NEWS BUZZ

murmurs | scoreboard | rogue of the week

YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US...
The Portland Women's Crisis Line is having a crisis of its own.

Last Friday, the agency abruptly suspended operations. Instead of help, callers will receive a recorded message referring them to Clackamas Women's Services and Crisis Triage until March 15. Neither executive director Kris Peters nor Viola Pruitt, chairwoman of the crisis line's board of directors, returned WW's calls to comment on the shutdown.

Volunteers and former employees say Peters, who took command of the crisis line in June, switched on the answering machine last week after firing eight of her nine paid staff members.

Sources say the staff and crew of 44 volunteers were so unhappy with her management style that they filed a grievance with the crisis line's board of directors Jan. 20 requesting intervention. When the board did nothing, the group exercised its right under an unusual provision in the organization's bylaws that essentially allows it to vote in a new board of directors.

It is unclear whether the staffers were fired because they called for the emergency meeting, scheduled for Feb. 13. The fired employees are not allowed to vote, so selecting the new board will be left up to volunteers, says Marcia Meyers, who was senior citizens' advocate at the crisis line until she was fired Feb. 8. But Meyers says former staffers and volunteers will restart the agency as soon as the new board allows them into the building.

"We are pulling it together," she says. "If we had a location, it would be functioning today."

Meanwhile, Multnomah County domestic violence coordinator Chiquita Rollins is trying to replace the crisis line, the largest of eight such services in the tri-county area, at least temporarily. In 1998, the most recent year for which figures are available, the hotline received nearly 5,500 calls from women looking for safe havens, court advocates and other assistance.

--Patty Wentz

Charity on the Clock
Two weeks ago Portland's besieged police chief, Mark Kroeker, finally got some good press.

The local media trumpeted the story of Kroeker and the World Children's Transplant Fund, a nonprofit whose board he chairs, arranging a life-saving liver transplant for a 14-year-old Bosnian girl.

But Kroeker's altruism falls into what City Auditor Gary Blackmer calls a "gray area." That's because the media was alerted by a press release on Portland Police Bureau letterhead, sent from the chief's office fax. Additionally, Kroeker's spokesman, Mike Hefley coordinated the Feb. 1 press conference that the chief and his assistant, Lt. Scott Anderson, attended. (All wore their uniforms.)

Kroeker's blurring of the line between his official duties and charitable pursuits might seem trivial, except that he has a history of such actions.

In 1988, while traveling on Transplant Fund business, Kroeker and a board member were barred from their flight after a dispute over carry-on luggage. Kroeker then borrowed a mechanic's radio, identified himself as an LAPD deputy chief, and persuaded the pilot to let them board, according to the Los Angeles Times. Chief Daryl Gates reprimanded Kroeker for the episode.

Kroeker's former LAPD assistant, Virginia Acevedo, says that throughout 1988 Kroeker made her devote most of her city time to nonprofit-related work.

Kroeker disputes Acevedo's claim, saying that she volunteered. Hefley and Anderson also volunteered their time for the Transplant Fund, he says, adding that charitable work is "not only acceptable, but is encouraged in good police organizations."

Told of Kroeker's use of city resources to support his nonprofit, former LAPD Assistant Chief David Dotson says, "It's a small deal except that he and his [LAPD] mentor, Bob Vernon, never seemed to be able to separate their official duties from their private beliefs."

--Nick Budnick

SCOREBOARD

WINNERS

LOSERS

1. It will be some time before the future shape of the Park Blocks is decided, but last week's convocation of national planning experts clearly endorsed Neil Goldschmidt's basic premise: Downtown is dead without some radical changes. 2. The Portland Police Bureau gets a belated merit badge for civil rights. Bowing to City Hall policy, the cop shop cut its ties to the Explorer program for wannabe cops, citing the Explorers' association with the gay-unfriendly Boy Scouts of America. 3. Metro's garbage hauler, STS, came out smelling like a rose even though the stench from the council chambers last week wasn't so pleasant. Turns out the Metro Council failed to ask for a copy of a consultant's report before OKing a new contract. That means councilors were kept in the dark about the consultant's recommendation: dump the company. This is charter reform?

1. D'oh! The FBI, Portland police and Clearfield, Utah, detectives looked like Keystone cops after the arrest of a man at Northwest Portland's CLASS Academy on charges of sex abuse. Turns out to have been bad information of the lowest order--and a major lawsuit waiting to happen. 2. It wasn't all good news for the prospective beneficiaries of President W's tax cut last week. Over the weekend, several SUVs in the upscale Alameda neighborhood were vandalized with spray paint and flyers in an attempt to guilt überconsumers into seeing the error of their ways. 3. Talk about your bait and switch. After promising not to run for governor if elected Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury now admits he's considering a 2002 run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Gordon Smith.

Racetrack Rock-Show Blues

Last week, the city of Portland issued a report demanding the end of summer concerts at Portland Meadows. The report claims that zoning forbids concerts at the North Portland horse track, a position the city defended at a hearing Tuesday morning.

Nonetheless, the production company that books shows at the Meadows is prepared to rock the racetrack this summer. "Our theory is that, one way or another, we will be doing shows there," says David Leiken of Double Tee Promotions.

A ruling in the case isn't likely for weeks, so it's unclear how the bureaucratic showdown will affect the
summer concert slate.

In the past, however, Double Tee has charged that the city is hassling Portland Meadows at least in part because of the city's financial stake in PGE Park (the former Civic Stadium), which is allowed to host eight concerts annually. If the concerts at the Meadows are forbidden, the stadium would be the city's only major outdoor venue.

Currently, Portland Meadows operates under the zoning equivalent of a grandfather clause, which permits activities held there before the neighborhood's present regulations were adopted in 1989.

Throughout the '90s, Leiken and other promoters booked shows at the track with city-approved noise permits. Last year, however, complaints from the neighboring Hayden Meadows shopping center led the city to decide that the zoning exemption allows horse racing--and that's it. "According to our records, there's no evidence that activities other than racing took place at that site prior to '89," says city planner Ellen Wax.

Leiken, who has promoted concerts in Portland for nearly three decades, argues that the city's position is dead wrong. "I know for a fact that there were shows there in the early '70s," he says. "In fact, I know one guy who went broke doing concerts
there."
--Zach Dundas

ROGUE OF THE WEEK
Seen a rogue on the loose?
Contact our roguemeister,
John Schrag
jschrag@wweek.com

This week's Rogue is a round-up. We're roping as many mobile City Hall officials as we can find. Their offense: gratuitous use of sport utility vehicles.

City employees increasingly pilot SUVs at a time when the public is souring on their polluting, road-hogging, gas-guzzling ways. Right now, the city owns or leases 135 of them, up substantially in the past five years.

Perhaps the most egregious example of excess is the Office of Government Relations. Chief lobbyist Marge Kafoury argues that she and her two aides each need Chevrolet Blazers for daily trips to Salem. Kafoury contends the SUVs (which lease for $808 per month) protect her team from inclement weather better than mere sedans (which they leased for the 1997 session) could.

Let's hope Kafoury presents better arguments in the Legislature. I-5 is flat, straight and rarely icy. Moreover, the lobbyists' choice of vehicle could put them at risk politically: Portland will introduce scores of environmental bills to the Legislature this term. For rural pols cynical about city slickers, what easier target than lobbyists storming the capitol in new SUVs?

Other city bureaus are guilty as well. Perhaps some Water Bureau and Transportation employees need four-wheel drive to visit Bull Run Reservoir and construction sites. The Police Bureau's bomb squad needs capacious vehicles to carry its gear, and battalion fire chiefs occasionally need to jam off-road. But do the head fire and police chiefs need them?

Beyond a few critical functions, the City That Works (preferably in SUVs) has done little to justify its vehicle policy, which leaves too many gas guzzlers rumbling through the well-paved streets of Portland.

CANADA in DYER STRAITS
Amid a cacophony of complaints about Ben Canada's administration, Portland school board members once again let the superintendent off the hook--although their patience is clearly growing thin.

When Canada hired Deputy Superintendent Susan Dyer last May, he gave her a $120,000 salary for three years and apparently guaranteed the contract's full value in the event of early termination. That extraordinary provision, of which board members say they were unaware, is far more attractive than a similar clause in Canada's contract, which includes only one year's severance. "She had a better contract than Ben or anyone else here," says board member Ron Saxton.

If Saxton sounded testy, he had good reason: The board didn't address Dyer's contract until after Latino activists and its own student board member blasted the administration while the Education Crisis Team waited to shut the meeting down.

During a bizarre hourlong interlude (after which nearly everybody had gone home), the board met privately to consider paying Dyer about $250,000 to hit the road. When the board retreated into executive session, it was reportedly deadlocked 3-3. (The seventh board member, Karla Wenzel, was out of town.) During the executive session (which WW did not attend), board vice-chairman Marc Abrams reportedly shifted his position. On the advice of district lawyers, he agreed to support the payoff, saving Canada a huge setback.

Like Saxton, Abrams voiced deep misgivings about Dyer's golden parachute when the public portion of the meeting resumed. "I vote 'yes' tonight only with extreme reluctance," Abrams said.

Board members Doug Capps and Derry Jackson cast dissenting votes. Capps said he was "offended" that Canada had negotiated the lucrative settlement without informing the board. Jackson said the payoff sent the wrong message.

Only one private citizen, Byron Kellar, a construction executive who has served on the Citizens' Budget Review and other committees, witnessed the vote. Earlier in the day, Kellar circulated an email (co-signed by Dwayne Schultz, another high-level district booster) urging the district to limit Dyer's settlement to five months' pay, about $50,000.

As Canada gave his pitch for the payoff, Kellar crumpled a copy of the superintendent's resolution in disgust. "That's just crazy," he said. "It's just flat-out crazy."

--Nigel Jaquiss

Murmurs

WE'RE GOOD ENOUGH, WE'RE STRONG ENOUGH...

* In a move apparently designed to distance himself from the Wilshire Financial Services Group, whose problems he created, Andy Wiederhorn has changed the name of his current company from Wilshire Real Estate Investment Inc. to Fog Cutter Capital Group Inc. Is that clear?

* Disgruntled workers, unite! Since more than 1,000 of Freightliner's shift workers were told they were out of a job effective March 30, some have been getting revenge. According to sources close to the company, workers are sabotaging trucks by meddling with construction and defecating in the cabs before shipping them off to distributors. Freightliner did not return calls seeking comment.

* The latest issue of Spin profiles Portlander Stephen Malkmus, the enigmatic frontman for the now-dissolved slacker rock group Pavement, as he embarks on a solo career. The piece lovingly tracks Malkmus and girlfriend as they ingest bits of manna at many of this city's hipster paradises.

* A tale of two proposed bars, both would-be Chinatown drinking destinations: East, an Asian-themed cocktail joint, attracted opposition from some elements of the Chinese community; Tube, a futuristic design, prompted screams of GENTRIFICATION!!! from punk artists it would displace. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission shot both of 'em down Monday, as a pair of 2-2 votes denied sought-after liquor licenses. This was East's second appearance before the commission, and the project's backers say they're through. Tube, however, may be able to try again.

* Last summer, faced with a new "business improvement" fee designed to pay security cops to nail graffiti taggers and drive the homeless into other neighborhoods, Pearl District denizens complained that the neighborhood had already become too pricey for artists--and small businesses were next. Now Murmurs hears that the Association for Portland Progress, the powerful downtown business group, has dropped the idea.

stinging the olcc
Last year, the OLCC reprimanded two store owners, Peter Graepel of Eugene and Darrel Morgan of Albany, not for selling alcohol to minors working in OLCC sting operations but for refusing to return their ID cards to them. The pair appealed the disciplinary slaps; they plan to subpoena OLCC director Pam Erickson to testify before a state administrative judge at the end of the month.

The summons will probably land next Wednesday, when the various parties hold a telephone conference similar to a trial court's discovery process.

"Since [Erickson's] not likely to come willingly, we'll subpoena her," says Graepel.

The dispute over stings--in which minors try to buy booze, then proffer their own IDs if asked--is part of a broader revolt by liquor agents against the OLCC. In this instance, Graepel and Morgan challenge the agency's authority both to use minors as decoys and to compel agents to return confiscated ID.

The OLCC contends that its decoy program passes legal muster. In a pair of letters to legislators written last fall, Erickson acknowledges that no law specifically orders store owners to return ID snatched from minors. However, the agency argues that such confiscations constitute an obstruction of its enforcement efforts.

At least two state lawmakers aren't ready to buy what the OLCC's selling. Republican representatives Betsy Close and Jeff Kropf both wrote letters protesting the agency's treatment of Graepel and Morgan. Neither is satisfied by the agency's defense of its actions.

"I thought the action with Darrel was unprecedented and unfair," Close says.

Graepel and Morgan say they're prepared to sue the OLCC in federal court if the result of the administrative hearing, scheduled for the end of the month, isn't to their liking.

--Zach Dundas