News Merritt Paulson, owner of the Portland Beavers and Timbers, wants the City of Portland to spend $85 million to renovate PGE Park for Major League Soccer and to build his Beavers a new ballpark. That's a pretty big ask in the best of times, which these are not. And Paulson, the son of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is anything but another thinly-financed wannabe looking to leverage ...   More

News The systematic dismantling of the city-owned Portland Development Commission took a major leap forward today. In perhaps the most consequential decision from his reorganization of the City that Works, Mayor-elect Sam Adams took away the Portland Development Commission's responsibilities for housing. And as a result, now gone are 42 of the agency's 209 employees (about 20 percent of the staff) ...   More

News As reported over the weekend on WWire, Metro staffers have decided a "headquarters hotel" that tourism boosters want to build next to the Oregon Convention Center, is a non-starter in the current environment. This morning, Mayor-elect Sam Adams convened government leaders and tourism industry representatives to see if there is any way to keep the project alive. That will be tough, considering ...   More

News Barring a last-minute miracle, Metro, City of Portland and Multnomah County leaders will pull the plug Monday morning on the latest chapter in the long-running effort to finance a so-called "headquarters hotel" next to the Oregon Convention Center. Speaking on background, sources familiar with the decision-making process say that the hotel is dead unless Mayor-elect Sam Adams produces a previously ...   More

News Some interesting names on the task force Mayor-elect Sam Adams has put together to evaluate the merits of Merritt Paulson's proposal to renovate PGE Park for a Major League Soccer franchise and build a new stadium somewhere else in town for the baseball Beavers. One sign that Adams is taking Paulson's proposal seriously: the counsel to the committee is heavyweight lawyer Steve Janik, who worked ...   More

News News of Mayor Sam Adams' admission of a sexual relationship with 18-year-old Beau Breedlove is — as the MSM invariably puts it — "lighting up the blogosphere." And in the brave tradition of the Internet, most of the people lighting those fires are keeping themselves completely anonymous. "Debatablepolitics" over at Daily Kos writes that Adams "had no business taking advantage ...   More

News A somber Mayor Sam Adams told reporters at a jammed City Hall press conference this afternoon that he doesn't plan to quit but did add that "if it's in the city's best interest ... I'll resign." Adams made his remarks in the wake of an admission to WW yesterday that he lied in 2007 about having had sex with a legislative intern named Beau Breedlove in 2005 when Breedlove was 18. "I'm ashamed, ...   More

News In an interview with WW on Jan. 19 and in a press conference the next day, Mayor Sam Adams said his sexual relationship with Beau Breedlove—a relationship he had previously denied—lasted "maybe two months" in the summer of 2005. That's different from the story that Breedlove told The Oregonian yesterday. "Breedlove says their only sexual encounters took place that [July 5, 2005]," ...   More

News As Mayor Sam Adams returns to work today for the first time since admitting to WW last week that he had lied in 2007 about having sex with former legislative intern Beau Breedlove, one unanswered question is how Portlanders will respond to Adams. Here's one answer below from the Portland Business Alliance, which issued its statement yesterday. The PBA, the city's largest mainstream business ...   More

News Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler, a close political collaborator with embattled Mayor Sam Adams, told WW today he's "shell-shocked and disappointed" that Adams lied to the public about his sexual relationship with 18-year-old Beau Breedlove. Wheeler, who once wrote a book on good government, declined to say whether Adams should step down. He said only that City Council members were correct ...   More