"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely

An observation that a person’s sense of morality lessens as his or her power increases. The statement was made by Lord Acton, a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

Just as we are all seeing RED at what is happening nationally on the national scene, don't kid yourself that the BLUE power here in Portland isn't leaving the people equally bruised (Black & Blue).

PDC's version of Economic Development is just as absurd for the common working folk as Trickle Down Economics of the right.

You only have to look at Portland's declining average wage to figure that one out, and don't kid yourself on the other side of the coin as pointed out by Jaquiss in the WW article on 3rd and OAK "Suite Deal" is alive and well making deals like that.

I don't think it's about the prevalence of evil and corruption as much as it is about the natural human tendency to cut corners. The rules are there to keep the honest people honest, and provide the mechanism to hammer the true miscreants. Many of the complaints this office gets come from citizens who are unhappy with the decisions their elected officials make and simply want somebody to put the fear of God into them. A large number of the complaints also deal with issues surrounding open meetings law violations. Much of that could be avoided, as Mr. Hearn has commented, by better training of local councils and boards. I do agree that his office is seriously underfunded and should be disconnected from the politics of the state budget process.

Lest we forget, Steve http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5091

I think this commentor to the WW "outing" of Neil said it better than I could. Yes I see Red at the Repubs, but the Blues have plenty of Black as well and don't kid yourself they have plenty of no bid or "wired" contracts to hand out.

Follow the Money, there is much more to know Let us see, hmmm? Prominent lawyer mayor head of large U.S. city repeatedly rapes a 14 year old over three years, engages in an alleged conspiricy to cover up his crime so that he can remain in his quest for more public power as governor and business insider so that he can make millions of dollars. The Oregonian just happens to publish a public admonishment of the WW by Burtchaell, who allegedly is involved in the conspiricy to cover up the crime of Goldy and he himself who has hansomely profited from the whole criminal cover up. Why? Follow the money, there is much more to this story that will shortly unfold. Posted by "Zeke" | Wed, May 12 2004

Steve,

I do need to say that I have run into many find an dedicated people in government as well as in the political parties, and they are usually very much underappreciated. Darlene Hooley is a woman I really admire and was such an improvement over the R she replaced. Tom McCall did so much for our state as an R. I am sure McCall was not perfect, but he didn't rape little girls. But often times the good people get stabbed in the back by the corrupt ones who are not operating on any established value system. You wonder how many good people got disgusted and left politics with the Bush and Clinton role models.

Steven: You need to become familar with PDC's Amendment 8 of North Macadam Agreement. Examine the Block 49 portion of the Amendment and you'll discover a "no bid" clause regarding Homer Williams/Dames. They are the exclusive developers for affordable housing on the site. Corruption isn't a democrate vs. republican issue. Many more examples exist in PDC agreements and elsewhere in Portland's agencies.

Frankly, my observation is that Northwesteners have a very immature sense of what corruption is in government. Directly taking money for favors, and variants thereof, is really the most trivial form of corruption in the real world, part of the civic immaturity here is the failure to understand that. By the standards applicable in many jurisdictions, Oregon and Washington have a high level of corruption, and many people who find their way into positions of influence and their supporters have lower than average ethical standards. Steve Maurer's rather simplistic and uniformed concept of corruption is an example (but Maurer frequently shoots off his keyboard in ways that show he is more full of BS than wisdom.)

The fundamental problem in the NW is much of what would be corrupt in other places for good reason, and as result of experience, is actually built into ordinances and laws as being permitted here. We have actually legalized what more mature jurisdictions recognize to be inimical to good government, arguably because we have more of a "If I want to do it, I should be able to" mentality here. And in what is even a more foreign concept here, in many places (including the federal court system), the actionable ethical standards for officials include failure to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. This is just one standard by which the PDC in many cases, and almost by definition, is a corrupt institution.

Another practice which actually is becoming more widely accepted in the NW, but which is coming more and more into question in places where the people in government and the constituency actually have a clue, is the practice of government entities signing NDAs with private corporations to shield information that the public legitiamtely has a right to know, and that otherwise would be disclosable under public records laws. As we've seen right in this blog in the PDC/PDX - MetroFi deal and the Oregon - Genentech deal, a lot of people have no clue why insitutionalizing this practice is inherently corrupting of government.

Steven-

My problem with your argument is that you don't recognize that the "revolving door" of the Goldscmidt Law offices are the same as those you describe on K-street, and that you don't seem compelled to solve the local problem as well as the national one.

Corruption has many meanings, but what concerns me is the widespread difficulty of finding facts. The Oregon public records law, once one of the nation's strongest, now is riddled with protections, loopholes, and exceptions, in addition to some that are essential. What seems a very open public records system proves on application to be difficult to access. The problem is not in finding out what authorities are content to have one find out. The iron curtain becomes apparent when one seeks information that might not reflect well on an agency or on functionaries within the agency. My most recent experience was asking a public body for the cost of a contract that it had agreed to. I was informed that the contract was agreed upon in a meeting closed to the public and that the cost would not be released. At least one knowledgeable reviewer agrees that the public officials had a right to keep the cost concealed from the public. Years of experience have shown that nearly every request I have made under the public records law encountered resistance, delay, or outright denial.

Maurer - You prove once again to demonstrate the example of too many people who post here who mistake the form of argument for substance. Plus engage in just a little fallacious argumentation.

No one made any argument defining "corrption" to mean "any political decision I don't like". A re-read of the previous posts suggests that this is your own strawman argument, which is used as a springboard to discourse about subjects that have nothing to do with corruption as it has to do with acts by government officials that would be covered by ethics laws.

Furthermore, specific arguments were made rooted in ethics law and practice around the nation. Marvin McConoughy addresses the point about how the PDC and other interested parties have worked to institutionalize the gutting of our public records law. This is a component of a culture of corruption that is at least at bad in the NW as anywhere else, in large part because collectively we actually have very stunted understanding of ethics here.

And BS is too mild a term for your bizarre argument that starts with "point granted" in an attempt to get past the substance of an contrary argument actually dealing with corruption by someone who has the facts on their side, followed by a non sequitor strawman argument that deals with all manner of civil and criminally actionable misconduct by officials including uninterpretable comments about rape.

What are you possibly trying to argue here that has any actual connection to ethics laws and corruption in government?

The sad offshoot of this is that people are becoming disconnected with their government and the democratic process. As the parent of a young woman, it makes my skin crawl to think of her as an intern in the White House during the Clinton era or Packwood's Senate office learning about politics.

You may be right Steven, technically, but many folks like myself in our gut feel there is a very real ethical problem and worry the directon we are headed.

For the most part, Oregon is a one party (Democratic) state, and just like other one party states (Indiana with Republican control) corruption will happen.

When one party controls the overwhelming majority in the state, no one really wants to vote for the opposing party no matter how corrupt they know the sitting politician to be because they do not wish to give the opposing party a foothold in the state.

I think that is the case in Oregon. I am a Democrat. I support the Democratic Party. However, our politicians in Oregon have become complacent and elitest in attitude believing they have no one to answer to because voters would never allow themselves to vote for a Republican -- you see this attitude in the governor's office but even more so in the Portland mayor's office.

What's the solution? Since we are basically a one party state, we've got to allow ourselves to have a more aggressive primary for these offices. Sure, there is a chance that information could come out of these primaries that a Republican candidate could use as ammunition against the Democratic opponent, but I think the risk is minimal.

If we want a state operated by politicians who work for the voters, then the voters have got to make the politicians accountable. In states with strong parties on both sides of the aisle, politicians are quick to address constituent concerns. In one party states such as Oregon, you will instead get a nice pat on the head, the politician will do nothing, and you'll get shoved to the corner. Such as Mayor Tom Potter's office with Jeremy Van Keuren (Mayor's Office Public Advocate) who replies to every correspondance to the mayor's office with, "The mayor isn't concerned about this issue and will not act accordingly. Have a nice day."

<h2>This is avoidable with strong primaries weeding out the leeches. Kulongoski has not been good for Oregon. Potter has not been good for Portland. Many of our state legislators have been social vampires. Unless the Democratic Party steps up with strong primaries to weed out these people, then corruption will continue -- and with the large number of people moving into Oregon, you will see more and more Democratic strongholds lost to Republicans because the Democratic Party refused to weed out the weak link in a strong primary.</h2>