school, but Forest says in a lot of ways it doesn’t feel like one.

“It’s totally different from my old middle school,” he says.

For example, he’s on a first-name basis with his teachers. He says classes rarely follow a textbook, leaving plenty of breathing room for student creativity. Forest likes to get to school early to hang out with friends and catch up on schoolwork before classes begin. He says the Metropolitan Learning Center is turning out to be just the kind of student-oriented education he was looking for.

Detroit native Carla Danley was also looking for something new. “I think a lot of times when you think about people leaving the Midwest to go to other parts, it might be a story about job opportunities or an improved economy elsewhere,” she says. But Danley was looking for a nicer place to live.

She wouldn’t have found economic opportunity in Portland anyway. Repeated statewide budget cuts have shuttered schools. The unemployment rate has been above the national average since the mid-90′s.

But Danley already knew how bad Oregon’s economy was. She figured – correctly – that her skills as a nurse would land her a job anyway.

“I really embrace the beauty of the wilderness of Oregon. And I think that’s very different from places I’ve lived in the Midwest,” says Danley.

Danley also likes to get around without a car and she figured Portland’s bicycle-friendly reputation would suit her just fine. It did. Carla’s not here alone. She met her husband back east, and for a while they lived together in Detroit, where she grew up.

“Then I said to my husband, thank you so much for coming to Michigan and not divorcing me, because Michigan is sort of an acquired taste,” she says. “You love it if you’re from there, and not so much if you’re not.”

Her husband uses a wheelchair, and it was important for both of them to have easy access to public transportation. Their new neighborhood has light rail and frequent bus service.

But Danley says despite the good public transit, natural beauty, and abundant cultural offerings, there is something the city lacks.

“As a black person, life is a little tougher in Portland than it is east of the Mississippi. There isn’t really a sort of rich, diverse black community in a way that I’m accustomed to,” says Danley.

Just 6 percent of Portland residents are African-American, compared to 83 percent in Detroit. And Danley is not the only one to notice the homogenous nature of her adopted city.

Jack Ohman is a nationally syndicated political cartoonist with the Oregonian newspaper in Portland. He’s also a Midwest native. “Portland is still not a diverse town, unless you count different shapes of beards as diversity,” he says.

Ohman agrees with Carla Danley on this: What the city lacks in diversity it makes up for in natural beauty. Ohman remembers when he flew out to Oregon for his job interview.

“I had never seen the Pacific Ocean. And it was the most beautiful day in the history of the Pacific Northwest. And once you see that, you’re not going back. You’re not gonna go back to Detroit. You’re not gonna go back to Columbus. You’re not going back to Minneapolis,” he says.

But the mid-90′s is when something else started to happen, especially in Portland.

Ohman explains that, “all of sudden it was just this renaissance, where it was just the coolest place in the world to live. And I had not really experienced that before. Living in the Midwest, it was never the coolest place in the world to live.”

Ohman says it’s around that time that Portland started to feel like Portlandia.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the political culture here has established this kind of ‘Amsterdam without drugs’ vibe to Portland,” he says.

Ohman says that Portlanders bear little resemblance to the characters in the television series. You know…the ones who ask to see the pedigree of the chicken they’re ordering for dinner.

But most Portlanders have embraced their city’s namesake television series. It’s one of the many things that helps set their city apart. And after decades of embracing quirkiness and livability, Portland continues to be a magnet for people looking to make a change.

This story was informed by the Public Insight Network. If you want to learn how to be a part of our network, click here.

You can read more stories about the Midwest Migration at http://midwestmigration.tumblr.com

Recall fight The Wall Street Journal reports that what started out as a fight over collective bargaining has grown into a “high-stakes, high-dollar referendum on Republican Gov. Scott Walker and central elements of his party’s fiscal agenda.” And a new poll shows Walker has a slim lead in the June recall race.

Wage gap MLive reports on a new report that finds a persistent wage gap between men and women in America. Michigan has the 10th highest gap of all states, with women there making only 74 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Indiana has the 6th highest gap. There, women make 28 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Not ready for college About 30 percent of Indiana students who enter college have to take “remedial” classes once they get there, according to a new report.

Rail expansion Norfolk Southern is planning a $160 million expansion of its rail yards in Bellevue, Ohio. The expansion is expected to create 275 jobs according to the AP.

Lower taxes The Dayton Daily News examines Ohio income taxes and finds that rates are at their lowest level in 30 years.

You’re on your own Michigan’s Office of Regulatory Reinvention is recommending that the state end oversight for 18 occupations and 9 boards. Partner station Michigan Radio has a full list of the recommendations.

Posted in BizTechEducationEntrepreneurialismEventsSarah ValekTechnologyWorkshop

[ April 25, 2012; 8:00 pm; ] Wed 4/25 @ 7:30AM - 5PM Women, let's work together. Come network with other female entrepreneurs and learn tricks of the trade (not gimmicks... actual real skills you can use) at CBC Magazine's Female Entrepreneur Summit. Learn how to work with social media, find the capital to grow your biz, and polish your negotiation techniques. And... [...]

Innovation is a tricky thing to track. Everyone talks about it, but it’s almost impossible to predict where it will happen, or what it will be. But you know it when you see it.

And so it is with a new invention out of Case Western University. A group of five undergraduate students at the Cleveland school have come up with a potentially brilliant solution to a nagging problem. They’ve built a better pothole patch.

They’ve done it with something called a non-Newtonian fluid. Without getting too technical, a non-Newtonian fluid is a material that acts like a liquid in some situations, and a solid in others – like the ketchup that stays stubbornly stiff when you shake the bottle, but pours out evenly when you coax it with a butter knife.

Another example is a mixture of cornstarch and water, which appears to be a liquid, but acts like a solid if you run across it. If you’ve never seen how this works, it’s pretty incredible.

The Case Western students took this principle, and applied it to potholes.

They’ve put a mixture of their own non-Newtonian fluid in a Kevlar-like bag, and dropped it into a few potholes around Cleveland to test it out. When a car drives quickly over the bag, it reacts as a solid.

It’s meant to be a temporary fix. But still, it’s pretty impressive:

The students have already won a $9,000 prize to develop the idea, and other investors are interested. And Cleveland’s service director told the Cleveland Plain Dealer he’d like to meet with the students.

Inventions like this are the reason you hear so many people involved in economic development talk about innovation. If the idea works, it could be a successful business that lowers costs for cities and makes driving safer. No one could have predicted that a group of 20 year olds working on a class project in Cleveland would be the ones to solve this kind of problem.

But when innovation is part of the culture, when there are places and people that encourage the pursuit of new ideas, new ideas will form. The more that happens, the more likely it is that innovation will strike.

Where will it strike next?

It’s tax time, and today is the last day before the filing deadline. If you spent your weekend filling out your tax forms, you have come face-to-face with your 2011 finances. Now is a time for reflection and reckoning – it’s also a time for planning. What will this year look like for you?

Over the next two weeks, Changing Gears will be sharing stories about how people are planning ahead in a tough economy, and how their expectations have changed in light of the recession.

You can read some of the stories about changing expectations on our tumblr page: http://chgears.tumblr.com.

You can also tell us about your own experiences. How are you planning for what comes next? Are you coming up on a milestone like retirement, marriage, or a new career? How have your plans changed since the start of the recession? Follow this link to share your story.

Infrastructure plan, examined Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $7.2 billion infrastructure plan gets a hearing today at the City Council. The Chicago Tribune reports the plan would give a board of financiers the ability to approve multi-million dollar deals with almost no oversight. Some aren’t happy with the idea.

Stimulating failure The Dayton Daily News reports that nearly $5 million in federal stimulus funding went to charter schools in Ohio that have since closed their doors. Millions more went to schools that were accused of mishandling funds in the past, according to the paper.

Casino competition Indiana is expecting to lose $100 million in state revenue as new casinos open in Ohio. The new Ohio casinos are expected to take away customers from Indiana’s casinos according to the Herald Bulletin.

Empty buildings, full of danger The Detroit Free Press looks at the harrowing walk to school for many of Detroit’s children. The Freep has a two-part series at the dangers children face from the 33,000 vacant buildings near Detroit schools.

Parking lawsuit A deal to privatize four city-owned parking garages in downtown Chicago has led to a $200 million lawsuit, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Banking on land banks Partner station WCPN Ideastream says more Ohio counties are setting up land banks to deal with the problem of vacant property.

Posted in BizTechKidsMusic: PopularNewsReviewThomas MulreadyUncategorized

Concert for Cleveland Kids These Days + George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic + Kid Cudi Reviewed by Allisa Taylor Last Thu 4/12 I attended the free, sold-out Concert for Cleveland at the Q. The concert was part of the Rock Hall’s Induction week and featured a multigenerational lineup with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, locals Kids These [...]

For many of us in journalism, Edward R. Murrow is an icon.

He was a ground breaking foreign correspondent, investigative reporter and program host who had an enormous influence on our profession from the 1940s through the 1960s. You might also know him as the central character in the movie, “Good Night and Good Luck.”

So, it’s with great pride that we let you know that Changing Gears has won a regional Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, for our series on manufacturing. (This is the same series that was awarded a National Headliner Award.)

We were the winner in the audio news series category in RTDNA’s Region 7, which includes entries from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.

Winners from each region go on to compete in the national Murrow Awards, which will be announced this summer.

Thanks to members of the Changing Gears team — Dan Bobkoff, Kate Davidson, Niala Boodhoo,  our former colleague Pete Bigelow, and our colleagues Sarah Alvarez, Meg Cramer and Dustin Dwyer.

Tax incentives have become the weapon of choice among states battling for new business investments. Niala Boodhoo reported in December that offering incentives has become a sort of strategy game for Midwest states hoping to one-up each other as everyone fights to grow jobs. But, as Niala reported, these are games with millions of dollars in tax breaks and thousands of jobs on the line.

Now, the Pew Center on the States is taking a look at incentives from a different angle. The Pew Center tried to figure out whether anyone is actually checking to see whether the incentives are worth it.

Turns out, a lot of states do very little follow-up once they approve incentives programs.

From the Pew Center’s release on the study:

States that have conducted rigorous evaluations of some incentives virtually ignore others, or evaluate infrequently. Others regularly examine these investments, but not thoroughly enough.

Michigan and Wisconsin are both called out for heavily scrutinizing incentives for the film industry, while ignoring other incentive programs:

Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin have studied their film tax credits in recent years but have not reviewed other types of incentives in the same detail.

Michigan made news when Governor Rick Snyder announced the state would get out of the incentives game, and focus instead on helping small startups. But Michigan still has some incentives programs. It’s just not evaluating them rigorously, according to the Pew Center.

Indiana and Illinois fare even worse in the study. Both are listed among the 26 states the Pew Center says are “Trailing Behind.” According to the study, both states “did not publish a document between 2007 and 2011that evaluated the effectiveness of a tax incentive.”

So, none of the tax incentive programs in Indiana and Illinois have been evaluated, according to the Pew Center.

The Associated Press says Illinois, in particular, has drastically increased its tax incentives. It made headlines last year by offering $330 million to keep Sears and two financial exchanges from leaving the state.

But Illinois officials defended their policies to the AP:

Marcelyn Love, a spokeswoman for Illinois’ Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, defended the agency’s evaluation process. She said companies applying for tax breaks through Illinois’ primary incentives program have to have an outside audit showing they created the promised jobs before they receive the credit. The program, called EDGE, is only for companies threatening to leave the state.

The Pew Center report focuses not on individual awards, but on incentives programs as a whole. The researchers looked for any sign that the states have stopped and evaluated their programs, and whether those evaluations actually had an effect on policy.

By those criteria, a few Midwest states did well in the report. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri were all listed as “Leading the Way” on tax incentive evaluations.

Iowa is listed as one of only four states in the country that have fully integrated those evaluations into the policy-making process. What that means is there’s actually something called the Iowa Legislative Tax Committee. The committee is relatively new, but its job is to review all of the state’s tax incentives every five years, and report those findings to state legislators so they can decide whether to change the programs.

According to the Pew Center:

“The more time legislators spend understanding how these things work, the better,” says state Sen. Joe Bolkcom (D), co-chair of the committee. “If we know how they work, we’ll make better decisions.”

Sounds like a worthy goal.

Not tracking incentives Few states are doing a good job tracking their business tax incentives. That’s according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States. The AP has a writeup. Among Midwest states, Pew says Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri are “leading the way.” Michigan and Ohio have “mixed results.” And Illinois and Indiana “trail behind.” The full report is here.

Revved up for RVs PBS Newshour reports on the rebounding RV industry in Indiana. The town of Elkhart was struggling just a few years ago because of a downturn in RV sales. Elkhart turned to electric vehicle maker Think to help boost jobs. Now, Think is in bankruptcy, and the RV companies are hiring again.

Now, on to the budget Detroit mayor Dave Bing will present his budget plan to city council this morning. It will be the last budget proposal from the mayor before a new financial advisory team takes over the city’s finances.

In full bloom A report from Michigan State University says the state’s agricultural sector grew dramatically during the recession. Partner station Michigan Radio has the details of the report, which claims agriculture now contributes $91.4 billion to the state economy.

Foreclosures New foreclosure numbers are out from RealtyTrac. The Midwest still has 7 states in the top 20 for highest foreclosure rate.