RETORT OF THE WEEK

[January 19th, 2005] Editor's note: This week, in a bit of uncharacteristic even-handedness, we've allowed County Chair Diane Linn the chance to respond to being named WW's Rogue of the Year for 2004. Despite the temptation, we didn't edit the following column.

With so many rogues in corporate boardrooms and seats of power, your readers must be wondering how I pulled out Willamette Week's "Rogue of the Year" (WW, Dec. 29, 2004)

Allowing 3,000 committed couples to marry and upholding the Oregon Constitution was only a start. I knew that beating out George Bush, Neil Goldschmidt, Qyntel Woods and others would require some really roguish behavior.

You touched on most of it in your account of my year, but it was such a brilliant path to Rogue of the Year I can't resist using this space to relive it.

I knew that if the County did a "lousy job" collecting the local income tax-as you say-that would move me up the list. So I was thrilled when nine out of 10 people actually paid the tax in the first year and the County was able to transfer more than $100 million directly to the schools and programs for the vulnerable. I knew that would really make people mad, especially all the parents whose children had a full school year.

And since I'm not into animal fighting, have no skeletons in my closet involving baby sitters and haven't taken the county to war for no reason, I knew I needed to do more.

That's when I came up with the idea of not reigning in a local school district's teacher health care costs, as you aptly chronicled. I knew that two years after intervening to help avert a teacher strike, and after creating the panel that crafted the just compensation plan now in effect, I knew I had better not contribute any more.

At that point, I knew I was on my way to Rogue of the Year. To seal it, though, I thought long and hard about how to pull off what you described as my final "coup de gracelessness"-the hiring of an economic development advisor.

Realizing our metropolitan area has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, I knew that trying to bring jobs to the county would put me over the top and Rogue of the Year would be mine. Victory is sweet!

With luck, I hope to repeat in 2005. If it's not looking good, I can always keep the bridges up.