Murmurs: It's Good to be the CEO

The job-creating power of school reform.

CREW
  1. Apparently Oregon school reform means paying big bucks to the top executive. Newly hired state Chief Education Officer Rudy Crew will make $280,000 annually under a three-year contract. Crew will get a $1,000-a-month car allowance, enough to lease a high-end BMW; a $30,000 moving allowance; an extra four weeks of vacation (a one-time bonus) and permission to accept outside consulting work. And if Crew gets fired without cause, he gets a year’s severance. Quite a package, considering the state superintendent of public instruction—the elected office the Legislature abolished, and the one Susan Castillo quit June 4—pays $72,000 a year.
  1. Fish in the Portland Harbor often carry cancer-causing chemicals from the polluted sediments, which is why companies who face paying for the harbor’s Superfund cleanup spent $500,000 on an outreach campaign targeted at the ethnic and immigrant groups who most often fish there (see “What the Muck,” WW, March 28, 2012). The Portland Harbor Partnership has now released the results of 72 focus groups and 1,870 surveys—collected everywhere from a meeting of the Bass and Panfish Club to a celebration of Vietnamese New Year. The anecdotal and inconclusive report shows Portlanders use the Willamette River for sustenance fishing—magnifying the questions about health risk in the harbor. “Tongans do not go out fishing on the weekends because it’s beautiful out or sunny,” says one response. “They go out there for food.”
  1. Charlie Hales, winner of the May 15 mayoral primary, won all of west Portland as well as the battle for the Kremlin—the inner-eastside neighborhoods that are liberal and often affluent: Irvington, Alameda and Laurelhurst. Precinct results released by Multnomah County show the runner-up, state Rep. Jefferson Smith, won much of East Portland, his political base, as well as many inner-eastside precincts, including those covering the King, Humboldt and Woodstock neighborhoods. In all, Hales won 53 precincts (orange in the map above); Smith, 46 (green); and Eileen Brady, two (blue). Hales and Smith tied in one (gray). Go to wweek.com/pdxvotes for details.
 

WWeek 2015

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