“Numbers floated around like prices at a Mideast bazaar: 5-percent was a working number—but of what?”
You might be on to something. Hardesty’s Measure 26-217 creating a new police accountability board comprised of people with “lived experience,” (negative encounters with police) requires the board’s budget “shall be no less than 5 percent of the Police Bureau’s operating budget.”
That measure passed with an astonishing 81 percent of the vote after the riots of 2020.
Once the board is seated, there will likely be fewer calls from the Hardesty crowd to defund police. It will mean less money for them to play with.
The small print on Sunrise PDX's donation page is interesting. It provides avenues for more detailed financial disclosures via a list of several state agencies, apparently as required by state laws, but for some reason Oregon is not among them. Meanwhile all their donation money is channeled through and then disbursed by an outfit called ActBlue in Washington D.C. Ahem....
Sep 17, 2022·edited Sep 17, 2022Liked by Richard Cheverton
It would be fun to ask the rainbow children on the charter commission to answer the following question: "The U.S. Constitution is to the Portland City Charter what statutes are to _______." "Lived experience" is not the correct answer. "Ordinances" is. And ordinances are what the kids are trying to stuff into the city charter because no adults had the opportunity to carefully specify and limit the charter commissioners' powers and terms when their remits were being drafted.* Vera Katz certainly would have seen to it that the charter commission would be disbanded, dissolved, deactivated and permanently terminated the instant they'd delivered their work product. Someone needs to pull the plug on the woke kids' governance project before something truly bad happens.
*Actually, it's doubtful whether any of the stellar representatives of the city's various racial and ethnic groups who make up the commission are aware of the difference between an organic document such as a city charter and ordinances, which elected officials craft in order to exercise the powers authorized by the charter. That's why most sane city governments would see to it that a charter review commission included an attorney versed in municipal law.
“(M)ost sane city governments would see to it that a charter review commission included an attorney versed in municipal law.”
I wonder if the Portland City Attorney’s Office is well-versed in municipal law. At times they seem to cater to Portland’s “progressive values” — whether it’s lavishing money on criminal offenders or groveling in apology, as City Attorney Robert Taylor did repeatedly when it was discovered a police training deck included a slide with a graphic joking about patchouli-smelling hippies.
At this month’s Citizen Review Committee meeting, Heidi Brown of the City Attorney’s Office began her presentation by saying, “I’m from the East Coast so it’s OK to interrupt me if you have questions.”
Apparently she was playing off the assumption that Portlanders are such sensitive souls a misplaced question could be painful.
City attorney Robert Taylor should be apologizing directly to the federal judge overseeing Portland's half-assed efforts to comply with the terms the Justice Department imposed on the city in 2014 after concluding that too many mentally ill people were ending up dead after confrontations with the Portland Police Bureau.
Frankly, instead of (or in addition to) apologizing, he should be telling the court, the DOJ and the people who ultimately pay his salary why it was he did not bring the controversial training slide to the attention of Justice Department lawyers the moment he became aware of it and why he sat on it for so long.
It's impossible for an outsider to know which attorneys, if any, have expertise in municipal law or any other field, for that matter.
Although with six chief deputy city attorneys and thirty-nine deputy city attorneys the office would be considered a medium sized law firm, unlike law firms the city attorney's office doesn't give its professional staff splashy pages on its web site with studio-quality portraits, a paragraph about their areas of practice and the all-important list of alma maters, honors, memberships and publications. Heck, we don't even know which of them likes to play darts and who among them was inspired by their recent trek along the pilgrim's path to Santiago de Compostela.
Still, professional obscurity ain't so bad. Presumably the deputy city attorneys aren't saddled with billable-hours quotas and don't have to take time away from their kids or cats beating the bushes or golf courses for business. In the city of Portland today there's no doubt plenty of business finds them.
In closing, if I had a genie or a reliable source inside City Hall I would dearly love to know who it was in the city attorney's office who signed off on this patently discriminatory program and why:
Arts Empowerment Program
The Arts Empowerment Program assists artists and arts organization get permits. We focus on assisting Black, Indigenous, people of color and persons with disabilities.
How we will support you
Answering questions about the permit processes
Researching your potential site before you sign a lease or contract
Finding solutions and problem solving for projects in process
Keeping you updated on the progress of your project
Connecting you with other potential community resources.
Has anyone considered, as I have started to suspect from my own participation in “public”Zoom meetings, that it’s the bureaucrats/neo-fascists best way to control control supposedly “open meetings?”
This is also common at the equally “woke” one-party state legislature from the rogue and inconvenient citizen rabble.
“Numbers floated around like prices at a Mideast bazaar: 5-percent was a working number—but of what?”
You might be on to something. Hardesty’s Measure 26-217 creating a new police accountability board comprised of people with “lived experience,” (negative encounters with police) requires the board’s budget “shall be no less than 5 percent of the Police Bureau’s operating budget.”
That measure passed with an astonishing 81 percent of the vote after the riots of 2020.
Once the board is seated, there will likely be fewer calls from the Hardesty crowd to defund police. It will mean less money for them to play with.
The small print on Sunrise PDX's donation page is interesting. It provides avenues for more detailed financial disclosures via a list of several state agencies, apparently as required by state laws, but for some reason Oregon is not among them. Meanwhile all their donation money is channeled through and then disbursed by an outfit called ActBlue in Washington D.C. Ahem....
As always, Ink, you have a keen eye.
Thank you for attending and for raising a salient point. I can’t even imagine how hard it must’ve been to sit through it.
It would be fun to ask the rainbow children on the charter commission to answer the following question: "The U.S. Constitution is to the Portland City Charter what statutes are to _______." "Lived experience" is not the correct answer. "Ordinances" is. And ordinances are what the kids are trying to stuff into the city charter because no adults had the opportunity to carefully specify and limit the charter commissioners' powers and terms when their remits were being drafted.* Vera Katz certainly would have seen to it that the charter commission would be disbanded, dissolved, deactivated and permanently terminated the instant they'd delivered their work product. Someone needs to pull the plug on the woke kids' governance project before something truly bad happens.
*Actually, it's doubtful whether any of the stellar representatives of the city's various racial and ethnic groups who make up the commission are aware of the difference between an organic document such as a city charter and ordinances, which elected officials craft in order to exercise the powers authorized by the charter. That's why most sane city governments would see to it that a charter review commission included an attorney versed in municipal law.
“(M)ost sane city governments would see to it that a charter review commission included an attorney versed in municipal law.”
I wonder if the Portland City Attorney’s Office is well-versed in municipal law. At times they seem to cater to Portland’s “progressive values” — whether it’s lavishing money on criminal offenders or groveling in apology, as City Attorney Robert Taylor did repeatedly when it was discovered a police training deck included a slide with a graphic joking about patchouli-smelling hippies.
At this month’s Citizen Review Committee meeting, Heidi Brown of the City Attorney’s Office began her presentation by saying, “I’m from the East Coast so it’s OK to interrupt me if you have questions.”
Apparently she was playing off the assumption that Portlanders are such sensitive souls a misplaced question could be painful.
City attorney Robert Taylor should be apologizing directly to the federal judge overseeing Portland's half-assed efforts to comply with the terms the Justice Department imposed on the city in 2014 after concluding that too many mentally ill people were ending up dead after confrontations with the Portland Police Bureau.
Frankly, instead of (or in addition to) apologizing, he should be telling the court, the DOJ and the people who ultimately pay his salary why it was he did not bring the controversial training slide to the attention of Justice Department lawyers the moment he became aware of it and why he sat on it for so long.
It's impossible for an outsider to know which attorneys, if any, have expertise in municipal law or any other field, for that matter.
Although with six chief deputy city attorneys and thirty-nine deputy city attorneys the office would be considered a medium sized law firm, unlike law firms the city attorney's office doesn't give its professional staff splashy pages on its web site with studio-quality portraits, a paragraph about their areas of practice and the all-important list of alma maters, honors, memberships and publications. Heck, we don't even know which of them likes to play darts and who among them was inspired by their recent trek along the pilgrim's path to Santiago de Compostela.
Still, professional obscurity ain't so bad. Presumably the deputy city attorneys aren't saddled with billable-hours quotas and don't have to take time away from their kids or cats beating the bushes or golf courses for business. In the city of Portland today there's no doubt plenty of business finds them.
In closing, if I had a genie or a reliable source inside City Hall I would dearly love to know who it was in the city attorney's office who signed off on this patently discriminatory program and why:
Arts Empowerment Program
The Arts Empowerment Program assists artists and arts organization get permits. We focus on assisting Black, Indigenous, people of color and persons with disabilities.
How we will support you
Answering questions about the permit processes
Researching your potential site before you sign a lease or contract
Finding solutions and problem solving for projects in process
Keeping you updated on the progress of your project
Connecting you with other potential community resources.
https://www.portland.gov/bds/empowered-communities-programs/arts
Ollie...great Comment.
And how odd to be writing on Constitution Day--think any of the whiz-kids even knew it was on the calendar?
Has anyone considered, as I have started to suspect from my own participation in “public”Zoom meetings, that it’s the bureaucrats/neo-fascists best way to control control supposedly “open meetings?”
This is also common at the equally “woke” one-party state legislature from the rogue and inconvenient citizen rabble.
Intertesting point about "open meetings."