Murmurs: City Gives Managers Three Extra Holidays

CITY GIVES MANAGERS THREE EXTRA HOLIDAYS: The city of Portland told all of its supervisors and managers last week it was awarding them each three additional “personal holidays” for the year. The city’s Bureau of Human Resources wrote in an email that the award is only applicable to managers who returned to full in-person work as mandated by Mayor Keith Wilson earlier this year. The email describes the additional holidays as “part of our ongoing efforts to ensure you are recognized and supported, especially during a time when the city’s budget realities place limitations on compensation.” The city has in recent years frozen compensation hikes for nonunion-represented employees as a cost-saving measure for the city. One of the ways the city makes up for it: by offering up to 80 hours of “management leave” awards to managers and supervisors. An analysis by WW this spring (“Participation Trophies,” June 4) showed that city bureau directors awarded an additional 88,240 hours of paid time off to nonunion-represented employees in 2024—double the number of hours awarded a decade ago.

EMBATTLED GOP OFFICIAL RESPONDS: Don Powers, chairman of the Oregon Republican Party in the 6th Congressional District, did not respond to questions for a recent story by the Oregon Journalism Project about allegations that he pocketed the proceeds from a Jan. 20 inauguration party in Washington, D.C. (“Afterparty,” OJP, July 23). But on July 29, Powers broke his silence, claiming that although invitations labeled the event the “Oregon Republican Party CD6 Presidential Inaugural Ball,” it was in fact “a private event which in the end proved to be the single highest profile event for Oregon conservatives in the state’s history.” Powers adds that “other than a couple sponsorships, I paid for everything. I rented the venue, I provided the liability insurance, I paid the vendors…all of it.” He says he contributed $5,000 of the event’s proceeds to the Oregon Freedom Coalition and $5,000 to the Oregon Republican Party and is holding about $13,000 until the “dust” settles. That explanation is unlikely to satisfy a contingent of Powers’ fellow Republicans who remain suspicious of his actions and want a full accounting of the inaugural event. One of them, a former Oregon Republican Party official, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Powers on July 22. Powers calls such concerns “lawfare.”

WILSON REBUFFS NEIGHBORHOOD OPPOSITION TO SHELTER: Mayor Keith Wilson spent the better part of an hour July 28 responding to questions and criticisms from a crowd of 500 Portlanders who showed up at a town hall at The Armory to press him on his latest homeless shelter, opening in September in the Pearl District. It’s the first organized and persistent opposition that Wilson has come up against in his quest to add 1,500 beds to the shelter system by the end of the year. The shelter is set to open in September in an old office building at Northwest 15th Avenue and Northrup Streets. Wilson, who was joined by Portland Solutions director Skyler Brocker-Knapp, responded evenly to the criticisms and questions lobbed at him. Among them: What would the city do to control drug and alcohol use around the perimeter of the shelter? While pushback against the siting of a homeless shelter is a tale as old as time, the town hall represented the first time Wilson has seen the strength of a neighborhood district’s opposition up close. Despite the rise of opposition in recent weeks, it appears Wilson will push ahead with the shelter, which could eventually could hold 200 beds. “We have to address the suffering,” Wilson said, “and I believe we can find a bed for every person in Portland in need every single night.”

GROUNDBREAKING JOURNALIST DIES: Diane Lund-Muzikant, a fearless investigative reporter who focused her considerable energy on Oregon’s health care industry, died July 26. She was 86. Lund-Muzikant carved out a career as a freelance reporter in the 1970s and ’80s and founded the Oregon Health Forum in 1990. In a related newsletter, she regularly bit the hand that fed her with probing looks at aspects of the healthcare industry that her industry sponsors would have preferred go unexamined. In 2008, at age 70, when most of her peers were sliding into retirement, Lund-Muzikant founded The Lund Report, an independent online publication that has regularly broken some of Oregon’s biggest health care stories. Lund-Muzikant is survived by her daughter, Elissa, three step-children, and her husband, Michael. “Readers of The Lund Report always knew she’d ask tough questions aimed at informing them about health care and holding special interests accountable,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “She will be hugely missed.”