While I’ve been tied down to enthralling—although time-consuming—events like city council’s charter review hearing and the mayor’s “State Of The City Club” speech, local bloggers have been tearing away at news that passed me by.

So, I have no option but to post links to some of my favorite blog posts over the past couple of days—I highly recommend all of them, for varying reasons.

Yesterday evening, after spending two hours debating the merits of the Charter Review Commission’s recommendations, and whether city council has an obligation to pass them on to Portland voters, city council tackled Sam Adams’ Business License Fee reform—ultimately passing it with a surprise unanimous 5-0 vote. Randy Leonard had long been expected to be a no vote, but after overwhelming public testimony in support of the reform, he changed his mind and voted yes.

Here’s what local rightwing blog OregonCatalyst.com had to say: “There were lots of people who helped create this victory, and the one we saw work his heart and soul out was Dave Lister. Lister sacrificed of his time, his business, his money and his sanity to score this needful win for struggling small businesses. Lister may have knocked a few months off of his life due to stress, but we got a tax cut!”

That’s right, good ol’ Dave Lister singlehandedly won a tax cut for small businesses. Shame, though, that Lister moved his business to Tigard to escape Portland business taxes, making him ineligible to reap the reward of his hard work.

Closer to our side of the political spectrum, our friends at Loaded Orygun have been chipping away at Measure 37, breaking the news that the Oregon legislature has created a joint committee to figure out what to do with the confusing, broken law, which is good news for city and county governments who have zero idea how to deal with M37, which has made land-use laws unenforceable. Topping that, LO broke the news that a Jackson County circuit court judge has ruled that M37 isn’t transferable to new land owners.

Over at BlueOregon.com, Jesse Cornett and Kari Chisholm have co-authored a post pitching an idea that I think is a no-brainer—moving Oregon’s presidential primary to February. Currently, Oregon doesn’t chime in on presidential candidates until May, long after the races have already been decided. This would raise the profile for Oregon, and make the state the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of campaign dollars. All it will take is a change in state law—and hey, waddya know, there just so happens to be a bill in front of legislators right this very minute that would do that very thing. Now all it needs is a champion in the legislature to carry the thing home.

Happy reading.