Go ahead, drug-test this column. We're clean.

[August 2nd, 2006] If you can't join 'em, beat 'em. Or try to, anyway, if you're Felix Schein , campaign manager for Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton. According to a Schein cover letter and résumé that recently fell into Murmurs' hands, he applied in 2003 for a job in what's now enemy territory —Gov. Ted Kulongoski's communications office. "I am both well versed in the issues confronting the Governor and am intimately familiar with the duties of your staff," he writes, noting his five years with NBC News in New York and Washington. Schein now says Kulongoski "did nothing to reform state government" and failed to live up to his promise, "which is why I'm working for Ron Saxton."

The number of Mexican citizens seeking ID cards from the Mexican Consulate in Portland has risen 16 percent this year to more than 10,000 people. The "matrícula consular" ID cards are issued to Mexican citizens regardless of their immigration status and let recipients secure driver licenses and open bank accounts. Consúl General Fernando Sanchez Ugarte says one of the forces behind the 16 percent increase is the REAL ID Act, the bill Congress passed last year to prevent illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses by requiring states to verify applicants' legal status. Critics of the ID cards issued by the consulate say they're designed to legitimize illegal immigrants. While Oregon and other states have until May 2008 to comply with the REAL ID Act, anyone who gets a driver's license under the old rules can keep it for eight years.

When OHSU recently mailed letters to its members notifying them of their right to opt out of future anonymous or coded genetic research (see "Rogue of the Week," WW, June 21, 2006), the healthcare provider included handy abbreviated notices in Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese. But the Spanish notice is so abbreviated that it omits any mention of genetic info, research or privacy . It simply says the letter is about how OHSU can "use and share information about your health" and says to contact OHSU for a full translation. Similar opt-out letters from Kaiser Permanente say—in English—that translations are available in different languages.

The new temporary home for the Streetlight and Porchlight youth homeless shelters is the former Martha Washington Hotel on Southwest 11th Avenue. Mary Li, manager of Multnomah County's Office of School and Community Partnerships, says the two shelters run by Janus Youth Programs have secured a 90-day temporary permit to lease the building's basement. Janus' shelters are looking for permanent space after their lease ran out Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 820 SW Oak St. (see "Street Strife," WW, July 26, 2006). The Martha Washington also has been in the news recently for other reasons. County Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey faces a complaint at the state ethics commission about her role in the county's planned future sale of the building ("Sweetheart Deal?" July 5, 2006). The commissioner's husband, J. Daniel "Dan" Steffey, is the director of affordable housing for a developer interested in the site.

Five and a half months after her abrupt departure as Rojo de Steffey's chief of staff, Shelli Romero has landed a new job. Romero still isn't saying why she left Rojo de Steffey after five years in that post, but she confirms she's landed a $58K-a-year gig as a regional government liaison with the Oregon Department of Transportation.

^WEB ONLY MURMURS!

Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the son of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., starts this week on The Oregonian's Multnomah County beat. The younger Sulzberger comes to The O after a nearly two-year stint at the Providence Journal in which he was well-regarded as a good reporter who exuded no sense of "to the manner born." Current county reporter Kimberly A.C. Wilson will now cover North Portland and do general-assignment work.