In his first “State of the County” speech, Multnomah
County Chairman Jeff Cogen recently described his government’s financial
woes.
“Multnomah County is
digging deep to change the way we do business to be as efficient as
possible,” Cogen told the City Club of Portland on Feb. 4. “In the short
run, this means doing everything possible to preserve our most critical
services.”
Yet at a time when the county may be laying off dozens of managers and line staff, a WW
examination of hundreds of purchases by elected commissioners and their
staffs in 2010 revealed these expenditures of your tax dollars:
- Commissioner
Judy Shiprack used county money to pay her annual Oregon State Bar dues.
The price: $492. (Shiprack now says she’ll pay back the county.)
- Commissioner
Diane McKeel and her staff spent more than $5,000 traveling to three
conferences on human trafficking and more than $1,000 attending City
Club of Portland events.
- Cogen, the
most frugal of the bunch, spent more than $1,200 on new furniture after
moving up from being one of four elected commissioners to the county
chair’s office.
County Auditor Steve March is in the middle of auditing
policies and practices for credit-card use. County rules allow staff and
elected officials to use the cards to pay for work-related expenses and
travel. March will consider whether the county should have firmer
guidelines.
“It’s a little bit of a gray area,” he says, “particularly when it comes to electeds.”
Cogen acknowledged he
pays out of his own pocket for many events—such as charity fundraisers
and City Club talks—that other commissioners charge to taxpayers. But he
declined to criticize his elected colleagues’ spending.
“They
are focused on what’s best for Multnomah County,” Cogen says.
“Different people can make different calls about what that is, but I
know it’s all coming from a good place.”
The
$39,000 spent is small change compared with the total $374 million
discretionary county budget. But the commissioners’ credit-card spending
would be enough to provide free immunizations to about 1,300 school
kids.
(Commissioner Loretta Smith is not included, because she didn’t take office until January 2011.)
Although I am prone to be typically irate with govenment spending and frivolous expenditures, this sure seems like a waste of print.
The crux of this article primarily revolves around various Commisioners spending money to go to events within our community.....and? Would you rather that they not attend, and conversely have the community they are representing feel as if their government is not in touch with their various causes?
This is coupled with these price tags being relatively small when looking at the totality of the budget as a whole......guess I just do not see the smoking gun here....
I appreciate WW's efforts to serve as a watchdog so that we can keep track of the spending habits of our elected officials. Fortunately, I do not see any excessive spending habits that I would raise concerns over.
The real waste is Multnomah county helping fund the Portland (milwaukee) light rail project. The only ones pushing this wasteful, mega capital intensive project are those leaders standing to profit from it. Everyday county residents don't get much of anything inexchange except for more clogged, unseemly streets - having to negotiate themselves around fixed line rail cars. Express buses are a whole lot more economical, and more sense in this economy. we aren't in the roaring 1990s anymore, folks. Get real and stretch those public dollars farther, more economically.
bar dues sound inappropriate, like having the county pay your mortgage, but office furniture, city club, $200 to neighborhood house? have you seen what neighborhood house can do with $200? they're saints on earth. those things are no big deal to me. like bob clark says above, all this money combined isn't even a morning of interest on the billions that will be spent on the light rail debacle that's materializing over here. i never thought i'd be against rail development, but once i learned the details - the destroyed wetlands, destructive industrial production of concrete and steel, cronyism, giving hundreds of millions of borrowed money to people who are already rich - i saw that light rail was being used to trick well-intentioned people who are concerned about the environment into supporting that kind of evil stuff, and i changed my mind.
Is it really necessary to use the most unflattering possible pictures of the public officials? What exactly are you trying to accomplish by doing so?