May 01, 2004
Endorsement: Sam Adams For Commissioner No. 1
Experience And Detailed Knowledge
If we were to make our endorsement for the Commissioner No. 1 position based upon the amount of attention paid to us by the campaigns, we clearly would have to endorse Nick Fish. Politics being what it is, however, one can never quite tell if such attention reflects a candidate's accessibility or if it instead reflects simple political persuasion. As such, it's not the sort of thing that can be weighed as a major deciding factor.
Much as been written about similarities between this race's two "major" candidates -- Fish and Sam Adams. But what ultimately clinched the decision for us was the release of each candidate's platform, which recently hit their respective websites during the same week.
Readers know that what drew us to endorse Phil Busse in the Mayoral race was his platform. Not just its positions on the issues, but the context it provides and its sampling of specific actions and proposals.
Although Adams' platform can't match Busse's for sheer amount of material (nor, for that matter, can that of any other candidate in any of the City's races), it shares a similar approach -- and in the process simply outdoes the position statements out of the Fish campaign.
We also believe that if certain processes and structures are put into place -- such as the recommendations of the Public Involvement Task Force and Adams' own call for citizen members of the City's budget committee -- any potential controversies over City proposals can be mitigated early on.
Such processes (and this is why we raise them here) will help balance out concerns some voters have over the possible negative aspects of Adams' status as an insider, leaving ample room for the positive knowledge and experience that status will permit him to bring to the job.
That knowledge and experience is in evident display during debates and forums, as Adams handily rattles off all sorts of data about the City -- whether in terms of its neighborhoods (correcting opponent Jason Newell on the proper location of one within the City), its cultural life (successfully naming the City's three cultural leaders who recently left their posts), or the minutiae of its government functions (rattling off budgets figures, numbers of employees, and Portland's sheer acreage).
Some voters worry that his experience working for Mayor Vera Katz is a signal that he would only be more of what many of them dislike about Katz's tenure. We, however, believe that this ready knowledge will allow Adams to hit the ground running, rather than having to spend much of his early days simply learning the intricacies of City Hall.
As Adams pointed out in this past week's Southeast Uplift forum, Katz hired him in part because he was independent-minded. But at the end of the day, she was his boss and in his role as chief of staff his job was to follow her lead. For better or for worse, that will not be the case when he himself has his own seat on City Council.
In some ways, we wish Portlanders had the opportunity to elect both Adams and Fish, much as we somewhat wish it were possible to put both Randy Leonard and a neighborhood activist on the City Council at the same time. But such choices, of course, are the nature of elections.
For reasons, then, of his experience at City Hall and the (comparatively) specific nature of his platform, we endorse Sam Adams for the Commissioner No. 1 position.
Comments (17)
M on 01 May 2004
I've followed Adams for quite some time, and it was satisfying to finally be able to vote for him. I only wish I could have voted him into the mayor's chair. I value your endorsements, and I'm pleased to hear that you've endorsed him, too.
I also voted Busse for mayor, but I'll predict a Francesconi win.
And I would like to advise Phil Busse and any other candidate in this state that your voter's guide photo should tell everyone who sees it, "Look at all these other goofballs. Clearly, I'm the winner here." It should not say, "Hey, I'm a goofball." In addition, to all candidates, if you have a nickname, pretend you don't.
M on 02 May 2004
Hey, b!X, do you think you could do something with the links here so that they're easier to notice? Maybe make them bold or underlined or a more saturated blue? I wouldn't have noticed that "goofball" is a link had I not created it myself.
The One True b!X on 02 May 2004
This is the problem with having only one OS in the house. Here, the links are obvious. I wou;dn't even know where to start on testing new link colors that work both here and there.
M on 02 May 2004
You wouldn't necessarily need to change the color, just make the link text somehow stylistically different. I think bold links would work well. The links in the left and right margins are fine, though -- you can tell they're links just by their context.
M on 02 May 2004
Maybe someone else could let us know whether the links are easy to see for them. I'm using IE6 on a WinXP OS.
Michael Dolan on 02 May 2004
Portland’s Double Standard for Housing Development
Friends and neighbors,
Comparing Portland’s newest subsidy of a 10-unit apartment building in the River District with the city’s housing projects in its Northeast neighborhoods tells us a lot about who we are and how we treat people.
The city council has determined its subsidy of the River District project should yield a 5.6% return on investment to the private developer each year. The debate today is about how much should this person make. (The Oregonian, April 29, 2004, page D2)
Well, how much do private developers make on similar subsidized projects in NE Portland?
Nothing.
There are no such projects in Northeast Portland. When the city allocates money (much of it federal) to housing, it creates private wealth all over town. But not in Northeast. In this part of town, the city builds its own massive real estate corporations to control 100s of units of housing. These facts are not in dispute.
The city spends millions of dollars on Northeast housing yet the residents make nothing. So as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of city government practicing a double standard, wealth disparity grows.
Why?
For the River District project and in most projects around town, the city works through the Portland Development Commission, an agency that tries to boost the private economy.
But Northeast Portland is the “territory” of a lesser-known agency, the Bureau of Housing And Community Development. Satisfied to let PDC take often mis-directed criticism, the city housing bureau works quietly, actually never conducting public meetings nor engaging in public accountability.
Instead, it controls dummy corporations, notably Albina Community Development Corporation, Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, and Portland Community Land Trust. These organizations are even more secretive than the bureau that controls them.
So called “community” development corporations are an excellent reform to subsidized public housing. And the independent Sabin Community Development Corporation does a job far superior to the city’s agencies. But to be effective such corporations must actually belong to community members who make decisions in public.
Northeast Portland might have had more legitimate community development corporations that return wealth to locals. But in 2000 and 2001, the housing bureau used its control of federal funds to corral as many housing units as possible under the three corporations that THE BUREAU ITSELF CREATED – not citizens.
Back in 2000, I asked Martha McLennan, then the #2 person in the bureau, what was the reason for not returning control of these housing units to citizen groups and even allowing people to own homes? She said that such private ownership violated city policy because people might sell the houses. Got that? It is housing bureau policy that the people in one part of town cannot be trusted to exercise judgment in their own homes.
If the housing bureau had not taken back-room control of housing at that time and instead had done what the PDC does in other parts of town, Northeast Portland would look different today. The city retained control of millions of dollars of real estate wealth that otherwise would have passed into the hands of long-time Northeast Portland residents.
So, the city – acting through different agencies – creates wealth in some neighborhoods and prevents wealth creation from developing in other neighborhoods.
You don’t need me to tell you what that says about how Portland treats people.
Mike Dolan
Northeast Portland
April 29, 2004
Copies to usual media
Michael Dolan on 02 May 2004
Can’t Tell if I’m Sick Orwell
Friends and Neighbors,
Are these people going out of their way to embarrass themselves?
Pointing the spot light on Portland’s double standard in housing, the city housing bureau is now burning an undisclosed amount of money on a report on “resource mapping” (Oregonian, April 30, 2004, page B2).
Where people can go to get housing? No. It means where the housing bureau and its contractors can go to get more money. A project spokesperson says the purpose is “raising public awareness,” accomplished in part by simplifying language.
Oh Oh.
“Affordable housing,” formerly “subsidized housing,” in newspeak now becomes “social housing,” explains the spokesperson.
Well, here’s a word: ORWELLIAN.
“Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” writes George Orwell in his great essay “Politics and the English Language.”
Your “awareness” reaches sufficient height, by the way, when you first agree to Erik Sten’s upcoming proposed tax on your home to cover past mismanagement and future salaries and you then don’t ask where the money went.
In contrast to this deceptive waste of time is an example of how a legitimate housing and development agency meets the standard of public accountability. On page B8 of the same section of the newspaper is an ad from the Portland Development Commission inviting you to a public meeting to learn about PDC’s activities and participate in a real life development decision.
The city housing bureau, however, never discusses anything as concrete as rent raises or property maintenance or tenant security. So-called “housing advocates” prefer to write papers on such abstracts as “social housing” and “public awareness.”
George gets the last word:
“The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech.” And: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.”
Michael Dolan
May 1, 2004
Copies to the usual ad-stained wretches
no one in particular on 02 May 2004
I use a mozilla-based browser in Linux, and I often don't notice the links. Sometimes when you're talking about an article and I know there should be a link, I just start dragging my cursor over the text until I find it.
The One True b!X on 02 May 2004
Well it ought to be fixed now -- the CSS has been changed to make links inside entries underlined.
Arua on 02 May 2004
Check out Sam Adams' website, it now lists your website as a major endorsement !
Arya on 02 May 2004
*Arya
Jack Bog on 02 May 2004
If we get both Adams and Francesconi, we will see another four years just like the last four -- among the worst of the 25 that I've lived here. They are the ultimate insiders' insiders -- both of them. If you expect things like police reform and east side/west side equity out of either of them, you're sorely mistaken. What you're going to get is a skating rink.
The One True b!X on 02 May 2004
Watching them both in action, and reading their campaign material, I'd say that Fish has more in common with Francesconi than does Adams (although, just to be clear, Fish would far better match my own political leanings that Francesconi ever could).
Actually, the Portland Business Alliance seems to see it that way as well.
Jack Bog on 03 May 2004
Homer Williams doesn't.
John on 03 May 2004
I know that you, like others, have missed the Katz-Adams link. No one expects Sam to be Vera in a suit. The problem is that Sam was the Mayor's go-to guy on business when Columbia Sportswear was mistreated and retreated to Beaverton, and when M&F said screw you to downtown. Both were significant to creating Portland's anti-business image. Is that what his insider trading had done to us? I say Go Fish!
The One True b!X on 03 May 2004
Re: Homer Williams. If developers are the issue, one would think that one would not endorse Randy Leonard, given his 1st Pre-Election campaign finance report.
Scott Jensen on 05 May 2004
b!X has done it again. Always keeping PDX educated. Thanks b!X for endorsing Sam Adams