Idol Buzz.

[May 27th, 2009]

• California’s Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Proposition 8, the state’s ban on same-sex marriage approved by voters last fall. The reaction from Basic Rights Oregon? Disappointment, obviously, says BRO executive director Jeana Frazzini. But Frazzini remains optimistic the California ruling will help a public-education campaign here for a 2012 ballot measure reversing a similar gay-marriage ban passed by Oregon voters in 2004. “We can’t look to any institution, whether it’s the courts or anything else, to do this for us,” Frazzini says.

• There’s gloom at the inn, as in the proposed headquarters hotel next to the Oregon Convention Center. The Tri-County Lodging Association last week listed big problems with the idea in a letter to Metro President David Bragdon, Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler and Mayor Sam Adams. The lodging association’s members think the hotel’s projected numbers “may not accurately reflect Portland market realities” (to read the letter and a more favorable review of the projections by Adams’ hotel task force, go to wweek.com). City Council, Multnomah County and Metro are supposed to vote by July 1 whether to spend $12 million to develop design drawings and a guaranteed maximum price for the proposed 594-room hotel.

• The University of Portland apparently missed the memo that men and women should be paid the same now that we’re in the 21st century, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Catholic school. Mary Allender, an economics and statistics professor at UP’s Pamplin School of Business, claims in the lawsuit she makes $10,000 to $20,000 a year less than her male counterparts. Allender seeks $50,000 for emotional distress, plus back pay. University spokeswoman Laurie Kelley declined to comment.

• A caregiver whose elderly patient gave her about $1 million in assets lost her battle with the patient’s children to keep the dead man’s estate. Multnomah County Circuit Judge Katherine Tennyson ruled May 20 that caregiver Patricia McIntosh used “manipulation” to persuade Warren Cummins, a 91-year-old retired accountant from the West Hills, to leave her everything (see “Estate of Denial,” WW, Jan. 7, 2009). McIntosh, who had already spent about $300,000, according to the family’s attorneys, quickly left the courtroom after the hearing. Her attorney, Jim Cartwright, said she would not comment.

• As first reported on wweek.com, Mayor Sam Adams’ former spokesman has put the city and Adams on notice that he plans to file a claim seeking $162,000-plus. Former Adams spokesman Wade Nkrumah’s allegation? That Adams “damaged his business reputation” when he told KATU that Nkrumah resigned in January because the job was “not what he signed up for in terms of stress.” Nkrumah’s notice says the real reason he resigned was Adams’ lies about the mayor’s involvement with Beau Breedlove. Adams spokesman Roy Kaufmann didn’t return calls seeking comment.