Isaac Laquedem

More on the former New Mexico State Treasurer

Our Man in New Mexico sends along a link to one of the Robert Vigil videos, showing the informant in a parked car handing some money to an unseen "Robert" (presumably Mr. Vigil) and apologizing for it not being very much.  The shuffling sound that occurs immediately afterward (about 1 minute 50 seconds into the tape) is presumably the sound of the recipient counting the bills.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/video/Vigil_evidence_8-24-2005.qtl

How to check up on second-hand stores

As I read the Oregonian's series on second-hand stores last week the thought occurred to me that a modest regulation could discourage disreputable operators from serving as fences of stolen property.  Suppose the city required all operators of second-hand stores to pay for goods by check, made payable to a specific person (no checks to "cash" or "bearer" allowed"), to list on the store's copy the items purchased, and then to staple a copy of the seller's driver's license to the store's copy of the check?  If maintaining a paper trail of where money goes is supposed to help us find and catch terrorists, then a simpler version of the same technique should work to deter petty theft.

New Mexico's treasurer is filmed in his car

Our Man in New Mexico is keeping us informed about the progress of Robert Vigil, the New Mexico State Treasurer (an elected position) recently indicted on charges of taking bribes in exchange for steering the state's business.  Mr. Vigil resigned his office, apparently to stave off an impeachment drive, but the evidence continues to leak out.  According to an Albuquerque Journal story from October 28, the evidence against Mr. Vigil includes two grainy videotapes, described in the newspaper as follows:

• Two videotapes showing Vigil accepting cash payments from an investment adviser, Kent Nelson. Federal prosecutors allege the payments— $10,000 in one instance and $1,900 at another meeting— were among kickbacks to Vigil in exchange for steering state business to Nelson. Vigil's lawyer contends the payments were campaign contributions. The California-based adviser was cooperating with prosecutors when he secretly taped the meetings with Vigil on May 2 and Aug. 24 in Albuquerque.
     
• The videos often were jerky, and the images were of marginal quality. A 3-minute video of the May 2 meeting mostly showed the dashboard of the car in which Vigil and Nelson were sitting, and the sky could be seen through the windshield. Lawmakers could hear the audio and follow a transcript as Nelson asked, "So when can I get more business?" Shortly after that, Nelson said, "There's 10,000." His hand could be seen with an envelope reaching toward Vigil. However, no money was visible and Vigil's face never appeared in the May 2 video.

This sort of filming puts Beaverton's red light cameras to shame.  It's a different world in New Mexico, with politicians collecting bribes (according to the prosecution) or campaign contributions (according to the defendant's lawyer) in parked cars in parking lots.  I somehow can't picture our local politicos making assignations with their supporters in the Pill Hill tram.

College memories, but no college doodads

On a recent trip out of town to the Ancient Institution that gave me my college degree, I dropped into the college bookstore and watched who was buying the doodads emblazoned with the name of the Ancient Institution.  I identified three basic groups: (a) freshmen, (b) parents of current students, and (c) tourists.  The alumni were there in force, but for the most part bought nothing more than ties and pens.  Groups (a), (b), and (c), however, bought everything available, except the golf tees.  (No one seemed to want the golf tees, but that might be because it was snowing.)

I thought about buying an Old College Sweatshirt, but figured that if I should ever wear it, my friends would all believe that I didn't really go there.

Isaac's all-purpose guide to financing a public project

I've drawn on the current stories about the Fill-to-Pill-Hill tram, which I'm calling the Ftpht <raspberry>, and the headquarters hotel for the Oregon Convention Center, and the past stories about the Performing Arts Center and the Rose Garden, to devise the Laquedem all-purpose guide to financing a public project.  It works like this:

1.  Announce the need for a public project.  Estimate the cost at $X million.  Let's say for this example that the announced estimate is $25 million.

2.  Announce that two-thirds of the cost (in our example, about $17 million) is coming from private sources, which may be private industry (such as OHSU's and the landowners' contributions to the Ftpht), a special tax (such as a hotel-motel tax for the OCC headquarters hotel), or fundraising (such as the donations for the Performing Arts Center).  Explain that this means the taxpayers will pay only $8 million and will get a $25 million project.  [Optional:  hire a consultant to do a study to show that the project will pay for itself.  Don't check the consultant's track record on other projects.]

3.  Have a nationwide or worldwide talent search for the best architects, engineers, or designers to work on the project.  Hold a press conference to announce the winners.  Show lots of pretty sketches of their designs for the project.

4.  A year later, discover and announce that the cost isn't $X million but 1.5x$X million, in this example about $37 million.  Reiterate that this will be a world-class project.  Say that as we've already spent $1 million on the designs and engineering, we're too far into the project to back out now.

5.  Because the private industry, or payors of the special tax, or generous donors (as the case may be) won't pay any more money, announce with a long face that the taxpayers have to chip in and pay the extra $12 million to make this world-class project happen -- "because Portland is a world-class city, right?"  [If you commissioned the study to show that the project will pay for itself, burn all copies.]

6.  Run for some other office before the bills come due.

Build half a tram, or start over

The estimated cost of the Fill-to-Pill-Hill Tram (pronounced "Ftpht" if you don't like the project) has nearly tripled since 2003, with the latest bump (according to Saturday's Whimperer) being an additional $5 million because the price of steel has gone up.  The total cost is now estimated at $45 million.

As far as I can tell, most of the increase in cost above the original estimate is because the original estimate wasn't very good.  It was, however, the cost estimate on which the City based its decision to authorize the Ftpht instead of a tunnel or some other means of connecting Pill Hill to the North Macadam industrial district.  OHSU, the Ftpht's main beneficiary, doesn't want to pay the extra cost.  Sam Adams told the Oregonian he's (in the Oregonian's words) "talking with property owners, Oregon Health & Science University, the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Portland Development Commission about additional construction dollars."  To his credit, Commissioner Adams said he would not ask the property owners at the tram terminals to pay more.

If OHSU does not want to pay the overrun then it's time to pull the plug on the tram project and go back to the drawing board.  The tunnel option was rejected the first time around because it wasn't cost-competitive with the tram.

It's cost-competitive now.

Or let's do the responsible thing, and build only as much tram as we can afford today, say from OHSU to Barbur Boulevard.  When someone kicks in another $20 million, connect Barbur Boulevard to Macadam.  And if it's not worth that to the users, then the City shouldn't be subsidizing it.

Mosler's Bakery

If you recall Mosler's Bakery from 40 years ago, read this post by Michael Charles on Portland Food and Drink.  Mr. Charles does far more justice to the bakery run by Harry Mosler (1882-1969, whose first name I always thought was "Mr.") than I could, and it's hard to read his description of Mr. Mosler's bagels without wanting to make some bagels yourself.  After Mr. Mosler died and his bakery closed, supposedly someone showed up at the bakery/deli near Gabriel Park and applied for a job as a bagel maker.  When given a tryout, he made bagels one-handed.  "Wow!" said the owner.  "I used to work for Mosler," said the applicant. 

On weekends our family would go to Mosler's Bakery and buy a bag of bagels and a loaf of challah, hot and fresh from the oven.  Instead of putting it to the proper ritual use, we passed it around the car and tore out and gobbled chunks of the piping-hot sweet white bread inside, munching on the empty shell of the crust to finish.  I miss the original Portland French Bakery also, that was on Second Avenue near Saturday Market, but that's another story.

Visitor no. 40,000

Visitor no. 40,000 arrived this morning, someone from Ireland who had used Google to search for "Isaac in Irish."  Céad Míle Fáilte!

Wilsonville unintentionally pushes mobile homes out of town

If I may digress from Measure 37 and the financing of public schools, I noticed that the City of Wilsonville is considering an ordinance affecting mobile home parks.  (Wilsonville has four mobile home parks.)  The ordinance, which the City Council is discussing tonight, would require the owner of any mobile home park who closes the park to pay the cost to relocate the tenants' mobile homes to some other park, and to buy the mobile home of any tenant who can't find another park to move to.  The City started work on the ordinance when the owner of the Thunderbird Mobile Park announced that he wants to close the park and sell the land for development.  Thunderbird is more than forty years old and many of the mobile homes in the park are older than 10 years, the point at which a park usually won't accept a mobile home.  So if the park closed the owners of those mobile homes would have to find one of the rare places that would accept an old mobile home, or simply abandon the mobile home for scrap.

Wilsonville has a fine purpose in mind in considering this ordinance, which is to avoid a group of lower-income tenants being dispossessed.  But the city may not have thought through the effects that this ordinance would have.  The biggest effect, it seems to me, is that no one would build a new mobile home park in Wilsonville.  Why build a park in a city with a stiff exit penalty?  So the result of the ordinance, I think, is that if one of the City's mobile home parks closes, the owner would pay to move the tenants out of Wilsonville, and over time the City would lose a chunk of its supply of lower-income housing.  The City would be saying inadvertently that new mobile home parks are not welcome in Wilsonville, and requiring the owners of old parks that close to pay to move the tenants out of town.

If the real problem is that mobile home parks won't accept older mobile homes, then a solution worth considering is to say that mobile home parks can't reject homes based solely on their age, but must have objective standards that allow well-maintained older homes to be moved into the park.  That's more reasonable than imposing upon owners of parks the duty to provide or pay for low-income housing that's the city's responsibility.

How to fix Measure 37

Measure 37, the property-rights measure (or the undo-land-use-planning measure, depending on your point of view), needs to be repaired.  A Marion County trial judge held yesterday that Measure 37 violates the Oregon constitution, but for now her decision applies only to the parties to the case.  These are the state itself and three counties: Clackamas, Marion, and Washington.  The result (I believe) is that until an appellate court rules on Measure 37, the state and these three counties can't grant Measure 37 waivers, but cities and the other 33 counties can.  (The decision of a trial court has no value as precedent, but does bind the parties to the case.)

I suppose that someone who needs a Measure 37 waiver from (say) Deschutes County, but not from the state, can still pursue the claim.  We can't go on very long with Measure 37 being sort of valid in some places and invalid in others, however, so either the courts need to fix Measure 37 rights at a constitutional level, or the legislature needs to revise the Measure 37 concept to that point.

Here is my vision of how Measure 37 could be revised by the Oregon Court of Appeals to conform to the reasoning of the trial judge and yet still have some effect.  (A link to her opinion is in the previous post.)

Although she did not say so in her opinion, Judge James would clearly have found that people buy property in reliance on the zoning.  She found that some of the plaintiffs had bought their land in reliance on how their neighbors' land was zoned, and if the question had been presented to her she would have had to find that Measure 37 claimants bought their land in reliance on the zoning also.

The court of appeals could find that the state has a legitimate interest in having people who buy land be able to rely on the zoning without being adversely affected by later-enacted land use regulations.  This is the basic purpose of Measure 37.  The court could, however, say that the state doesn't have a legitimate interest in having people who inherit land or buy it from relatives get compensation because the zoning changed while their relative owned the land.  Put another way, if A and B acquired adjacent properties at the same time, why should A get better treatment because A inherited from a relative but B bought from a stranger? 

From this reasoning, the court could say that owners of land can go back to the zoning in place when they themselves acquired their property.  Respecting, however, the legal rule that corporations are artificial persons, a corporation or limited liability company could not go back to when its principals acquired the property -- if you put your land into a corporation, it counts as a transfer.  You can't have the benefits without the disadvantages.

The compensation provisions could be removed.  Despite what Judge James wrote, the main purpose of Measure 37 was waiver, not compensation.  (Measure 37 allows owners to get a waiver or compensation for zoning rules imposed during their ownership, but allows persons who bought or inherited from relatives to get compensation, but not a waiver, for rules adopted during the prior relative's ownership.  I think this was a drafting error.)  The result is by no means perfect, but it's fair and defensible.  You get to choose between the zoning in place when you bought your land, or the zoning that's in place today.

I don't think this solution will occur to the Court of Appeals (though I would be delighted if it did, with or without citation), but it, or something like it, had better occur to the legislature, or the next initiative will be simpler and stronger.  In the continuation I give some predictions.