More Charter Madness

Multnomah county gets into the rewrite act.

Bet you didn’t know that Multnomah County is having its charter rewritten. Portland’s proposed new charter has barely gotten any coverage, so why bother with the government entity that seems to exist only to spend $250-million on the homeless?

This ‘stack has written several times (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here) about the shenanigans and outright racist slant of the Portland gang of twenty whose handiwork seems headed for the November ballot. (Count on compliant judges to wiggle past the “single issue” problem that doomed People for Portland’s effort to get the county to spend money on homeless shelters on the ballot.)

Over at Multnomah County, their charter committee has happy news!

Multnomah County will extend the vote to the fullest extent possible allowed by law, including but not limited to noncitizens.

The Charter review timeline will be extended to allow for up to 18 months of work; the Charter will also explicitly allow the Charter Review Committee to select its own leadership structure and require the Office of Community Involvement to run a public education and engagement process for the duration of Charter review.

The MCCRC also discussed recommendations that the county adopt Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in its elections and that members of the Board of County Commissioners be required to inspect county jail facilities a minimum of four times per year while accompanied by constituents.

The Committe also wants to make the charter’s language “gender neutral.”

This kind of loopy nonsense makes the Portland Charter Commission look positively tame in comparison.

But it did, finally, get the attention of the progressive machine’s mouthpiece, Oregon Public Broadcasting, which filed a report on Saturday that was then picked up by the Tribune today in a virtual rewrite. The Oregonian, off for the long weekend, lead its execrable OregonLive web page with news that the execrable Blazers aren’t for sale…yet.

Kindly note the tippy-toe language, such as “not limited to noncitizens,” in the above county communique, which begs the question: who else will get to vote? (How about felons serving time?)

And what’s that blah-blah about a publicly-financed “education and engagement process…” without, of course, mentioning what that might cost. Or what kind of propaganda will be pumped out? Or who will do the pumping. Portland’s Charter Commission solved that problem by hiring the completely neutral outfit, Coalition of Communities of Color, to do its flacking and run their “listening.” Check their own stats on who got heard the most.

The “visit the jail four times a year” nonsense? Not surprising—but how come every Portland-area pol seems to be campaigning for the felon-vote?

Nither OPB or the Trib did much of a deep-dive into the folks messing around with the county charter. So let’s take a look.

Note, first, that each and every one lists their preferred pronouns. It’s a verbal bend ‘o’ the knee that, in due time, our kids will look back at as evidence that their parents were all momentarily insane. And a giveaway in the “I don’t know what a ‘woman’ is” variety of political mush.

Here’s another tell: they are, with one or two exceptions, kids. Short on “lived experience,” particularly in government; long on the kind of wishful thinking endemic among people who think they’re ready to run the world. Even before they graduate from high school.

By my count, eight of the members are “first generation” children of immigrants; each active in the various “Gimme” non-profits that promote immigrant interests. You’ve got the Vietnamese, Turkish, “Chicana/Peruana,” Swedish, Mexican, Somali and one who lists herself as “a special educator of Iranian dissent.” All looking for a bigger piece ‘o’ the American pie.

Awesome, how fast the first generation learns how to play the system. The old boys at Tammany and the Irish machine in Boston would smile down on the latest plunderers.

One of the Committee’s “tri-chairs,” is Marc Gonzalez (He/Him), who is the only person with any real experience in retail government:

He served as Finance Director overseeing Facilities Management, Procurement and Fleet Services as well as all financial activity including accounting, financial reporting, budget and payroll for the County and several of its component unit agencies from January 1995 until his retirement on July 31, 2018.

Otherwise, the thread tying everyone together is—dare we guess?—radical, racial, sexual-preference progressivism. Which, of course, every single ciitizen of Multnomah County agrees with one-hundred percent.

Let’s parse a few of the committee biographies for amusement.

 J'reyesha (Jay) Brannon (She/Her)

She’s a “design engineer and project manager for the City of Portland,” whatever that means, although “programs” and “Portland” are synonymous with “failure.” Also, she is “passionate about accessibility and inclusion for communities of color…” We will encounter passion frequently as we tour.

Ana del Rocío (She/Her)

She’s “executive director of Oregon Futures Lab and Color PAC,” and is “passionate about reproductive justice, grassroots organizing, and building political power with and for Black and Brown communities…”

Samantha Gladu (She/They)

She’s a “a queer white woman committed to addressing power inequities by building representative and progressive anti-racist leadership,” and “helps build strong, sustainable, values aligned abortion funds.”

Ana I. González Muñoz (She/Her)

Her “professional and personal commitment revolves around serving her community to advocate for equity, inclusion, and social justice.” Her “community” is the “Latino Network [where she’s] the Director of Community Engagement & Leadership Development.”

Annie Kallen (She/Her)

Wonder where non-citizen voting came from? She “chairs the board of the Equal Vote Coalition, which advocates for fair voting methods.”

Danica Leung (She/Her)

She’s “a senior at Lincoln High school and a first generation Asian-American, born and raised in Oregon. She is a fierce advocate for youth activism, education and political engagement…”

Jude Perez (They/Them)

They are “a queer, first-generation Mexican American from Houston, Texas,” active in a non-profit that will “distribute funds to grassroots groups that are working towards long-term, systemic solutions, and community-centered strategies to dismantle oppression in Oregon.”

Donovan Scribes (He/Him)

He’s a “multi-faceted creative,” and “2nd Vice President of the Portland NAACP, where he has been working on ending Qualified Immunity for police, environmental initiatives and community engagement.”

Salma Sheikh (She/Her) 

She’s “an honor roll student at Oregon Islamic Academy,” who “seeks opportunities in which she can use her skills to help her community.”

Theresa Mai (She/Her)

She’s one of the committee’s tri-chairs, and “a public policy major at Oregon State University, where she focuses on “how research, advocacy, and engagement can help create policies that uplift communities and their future generations—especially those that have been historically underrepresented and excluded.”

Kids.

There are a couple of wild-cards on the panel…

Georgina Miltenberger (She/Her)

Her qualification seems to be that she’s “a partner at Eagle Bay Advisors, an investment advisory and multi-family office firm based in New York.” And “serves on the board of trustees, chair of the Governance Committee, of Oregon Episcopal School.”

And…

Maja Harris (She/Her)

She describes herself as a “serial voluunteer,” and is “a director of the Hormel Harris Foundation with a focus on the intersection between philanthropy and politics.” The foundation, located in Lincoln, Nebraska, gave away around $98-thousand in 2020, mostly to local Lincoln charities such as Matt Talbot Kitchen & Outreach, which provides free meals.

Both, let us predict, will be easily outvoted, as will Mr. Gonzalez, by the assorted “volunteers,” non-profiteers and college kids. The measures approved thus far bear that out..

Well, there’s a lot of “passion” there…but expertise and a commitment to all of the citizens of the county…not so much.

As one of my favorite Dissenters, Ollie Parks, put it…

Instead of selecting for diversity of race, color, ethnicity and national origin and uniformity of political outlook (i.e., woke progressive) a Vera Katz would have seen to it that the committee comprised the best possible experts in municipal law and governance, political science, conflict resolution, history, sociology, economics, law enforcement and other fields germane to the undertaking.

Tough luck, Ollie; those days are over. What we have is a panel appointed by the ladies who run the county; if they are interested in anything beyond monetizing homelessness and supervising the hysterics at the county health department, we have yet to see it.

Instead the kids are in charge—thank you, American education!—and if it looks a little like the great film, “Viridiana,” it’s going to be showing for a long time, since the kids have asked for another 18-months to come up with new schemes.

One of the serious pejoratives in the UK is, “silly.” It’s enough to get a fistfight going—but let’s say it anyway:

This is government from biased, racist, narrow-minded, sheep-like silly people.

Coming soon; to a county near you.