NEWS BUZZ

murmurs | scoreboard | rogue of the week

On Monday, deputies James Borja, Rodger Cross, Wallace John Montoya and Jeff Ristvet received notice of their intended dismissal. They have 48 hours to challenge their firings; Noelle will hear any appeals within the next two weeks.

The alleged beating gained notoriety with the announcement that two of the deputies implicated bore tattoos reading "Brotherhood of the Strong" (see "Brotherhood of the Strong," WW, Aug. 23, 2000).

Poe was booked July 11 at the downtown jail on what has been characterized as a minor domestic-relations charge. Cross allegedly struck Poe with his forearm or fist in the head or face when Poe proved uncooperative during fingerprinting.

Poe has reportedly claimed that he was then strapped to a stretcherlike restraint board, taken to a shower room and beaten. Deputies Cross, Ristvet and Borja reportedly entered the room, while Montoya allegedly stood guard outside.

All four deputies have denied beating Poe.

Of the four, only Ristvet faces criminal prosecution over the Poe affair; his trial is scheduled to begin in May. Grand juries have already declined to issue indictments against Cross, Borja and Montoya.

The basis for the dismissal letters remains unclear, though the sheriff's office does not need a criminal conviction to fire somebody.

Noelle said he would not comment on the Poe affair until a March 15 press conference.

Meanwhile, an ongoing federal civil-rights probe at the jail is believed to have centered on Cross. Sheriff's spokesman Dan Oldham said a WW public-records request for reports concerning Cross could not be fulfilled because they are part of an ongoing investigation by the FBI.

--Nick Budnick

"They're treating it like a sewer," says Barbara Hutchinson, one of many neighbors in Corbett, Lair Hill and Terwilliger who've waged an unrelenting battle against the project. The tram would link the university's Marquam Hill campus and an expansion site in the North Macadam area--where the city is eager for OHSU to expand and bring thousands of jobs to the central city.

Declaring the tram to be a utility would make it easier to shunt aside opposition from neighbors, because utilities (usually sewers, electrical cables and telephone wires) require little citizen review. If, on the other hand, the tram is considered part of the forthcoming Marquam Hill plan, neighbors will have many more opportunities to derail the proposal.

Earlier this month, planning officials concluded that Mayor Vera Katz should advise OHSU to request more review. Translation: less political heat for the mayor. But on Feb. 20 officials from the Office of Planning Development and Review, the bureaus of Parks and Planning, and the Office of Transportation came up with a new consensus. "The best analysis is that it's a utility," says Susan Hartnett, a project manager for the Planning Bureau.

Meanwhile, neighbors are slated to meet with OHSU's top brass March 1 for a sneak preview of engineering plans--which have yet to be unveiled, in part because, despite the furor, OHSU has not decided whether to move forward with the project.

--Philip Dawdy

SCOREBOARD

WINNERS

LOSERS

1. Managers in the state's departments of Human Services and Transportation scored big bonuses last year for staying with the state through the frenzied leadup to Y2K. 2. Blessings were showered upon Columbia River salmon this week. First, 12 Catholic bishops called on the faithful to honor their stewardship of the Columbia River. Also, fish-eating Caspian terns stayed away from Rice Island last year. Perhaps it was divine intervention--now if we could get a little rain, please? 3. Marion County Judge Paul Lipscomb ruled last week that the Full Employment Act for Lawyers, a.k.a. Measure 7, is unconstitutional, thus gladdening the hearts of 1000 Friends of Oregon, Gov. John Kitzhaber and opponents of unchecked growth--as well as the lawyers handling the M7 proponents' appeal.

1. Oregon taxpayers could be on the hook for up to $7 billion in public-employee pension benefits, says a study prepared for the Public Employee Retirement System. That'll keep those Californi-cators from moving north. 2. Nike shuddered when an independent survey of more than 4,450 Indonesian workers found disturbing conditions at nine contract factories, including forced overtime, sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse. The company helped pay for the study. Separately, Nike's stock cratered on news of lower earnings. 3. Suspected drug dealers are banned from the city's drug-free zones whether or not they've been convicted--so when a federal judge tossed out a legal challenge last week, police cheered. The news was lousy for African-Americans, who are disproportionately excluded from the zones.

The rest of the council found the lobbying of Portland General Electric and Pacific Power and Light far more persuasive. But now that California's disastrous deregulation has sent energy prices soaring, utilities teetering and blackouts rolling, Sten is beginning to look like a visionary.

While most of California suffers from a combination of legislative bungling and utility profiteering, Los Angeles--which is plugged into public power--has escaped the chaos. Now aides to Mayor Vera Katz are dusting off a long-forgotten study, originally conducted at Sten's request, which concluded that Portlanders could save $32 million to $105 million a year if the city switched to public power.

In the short term, the crisis has undercut the financial incentive to municipalize the grid: The federal Bonneville Power Administration, the source of public energy, is eyeing whopping rate increases while PGE's prices hold steady. But over the long run, advocates for public power say their idea would save ratepayers millions. Both PGE and PPL are expected to file for a rate increase later this year, and public power advocate Larry Tuttle says Oregon's energy deregulation, scheduled for October, will hike prices at the two utilities.

Last year, Tuttle floated a public-power ballot initiative, but PGE sued to block it. The court overruled PGE's objections; the utility has appealed. "We have been serving Portland for 110 years," said PGE spokesman Kregg Arntson. "It makes business sense for us to keep [operating] along those lines, offering our customers cheap and reliable electricity."

Sten, however, compares power lines to public roads: "They are absolutely essential to having a competitive free market. If you have one monopoly that owns them, then you're at risk."

--Nick Budnick

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

We groaned when they killed off Cheap Mondays. We winced when they inflicted us with the Pepsi Poppet. We wept into our jumbo-sized popcorn buckets when they shut down the city's biggest screen at the beloved Eastgate Theater (see story, page 69). But now our Rogue of the Week, Regal Cinemas, has added insult to injury. Yes, we're talking about the Nacho Man.

If you haven't noticed him, consider yourself lucky. He lurks among the other slides before the show, camouflaged among the concession-driven trivia and WW Personals promos. Then he leaps on screen, assaulting viewers with every inane Latino stereotype you can imagine: the handlebar mustache, the outsize sombrero, the lobster complexion, the shit-eating grin.

Combining the timeless appeal of a black-and-white minstrel show with the subtlety of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the Nacho Man belongs to a bygone era. Somewhere in the hills of Tennessee, where Regal Cinemas is based, there may be viewers who still find the Nacho Man amusing. We think he's about as funny as a brain tumor.

If the Nacho Man is so painful, why not just avoid Regal entirely? Ah, if only we could. Unfortunately, Regal owns the vast majority--roughly 89 percent--of all the first-run screens in the Portland area.

You'd think Regal would have learned its lesson from last year's Pepsi Poppet disaster, in which super-brat cowgirl Hallie Kate Eisenberg hectors hapless Regal patrons on proper theater-going etiquette. Last week, Regal announced it was finally pulling the plug on Eisenberg--hallelujah! Perhaps Regal can apply the same raw intelligence and brilliant analysis to the Nacho Man and do the honorable thing.

Whistle Blower Sues Beetle Boss
A former sales manager of the biggest Volkswagen dealership in the Northwest claims he was fired because he blew the whistle on his boss's affair with an employee.

Gregory Kraljev, the former general sales manager at Herzog-Meier Auto Center, filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit in federal court in December alleging that he lost his job after he tried to help the company avoid a lawsuit--by reporting a relationship between co-owner Jim Meier and an accounting clerk.

Kraljev's claim was corroborated by an investigation conducted by the Bureau of Labor and Industries Civil Rights Division, completed last September, which found "substantial evidence" that Kraljev was fired in retaliation.

Herzog-Meier maintains that Kraljev, who was hired as a sales manager in 1996 and promoted to general sales manager in 1998, was fired for legitimate reasons.

According to the BOLI report, Kraljev claimed that in February 1999 another employee told him that
an accounting clerk had complained about a sexual relationship she was having with Meier, saying that she "couldn't tell Meier no."

Kraljev, who claimed he saw a potential lawsuit brewing, either for sexual harassment or a "hostile work environment," reported the affair to the clerk's supervisor in March 1999.

Soon thereafter, Kraljev's relations with Meier "changed from warm and friendly to cold and confrontational," he said in a sworn statement to BOLI. When Kraljev wrote to Meier expressing concern over their deteriorating relationship, Meier told him that "he needed to focus on their sales goals."

In July, Kraljev's daughter, who also worked at the dealership, was terminated from her job as a greeter. She was eight months pregnant.

A few days later, on July 17, 1999, Kraljev himself was fired; his termination notice said it was for poor performance.

Questioned by the BOLI investigator, both Meier and the accounting clerk said the affair was consensual.

Meier told BOLI he had nothing to do with the decision to lay off Kraljev's daughter and that Kraljev was fired because he was not meeting sales goals, selling only 158 cars a month in the first half of 1999.

BOLI examined company records and found that Kraljev had actually sold an average of 275 cars a month during the period in question.

"Mr. Meier's testimony was not internally consistent and lacked credibility," the BOLI report concluded, adding that the reasons Meier gave for Kraljev's termination appeared to be "pretext designed to hide the true retaliatory motive."

Shortly after the BOLI investigator reached her conclusions, Kraljev's attorney, Ben Rosenthal, withdrew the complaint and filed a lawsuit in federal court. No trial date has been set, and Rosenthal declined to comment.

Contacted by WW, Herzog-Meier referred calls to its attorney, David Riewald, who predicted that the trial would show "our actions were legal and proper."

--Nick Budnick

Murmurs

EMINEM NOT SPOKEN HERE

* Call it the Campaign for Crooks & Kids: Murmurs hears that the City of Portland will float a parks bond before voters next year to cover operating costs and build some much-needed skateparks. It will join a ballot that will most likely include a countywide public-safety levy.

* He's rested and ready: Ben Canada's predecessor as superintendent of Portland Public Schools, Jack Bierwirth, resigned as president of Outward Bound USA earlier this month. Bierwirth says he plans to return to education and will stay in the New York area.

* Lawyers of the world, look out. A local chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World and fellow travelers will demonstrate at the tony offices of Stoel Rives law firm Wednesday to protest Janus Youth Programs' layoff of a union member. The connection? The downtown firm does legal work for Janus. It may seem like a stretch, but Janus recently reinstated two other Wobblies following a similar protest.

* Jaws dropped in Portland earlier this month with the announcement that Judith Ramaley, former president of PSU, had resigned as president
of the University of Vermont. Now we hear that Ramaley had
a little encouragement: She turned in her resignation a week after a no-confidence petition circulated among the faculty and four days after the Board of Trustees told her to go. Ramaley's crimes included canceling the 1999-2000 hockey
season after a hazing scandal and mishandling union sentiment among profs.

* Lisa Schroeder of Mother's Bistro will be featured in O, Oprah's magazine, as part of its success-story column. (She went from impoverished mother to top restaurateur.) May is the likely publication date.

The current chair, Beverly Stein, will be termed out in 2002 and is campaigning for governor. Over the past year, several potential successors have emerged, including state Rep. JoAnn Bowman (D-Portland), County Commissioner Serena Cruz, County Commissioner Diane Linn, Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Noelle, and Lolenzo Poe, director of the county community and family services department.

The county chair oversees what is, in essence, a $900 million social-services agency, making it the third-largest government in Oregon. It pays $88,000 a year.

Linn declared her candidacy last week. "At this stage in the game, I intend to run," she told WW, confident of her ability to lasso the minimum $100,000 to run a primary campaign.

Cruz says she will firm up her plans in the next two weeks. "The biggest decision I have to make is, 'Is this the right thing for me?'" she says.

Cruz's other option is to stay where she is and then run for City Council in 2004. If, as expected, city commissioners Jim Francesconi and Charlie Hales both run for mayor in 2004, then their two seats will be open. (City Commissioner Erik Sten is also expected to take a swing at the mayor's job in 2004 but would not have to vacate his seat on the council, since his third term wouldn't end until 2006.)

Last week, Poe, director of the county's Department of Child and Family Services, told WW he was no longer a potential candidate.

The two wild cards in the race are Bowman and Noelle. Bowman says she'll run for chair if Cruz doesn't; if Cruz does, Bowman will go for Cruz's vacant seat.

Meanwhile, the sheriff sounds the cagiest note. "I had decided not to run for chair," he says. "Now, I'm having reservations again." His biggest reservation may come with the $20,000 pay cut he'd have to take if elected. Noelle also remains undecided as to whether he'll seek re-election as sheriff.

--Philip Dawdy