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Portland's independently elected auditor, Mary Hull Caballero, is continuing her investigation of Uber's compliance with the city's lobbying regulations this week after Uber partially complied Friday with her demand that the ride-sharing giant share information about its hiring of Mark Wiener as a lobbyist.
Wiener, of course, is the political consultant who helped Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioners Steve Novick and Dan Saltzman get elected.
Last year, as Hales and Novick maintained a combative stance toward Uber, Wiener agreed to work as a lobbyist for the company. The timing of his hiring and the exact nature of his work for the company are the subject of Hull Caballero's investigation.
Friday, in its response to Hull Caballero's questioning, Uber disclosed that it first contacted Wiener for help on Dec. 5, the day Novick was quoted in The New York Times calling company executives "a bunch of thugs."
Other details of Uber's latest disclosure appear inaccurate.
In the same response, the company disclosed that Wiener may have started working on Uber's behalf as early as Dec. 11, 2014. The company's five-page letter also listed contacts Wiener made with city officials, including Hales and Novick.
That list says Wiener first made contact with Novick as a representative of Uber through text messages on Dec. 11, 2014.
But WW submitted a public records request to Novick for the texts, and Novick, who forwarded the texts, says the two actually exchanged messages three days earlier, on Dec. 8, 2014.
The exchange illustrates Wiener's entrance into the discussion and Novick's combativeness toward Uber late last year:
Wiener: Do you have a moment to talk Uber?
Novick: I have no time for anything today.
Wiener: K. I'll talk to Chris [Warner, Novick's chief of staff]. Uber is knocking on my door. I am probably going to tell them to pound sand, unless you guys think there is something constructive to be done.
Novick: Tell them pound sand. Thing is, we're going to undertake a review of the rules that will have whatever result it has; it might result in allowing them to operate under certain conditions, but given that they aren't interested in policy discussions, they can't contribute to that process.
Novick: Actually, I have an idea—will call tonight.
Wiener: Ok. Does that mean I should slow play them? I was considering just canceling the mtg.
Novick: I'd postpone the meeting—we should talk first, after I've talked with josh [Alpert, policy adviser to Hales] etc.
Wiener and Uber have not responded to inquiries about the discrepancy regarding dates.
In an email, Novick tells WW he regrets that he OK'ed Wiener's decision to go work for Uber.
"After that text exchange, I told Mark that it might not be bad for someone rational to be advising Uber," Novick writes in an email to WW. "At the time Uber was operating illegally and in my view not behaving sensibly. Of course, after Mark started working for Uber I wasn't going to take any advice from him about Uber, but I thought he might get them to behave better."
He added: "I also now think [it] probably wasn't a good idea to tell Mark it might be useful for him to advise Uber. I thought that if Uber had someone who knew the city well, maybe they'd help them understand they were making a mess of things. Mark is a guy who definitely fits that description. Although he wasn't currently advising me, his involvement in consulting for city electoral candidates gives people pause, and that's entirely fair. If I had to do that part over again, I'd definitely advise Mark to tell Uber to 'pound sand,' as he initially suggested."
Correction: An earlier version of this post misidentified who sent the last three texts in the exchange between Wiener and Novick.
Willamette Week
