City Council should keep its mitts off PDC
Mayor Tom Potter grasps the value of the Portland Development Commission, but do his colleagues really get it?
Oregonian Editorial Sunday, July 30, 2006
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1154048115254620.xml&coll=7

Fred Stickel, Oregonian publisher, has the right to publish wrong opinions written by those that serve at his pleasure. Tom Potter, mayor of Portland, has the right to allow those that serve at his pleasure on the Portland Development Commission and the Housing Authority of Portland to make wrong decisions. But when Potter's people mess up it's time for the "cavalry" i.e., the Portland city council, to come to the rescue of those paying the bills and being affected by PDC and HAP's misguided adventures in public spending.

Stickel's opinionators continue to define PDC as an, "independent urban renewal agency" as if the appointed commissioners had tenured lifetime positions. Completely untrue. PDC and HAP commissioners are more akin to cabinet secretaries then supreme court justices. Everything they do reflects the person who appointed them. When they stop doing the bidding of their master they are shown the door.

The only thing standing between the unelected PDC and HAP commissioners from annually spending hundreds of millions of dollars of the public treasury on the wrong policies is Portland's mayor. Tom Potter has a fiduciary obligation to the citizens who elected him and those east of Portland who can't vote for Portland's mayor to guide, monitor and supervise how his appointees are spending our money.

Fred Stickel can no more divorce himself from the editorials that appear in his newspaper than Tom Potter can distance himself from decisions and policies advanced by PDC and HAP. In each case it is their ball, their field, their team, their game. When they don't like the score they change the players.

It is no longer enough that Tom Potter is not Jim Francesconi. Aided and abetted by Stickel's bloviators Potter continues to deny his statutory role. The Portland city council can, should and must hold the mayor accountable or step in and exercise their authority as responsible elected officials.


Richard Ellmyer
3-6-9 Resolution author and project champion
Writer/Publisher - HAP Watcher commentary - Published on the Internet and distributed to 13,000 readers interested in public housing policy in Multnomah County.
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses. Located in Portsmouth, the neighborhood with the second highest concentration of public housing clients, 15% and rising, within HAP's Multnomah county jurisdiction of 117 neighborhoods.