Albina Vision Trust in the Sausage Factory

The Joint Transportation Committee meets, genuflects to the Albina Vision Trust. But how come no one, even Republicans, mentioned the elephant in the room?

Down in Salem, the senators and representatives on the Joint Committee on Transportation (one of the classic pork barrel outfits in any self-respecting legislature) got together on Monday to consider who would control, and profit from, the Lid on the new, de-kinked I-5 in Portland.

Although the words “Albina Vision Trust” were hardly ever mentioned,¹ the hearing and the done-deal vote was really about giving the Trust the inside track on a $2-billion (and counting) real estate development deal. (Which we discussed in our last two posts.)

The bill being considered…

…was as obvious as a zit on a teenager’s cheek: to freeze out anyone else from maxing out the dollar-potential (tax free, of course!) on whatever the Vision Trust will build on the Lid.²

The entire performance is available here. It will hold few surprises, being semi-standard kabuki by a political Machine that specializes in foregone conclusions.

The first part of the performance featured the head of the Oregon Department of Transportation, Kris Strickler, whose bureaucracy was outmaneuvered by the Trust³, and his response to a loaded question from Rep. Bruce Starr, who represents Yamhill Valley and wine country (aka “Nowheresville”).

Note the definition of “surplus properties,” which would seem to consist of left-overs for places to park the asphalt trucks and bulldozers to improve a highway. But all of the property on top of the Lid will be “surplus” from the minute the concrete hardens.

An occasional Democrat—in this case Sen. Mark Meek, from Happy Valley—sniffed around the deal’s fine print, and was quickly intercepted and wrenched back to the emotional norm by neo-Marxist Sen. Kanh Pham…

After all, the Trust’s chief political fixer and PR voice, JT Flowers, was seated in the audience. So when Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, Republican, made noises about the rush to seal the Vision Trust deal, Sen. Pham again dashed to the rescue…

…without pointing out that the “checkbook” was unavailable to anyone not plugged into the Machine and its little last-minute surprise-gift. You can’t write a check if you don’t know what’s for sale.

And so it went, trudging toward the inevitable vote with last words from Rep. Starr, who left us wondering if he had read our two-parter…

…or perhaps had a PhD in urban destruction.

We waited in vain for someone—even a hard-core Republican without anything to lose—to raise the issue of the whole scheme’s foundation of outright racism, seasoned with a soupçon of white guilt. Everyone on the dais was schtum.

But the Vision Trust isn’t quite home free, even though they managed to finesse the worst disaster that might have occurred—if the Machine apparatchiks had gotten off the leash.

Note that the committee pushed ODOT and the Oregon Transportation Commission, which decides which projects go where, to get a professional estimate of the “value” of the Lid’s air rights. We predict that JT Flowers would have come out of his ringside seat if they had demanded that the Trust make up the difference in what it would cost to build their field of dreams, as opposed to simply occupying it.

That’s because there’s a gap, which grew even as members of the committee spoke, between the $450 million that the DC branch of the Machine got in the waning days of the Biden administration and the state’s latest estimate that the Lid will cost up to $2.8-billion. Do the arithmetic. Also consider that a different crew is now running the federal Department of Transportation, which has only approved $37-million thus far.

Time for Sen. Kanh—or someone—to get out the checkbook.

And, we almost forgot: the bill and its soon-to-be-forgotten amendment passed.

But there’s more: beyond the sausage factory, Herman Greene, who had been leading the charge for the schools to donate their Prophet Center, all 10.5 acres of offices, warehouses, repair shops, etc. to the Trust, got unelected Monday. There are a bunch of new faces on the school board; who knows, a couple of them might have some questions about the sweetheart deal. And soon, the Trust will have to cough up their candidates for the swap with the Prophet Center.

Good luck.

It ain’t over till it’s over.

1. Advocates of the giveaway prefer the more comfortable word, “community.” Which poses a conundrum: if Albina was, as the Trust maintains, utterly destroyed by the various government depradations, what now constitutes a valid “community?” Occasional visitors?

2. The Trust has been non-specific about what, exactly, they will build; for all we know, in a tribute to the Machine, it could be a sausage factory.

3. The Trust cut off negotiations with ODOT in 2020, then worked the back-channels with Sens Wyden, Merkley to find federal bucks for the Lid scheme. A cynic may look at the escalating estimates of costs to actually build the Lid as ODOT payback. Stranger things have happened.