If Guantanamo closes, can Wapato open?

[June 27th, 2007]

One win, one loss for city Commissioner Sam Adams. The win came when the city attorney's office issued an opinion last week that gives Adams the ammunition he needs to kill an unusual exemption real-estate brokers enjoy from the city's business-license fee (see "A Real Break," WW, May 9, 2007). "There's no logical reason that brokers should be treated any differently than any other independent contractor," wrote Deputy City Attorney Shane Abma. Adams says he'll seek to end the exemption ASAP. And he'll use the proceeds, estimated at $250,000, to lower the tax overall for other businesses. Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors spokeswoman Jane Leo says her group will oppose imposition of a "blanket tax." The loss: The state Land Use Board of Appeals overturned the moratorium Adams pushed on further development on Hayden Island.

It shouldn't surprise anyone following the case of Oregon v. Reverend Phil Sano that the state has dropped all charges against the 30-year-old local bike-culture personality. Sano faced four misdemeanor charges for an altercation with an SUV driver and the driver's off-duty Portland cop passenger during the 2006 World Naked Bike Ride . Among the charges: public indecency (even though nude activism, like the naked bike ride, is protected by the state constitution) and criminal mischief for smacking the hood of the SUV—as it was running into him. The case had been postponed an astonishing 10 times; prosecutors say they finally dropped it last week because the SUV driver was no longer interested in pressing charges and couldn't make the trial date anyway.

Last-minute legislative sleight of hand has united a group that usually doesn't agree on much, which includes Portland General Electric, the Citizens Utility Board, Associated Oregon Industries and about 20 others. The issue in the 2007 Legislature's final days: an amendment to Senate Bill 994 that would redirect $4.6 million of PGE ratepayer money collected for conservation efforts. That money instead would go to retiring debt that OMSI owes to the Oregon Department of Energy. A letter in opposition signed by PGE, CUB and AOI calls the amendment "the equivalent of consumer fraud. " No legislator claimed responsibility for the amendment, which slipped into a "Christmas tree bill" of unrelated items.

For departing Portland Public Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips (see "Hurricane Vicki," WW, Feb. 7, 2007), the words "long-term" and "school planning" often appeared to be code for "right now" and "fire drill." Not so at Lincoln High School, where parents and community members are in the initial stages of re-imagining the downtown campus as a mixed-use hub of city services and possibly other offerings such as housing. Lincoln, with about 1,500 students, needs at least 14 new classrooms on its Southwest Portland campus. Words like "green" and "sustainable" color the current discussions. But don't break out the champagne just yet; this is a plan for a planned plan. Principal Peyton Chapman says the committee is thinking "big" with a vision beyond Lincoln.

Despite continued rumblings that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wants a more mainstream challenger to U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), activist Steve Novick is plowing forward. Murmurs has confirmed that he has hired Gov. Ted Kulongoski's 30-year-old deputy spokesman, Jake Weigler, to manage his campaign. Novick declined comment on the hire.

Update time on the June 6 story "Downward Bound" about a U.S. Department of Education decision to make schools like Portland State University participate in a questionable study of the nationwide college-prep program known as Upward Bound. Last week, U.S. Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) and other members of the House Education and Labor Committee asked federal education officials to drop controversial study conditions from the program's latest evaluation—one such requirement asks schools to recruit twice as many students as they can serve for the purpose of creating control groups to analyze. Education officials declined the proposal. The same House committee on Monday tacked that requirement to another bill that, if passed, would erase the new conditions.