Today's Oregonian reveals that the stakes are definitely going up in the game that the City of Portland is playing with the Enron bankruptcy crowd over ownership of Enron's only decent subsidiary and the state's largest electric utility, Portland General Electric. PGE is now publicly threatening to pull its corporate headquarters out of downtown Portland and move it to the burbs of Wilsonville if the city doesn't back off from its plans to orchestrate a municipal takeover of PGE.

This is classic Portland city government. It's already spent $850,000 on its efforts to get control of PGE, and it isn't stopping there. In other words, the city's taxpayers are now spending close to a million bucks to run another of our large corporate employers out of town.

Another nice move, Erik and Vera. Keep it up and your hero Homer Williams will be the only guy left with an office here.

Why, why, why is the city doing this? Supposedly to "protect the ratepayers." Excuse me, but as Commissioner Francesconi wisely points out, we already pay a state agency to do that. It's called the PUC. Look into it.