To think, how much cushier her sendoff might have been if you had featured her in your adoption series.

Stack the positions then trade them like baseball cards. That's why nothing changes in Portland government.

Yocum's bio from a websearch:
"Born and raised in Pennsylvania, where she attended Lebanon Valley College, Yocom moved in 2002 to Portland. She worked in marketing briefly before getting involved in 2003 with the upstart political nonprofit, the Bus Project, as operations manager and development director. She moved on to campaign manager for city Commissioner Erik Sten's re-election in 2006, then as an aide to Sten and later as communications specialist in the Office of Sustainable Development."

I've never really paid attention to this stuff in the past so I have a naive but real question: who limits the power and actions of the mayor of Portland? From the comments about Beth Slovic's article I read that Sam increased his staff to 26 assistants (his Chief of Staff even has her own staff of assistant minions). Who's to stop Hales from pushing that number up to 30 and raising all of their salaries?

If someone is immune to public shame (like Creepy) is there a person or group that has to approve such things or does it just get buried in the greater HR budget?

And is the idea of qualifications for city jobs just a quaint notion? Do new mayors bring in their own people for all of the cushy jobs? Hales walk in and can Yocum from the Parks and Rec head job and put in his favorites?

How about taking an in depth look at Leonard's office and his staff before he leaves?

I have faith in Charlie's ability to repair the City's condition. That includes getting rid of the unqualified personnel put in place by Adams and the idiots he hired.

Think favoritism , back stabbing ," I will do ANYTHING for a promotion."And you will understand our local government.
I see it everyday and thats the way it is.

Wait. Adams put the mercury reporter who was exposing him as a creep onto his staff?

Is the appearance of corruption not enough to stop such a thing? It must be proven? Bah!

Ruiz moves from a reporter at the Merc in late 2008 to making 100K a year plus gold-plated benefits in 2012. And her qualifications are????

Sick.And.Wrong

Sammyboy hires only suck ups and yes people cronies. Ruiz praised him in the Mercury. Bingo, she has a high salary job in his office. The proliferation of Adams’ unqualified cronies into other city positions and bureau assignments is an attempt to infiltrate his control obsessed thinking throughout city government. The unqualified Tom Miller will hopefully be gone shortly after the Adams regime ends. Finally, although this is not my brainchild and has already been done, if anybody has not disposed of their slop bucket and still has it laying around, send it to Mayor Creepy as a leaving office souvenir award. Wouldn’t it be grand to have a 100 or more filling up his office.

Anybody who kisses Adams's butt is dead to me. Street Roots is the latest group of fools to glorify this idiot. They lost my support.

Christmas is coming.

Ruiz will get to enjoy her $100k salary for about 6 weeks. Just think of it as another "envelope of cash" from Sam the Scam.

How about taking an in depth look at Leonard's office

Ty Kovatch is still the winner with a 30%+ raise to 140k a year with benes to be Shafts hey-boy at pwb. of course, the what Schaffer before running pwb? I have iI think an hr guy.

so kissing a$$ does have its benefits

sorry, but keyboards smarter than me - Schaffer was an hr guy, I think.

Charlie fired his campaign staff after the primary, so don't worry, this lot won't be around. He's got plenty of cronies of his own. However, they are more qualified cronies so take comfort in that. I don't like Charlie but at least he knows what he is doing and will be more efficient than Sam who tried to be all things to everyone but made no one happy, really. This last 4 years has been a waste of time and money.

This last 4 years has been a waste of time and money.

All that needs to be said on this subject.