Isaac Laquedem

Isaac on the campaign trail II

My next campaign pledge is that the bureaux under my control will hire no consultants to assist them, except as necessary to comply with federal or state law, unless the bureau that wishes to hire the consultant first identifies (a) the expertise the consultant provides, (b) the City employees who already have that expertise, and (c) why those City employees cannot provide the service.  I will grant a blanket exemption for the hiring of outside actuaries to evaluate the City's liabilities under its pension and disability plans.

Isaac gets a mild case of the campaign bug

In the unlikely event that I should ever run for Portland office, I thought of a campaign pledge I would like to make:  "In the first four years of the Laquedem administration, the city will build no buildings and buy no property.  We will figure out how to get by with what we own already."  I'm prepared to make an exception to replace buildings that are destroyed by fire, earthquake, or public dissatisfaction with my administration.

Ted Wheeler becomes the state treasurer

It's official: Governor Kulongoski has appointed Ted Wheeler as state treasurer, in place of Ben Westlund, who died this weekend.  Mr. Wheeler is the chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.  The political jockeying for position now has two racetracks: one for the state treasurer's position (the filing deadline is today) and another to succeed Mr. Wheeler on the county commission.  More to follow.

When is a Toyota better than a Lexus? When you don't have the keys

Alas, this is one story that I'm going to have to reserve for my friends at the Drones Club.

Chile gives the Intrepid Traveler 8.8 reasons to remember this trip

It's been a while since the Intrepid Traveler (a long-time friend of the Laquedems) has appeared in these pages, not because she hasn't been traveling, but because I haven't been keeping up with her.  The last time she appeared here was in 2004, when she was in the Yucatan, just missing being robbed by the revolutionaries.  She expected last month's trip to be less eventful: not a trip to frontiers of unsettled politics, but a cruise and tour of the cities and villages of Chile.  The 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck while she was in the country.  She writes:  "We are in Santiago.  We would have gone to northern Chile and wait it out there until flights resumed, but, lo and behold, they had a large earthquake there yesterday.  The plates are really moving and I want to get out of Dodge."  (Intrepidity has its limit, which I think is around 7 on the Richter scale.)  She continues: "All old buildings here are roped off and most are greatly damaged.  I fear that most historic churches will be demolished.  They are in sad shape and will probably never be safe to enter.  Even the major cathedral is closed." 

How accurate are the news reports?  She writes, "The news just shows all the ransacking and looting and people protecting their property with guns.  All stations [the I.T. means the stations in Santiago, not the television stations in the United States, which she can't see] get caught on one subject and leave most of the story untold.  I get most of my info from taxi drivers, but I think they know more than what is on the news.  Most lines are down on the outskirts, and all the passenger overpasses are capsized or broken apart."  Help is coming from other countries:  "On our bus yesterday there were three doctors from France and one from China.  A Russian plane landed this morning with generators and electrical stuff." 

As with her 2004 trip, the Intrepid Traveler's report of this one helps me keep things in perspective, and not to complain so much about the rain and the evening traffic jams.

At least the Alaska "Bridge to Nowhere" got not built more cheaply

Does it strike anyone else as perplexing that the government has spent $100 million on planning the replacement of the Interstate Bridges without moving a spadeful of dirt, when for about $150 million it could have designed and built a new Sellwood Bridge? 

The Housing Authority messed up in 2007, and wants its tenants to pay now

The Housing Authority of Portland has justly been commended for its rebuild of the Columbia Villa housing project in North Portland.  The new project is called New Columbia.  It opened in 2005 and it's a distinct improvement over the old one.

Where the Housing Authority has fallen short, however, is on its understanding of the landlord-tenant laws.  Its property manager (an outside company, hired on contract) has been going over the books of the previous property managers and has discovered that some of the tenants paid the wrong amounts in rent during 2007.  The managers have been writing the tenants to tell them to come in and pay the extra rent, or to work out a payment plan, or to be sued.  The amounts are in the range of $1000 a tenant, and aren't large, unless you're a low-income tenant in a public housing project such as New Columbia, for whom $1000 may be an unattainable sum.

What's wrong with this picture?  Two things.  First, the arrearage stems from HAP's own mistakes, or those of its former managers.  Second, although Oregon law allows plaintiffs six years to sue on most contracts, we have a quirky statute, ORS 12.125, that allows plaintiffs (such as landlords) only one year to bring suit on a residential tenancy or a residential rental agreement.  What does that mean for HAP and its managers?  HAP and its managers are threatening to sue their tenants on unenforceable debts.  It seems to me that HAP shouldn't try to pass the cost of its own mistakes onto the people it's trying to serve.  It also may not have occurred to HAP that any tenant whom it sues whose lawyer is wise enough to find ORS 12.125 is going to be able to recover his or her attorney's fees from HAP, meaning that some of HAP's money that should be going to make life better for its tenants is instead going to improve the lot of their tenants' lawyers.