Portland cops - WINNERS

Portland cops finally got to bask in some positive headlines. Just as media types started groaning about PPD's inability to catch perps in homicide cases, they made a surprise arrest in one of the more enduring mysteries in recent memory: the murder of Kate Johnson in her University of Portland dorm room (see story, page 12).

Record lows in attendance? Spoiled players in tears at press conferences? This is all music to the ears of Blazer-haters, who savored the sweet stench of defeat as the town basketball team dropped nine of 10 games and plunged to its worst midseason record in almost 30 years.

Nobody won last week like city commissioner and mayoral hopeful Jim Francesconi, however. Two potentially strong candidates--state senator Kate Brown and developer Bob Ball--decided not to enter the race, and the campaign manager for Francesconi's main opponent--former police chief Tom Potter--resigned. Why even bother with the pesky election?

LOSERS

Bad news for future low-income hospital patients. Woodland Park and Eastmoreland hospitals--which both served a high number of Medicaid and mentally ill clients--closed last week. The sudden shutterings, believed to be the result of negative pressure from big regional HMOs, left 500 workers jobless.

The slim chance of seeing Major League Baseball in Portland anytime soon grew even more slender last week, after MLB announced that more contenders have joined the chase for the hapless Montreal Expos. On top of that, state officials crushed hopes for a shiny new stadium when their revised revenue projections for a tax on player salaries fell by $50 million.

County Chair Diane Linn took another bloodbath in the media last week, after voluntarily extending an extra day off to county employees as a reward for their labors during the snowstorms. To make it even worse, she later revoked the idea by saying a county policy forbade it, thus alienating the new friends she had made.

Light-rail advocates watched helplessly as the beautiful dream of train service between Beaverton and Wilsonville slipped farther away. Lower ridership projections lost the project $20 million in federal funds, pushing the $100 million track's debut back a year to winter 2006.