It would be fun to watch a grown-up take on kiddie Hall.

The sewer side spending is already on a Creepy -determined discretionary glide path. Leonard and PWB are the worst spending offenders 'cause they're just getting started. If anyone has the courage to go up against the Richard J. Daley wannabe Leonard, now's the time.

I'm not getting my hopes up. When Portland is unhappy, Sslem trembles. The legislature will just find a way to grant PDX some sort of special exception. Portland is 'too big to fail'.

Thanks John DiLorenzo for considering suing the city on sewer/water misappropriations. Please do it. There will be help. Sam and Co. has continually taken money from many piles opposite of their designated use. Also he has taken monies without public input, and required voting from commissions and committees, and required public process/input.

For example, in the past year Sam took $10 Million in Service Development Charges from the SoWhat URA without a vote of its Urban Renewal Advisory Committee for the proposed Milwaukie Light Rail. Then when Portland still couldn't find the additional monies to match it's committed $30M for MLR, Sam again took an additional $10 Million from Tax Increment Financing taxpayer dollars from SoWhat. And AGAIN, he did it without any public discussion or vote by the SoWhat URAC.

Recently, at a TriMet Board meeting these facts were conveyed to the Board when they were considering an additional $43 Million to move the recently built trolley lines in SoWhat 100 ft to the west and raise them 14 ft in elevation to help accommodate the proposed MLR. The TriMet Board was asked if they had known of two votes taken by the SoWhat URAC opposing the taking of $10 Million in TIF dollars by Sam for the MLR. They all said "NO".

There are some LUBA and other legal problems developing for PDC, City Council, TriMet and METRO for taking positions without proper representation of facts. I hope John can legally follow up on these kind of issues too. The dominos are lining up.

I hope this goes forward. Water and sewer departments are the newest slush fund. Of course, once they're cut off City Hall will just switch back to abusing urban renewal. But we have to try....

Too bad the Supreme Court just threw out the feds' ability to use the charge of "theft of honest services" to attack corruption. There is no other, better way to describe the Council's swiping of BES revenues for non-sewer projects.

Please, John, please file your lawsuit! I say that as a leftie who generally would be on board for bike lanes and scholarships for kids. Those are wonderful things, but getting them by taking money from ratepayers who have no voice or choice on the matter is -- if not illegal (although that's what we all suspect) -- unfair and undemocratic.

If you need to pass the hat or get some ratepayers to sign onto to a friend-of-the-court statement of some sort, I'm sure many of us who read this blog will be more than happy to help. I'm not sure if it will be enough to launch the gubernatorial bid you were pondering, but it will win you the undying affection of us beleaguered BES ratepayers.

Eric, I read your link briefing the ruling. Admittedly, I am not licensed to practice law but I also have legal training. The court did not per se throw out the feds' ability to use theft of honest services, they limited it to a more narrow set of circumstances. I think campaign contributions in return for political favors could be construed as meeting the criteria for kick backs. And kick-backs and bribery are still considered in play by the ruling.

Nice one JB. I'm almost positive the first I ever heard of this, along these lines, was right here on this blog. Kudos!

Thanks, LucsAdvo. I was mostly being facetious in bringing that SC ruling up. The raiding of the sewer revenue definitely FEELS like a "theft of honest services", but as Jack has pointed out and John's lawsuit would content, the actual legal grounds for challenging the raids would come from the state laws around Measure 5 tax limitations.