Portland’s latest ban

By Lars Larson
NW and national radio host,

To paraphrase, I love the smell of two-stroke engine smoke in the morning.

It smells like leaf blowing to me.

But now the Rose City has banned gas leaf blowers, starting 20 months from now.

If you violate that ban, the city promises to fine you one thousand dollars PER DAY for violations.

Will the new leaf-blower cops wear green uniforms as they patrol Portlandia?

A city that still dumps tens of thousands of gallons of raw sewage every year into a river that’s home to endangered species is banning leaf blowers?

A city that can’t get deadly fentanyl off its streets?

For a city that can’t put criminals in jail?

A city where citizens must take their kids to needle-strewn public parks is worried about pollution from 55 CC engines?

A Rose City whose number 1 concern is leaf blowers, where thousands of homeless make number 2 on the streets?

When that ban goes into effect millions of dollars worth of equipment in your garage becomes worthless…and you’ll spend more replacing it with a wimpy electric blower.

Don’t get me started on the pollution that’s baked into those batteries.

As for my powerful Stihl blower? You’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.