By Fred Delkin

There were hordes of Portland area citizens gathered recently to demonstrate in a riverside park named for an enlightened politician who surely would have decried their stated motivation.

The late Governor Tom McCall would have seen the irony in this anti-war protest by folks who blindly sanction the economic fantasies of their local politicians. We fervently hope that the electorate will stage the only effective and overdue reaction against the blind and selfish office holders at city and county  levels...vote ‘em out.

Ineptitude is a polite description for these "leaders" who have perpetuated a 
decades long failure to support sane economic growth hereabouts. Consider their follies...the Katz administration’s  snubbing of a soundly researched,  financially backed plan to create a major league athletic arena in favor of a sorry proposal that resulted in a bankrupt PGE Park...that same mayoral  regime created hurdles that drove the international business success story  called Columbia Sportswear right out of town...the Katz city hall spent  millions on a computerized makeover of city water and sewer billing that years later still isn’t functioning properly...this same enlightened municipal cadre allowed a pipe dream called an aerial tramway to reach its current financial morass without sane oversight.

Katz has left her sorry scene, but a stolid group of city councilmen maintain
the city’s financial foolishness. Sam Adams, who enjoyed a European 
sojourn to "observe" the manufacture of streetcars for a downtown line...the same Adams who made an inane attempt to shift all blame for runaway tram costs to the private sector. The council’s failure to exercise fiscal sanity, 
however, is led by wunderkind Erik Sten, creator of the water bureau meltdown and whose attention was then focused on spending

$1.6 million taxpayer dollars on an attempt to make Portland General  Electric a public utility (with an unproven financial justification). Sten also generated an approved legislative measure to provide public dollars to  finance local political campaigns and he’s the first candidate to take  advantage of this unjustified windfall.  Sten and soulmate councilman Randy
Leonard continue to attempt measures to harass PGE’s so far preserved identity as a private servant to our area. Leonard, with a background as a
labor union official, keeps finding excuses to demonstrate his disdain for capitalist endeavors...the latest his advice to centuries-old family enterprise Schumacher Furs to leave downtown Portland  rather than provide support for any measures to discourage undisciplined People for the Ethical  Treatment of Animals protesters blocking the sidewalk. 

County Follies Recounted

Multnomah county’s governance has become non-existant thanks to  chairwoman Diane Linn’s series of foolish decisions and an ongoing open feud with her trio of dissenting female commissioners. We taxpayers spent many millions on a new county penal facility, but sheriff Bernie Giusto pleads
that he has no funds for operation. Linn is running for re-election vs. Ted 
Wheeler, a fellow with no political experience, which is probably a
compelling reason to vote him into office.  The illustrious  councilman Sten
has never had any career experience except in political office. He is now challenged by Ginny Burdick, vice president of the Gard & Gerber
advertising agency and a veteran state legislator. Her voting record shows
support for public education, which should inhibit her from supporting tax
dollars waste as exemplified by Sten in the face of financial shortfalls in
funding schools, police and our highway system. 

Unfortunately, we voters will have to put up with Mayor Tom Potter for a  while, even though he just supported a giveaway of $200,000 taxpayer  dollars to a farming commune on the city’s edge, an enterprise with no hope of funding itself with its activities, now or ever. Potter has just accepted a  boondoggle trip to France, where we can only hope that riots among the  Frogs may inhibit his irresponsible journey.

This correspondent has a past history of paid activity in support of various worthy public projects and has never seen the level of financial ignorance, or should we say malfeasance, exhibited over the last decade by office holders at the top of local government. Can any pol out there locally even spell  "capitalism?"–a fiscal philosophy understood by our founding fathers who created the basis for an economy that still flourishes in a troubled world and has inspired surprising private business development in such disparate places as China and Russia. 

© 2006 Oregon Magazine