Last week, we noted that the City of Portland was hiring an outfit called Local Government Personnel Institute (LGPI) to help with the city's negotiations with the firefighters' union. We asked some pointed questions about what kind of organization this LGPI was. This state has way too many unsupervised pots of public money, and we were concerned that we had stumbled upon another one.

We sent an e-mail request to Diana Moffat, the head honcho of LGPI, asking for its basic organizational documents and any financial statements it might have. She promptly sent them along, and they're pretty sleepy. Here is the intergovernmental agreement under which it operates, and its last two audited financial statements are here and here.

Apparently, LGPI has been around since 1971, although the agreement we received was dated in April of 2005 and shows that it was revised in December of 2004. It is described by its auditors as a joint venture between the League of Oregon Cities and the Association of Oregon Counties. The latter two organizations describe themselves in the agreement as joint "departments" of the state's cities and counties, who are authorized to create them by Oregon Revised Statutes 190.010 and following.

LGPI had annual revenue last year of about $615,000, the same as two years before; the year in between saw revenue of about $650,000. Its biggest expense is for personal services -- $515,000 last year, up from $467,000 two years before. It had $96,000 in the bank last June 30, and no long-term debt.

Its auditors say that LGPI is not subject to the state's local budget law. But its employees do get PERS pensions, and some level of health care benefits.