Get your story straight
If the Portland Development Commission is supposed to be so independent under the current City of Portland charter, then how does this happen?
Some commissioners pad their offices by billing their staffers to the bureaus they run. Sten's housing adviser, for example, works in his office but is paid by the housing bureau, the Portland Development Commission and the Housing Authority of Portland. Adams bills two staffers time to the sewer and transportation bureaus. Potter bills three positions to the Police Bureau, one position to the PDC and half a position to the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.The city commissioners already control some of the PDC budget, it seems... (Via the O City Hall reporters' blog.)
| Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (7)
It gets even stranger:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/portlandcityhall/2007/04/new_campaign_vote_no_on_pdc_me.html
Posted by LMNOP | April 30, 2007 12:14 PM
They form a committee the day the ballots go out? Truly strange, but then again, this whole election is straight out of Bizarro World.
The PDC measure is the only thing on that ballot that matters much to me. I'm voting for it.
The best part of the Bud-Vera speech is:
"We think the voters got it right nearly 50 years ago when they created a structure for urban renewal funding that places a strong emphasis on citizen involvement rather than on political meddling," the former mayors say.
Citizen involvement at Vera's PDC? That's funny. Citizen Homer, maybe.
Posted by Jack Bog | April 30, 2007 1:55 PM
They formed the committee a couple of weeks back. You can check out the history on ORESTAR (SOS website) and who the "Director" is too.
Posted by LMNOP | April 30, 2007 3:36 PM
You can check out the history on ORESTAR (SOS website) and who the "Director" is too.
Maybe you can. I can't find jack over there.
Posted by Jack Bog | April 30, 2007 4:22 PM
As far as I am concerned the PDC money paying for commissioner's office staff is nothing but hush money.
Posted by Howard | April 30, 2007 6:31 PM
Just saw in the SE Examiner that PDC sold a SE waterfront building to private operators at a loss of over $2 million. I was shocked at the one downtown. Now I see there's another. Are there more? Does anybody have a list? Do we have a list of the beneficiaries?
Do these people know that you go to prison for this elsewhere in the US?
Unbelievable.
As Jon Stewart would say, "Your moment of zen..."
Examiner quotes the beneficiaries of our $2 million plus gift as complaining that they had to go to too many long meetings to get it.
Posted by dyspeptic | April 30, 2007 7:31 PM
[SE] Examiner quotes the beneficiaries of our $2 million plus gift as complaining that they had to go to too many long meetings to get it.
If I was assured $2M, I'd sit through a lot of long meetings.
Katz and Clark: "We think the voters got it right nearly 50 years ago when they created a structure for urban renewal funding that places a strong emphasis on citizen involvement rather than on political meddling..."
I got this in today's mail, and my reaction was that they probably did indeed think the voters got it right - for the voters. So they were of course obligated to disregard citizen involvement whenever necessary or convenient, because we obviously couldn't see things the way they could.
Posted by john rettig | April 30, 2007 11:40 PM