Isaac Laquedem

Old McDonald can have a farm, but not a fire station

Who knew?  Multnomah County, implementing the state's land use goals to protect farmland, prohibits fire stations in its farm and agriculture zones.  Apparently it's legal to protect farmland, but not farmers.

New York removes a special privilege, in a manner of speaking

I welcome New York's approval of same-sex marriage for several reasons, one of which is my long-held (if slightly tongue-in-cheek) opposition to special rights.  New York is taking away the privilege of gay couples to separate without judicial intervention; they'll now have to go through the divorce courts just like their heterosexual neighbors.

I take this trial subscription Siriusly

Last year I bought a car that came with Sirius satellite radio installed.  "An interesting feature," I thought, as I tested it out, but all I received was one channel, which played an endless loop advertisement for Sirius with information on how to subscribe.

I didn't give Sirius another thought until May 23, when I received a letter from Sirius, dated May 20, telling me that my introductory trial subscription to Sirius will end on June 16, and imploring me to extend my subscription.  "What trial subscription?" I wondered.  "All I receive is the advertisement - no music, no sports, no talk radio."  Then on May 24 I received a second letter from Sirius, also dated May 20, welcoming me to Sirius and saying that my complimentary 3-month subscription to Sirius had just been activated.  (I still get only the channel with the endless advertisement, however.)

Delightful as I'm sure the dozens of channels that Sirius didn't include in my trial subscription must be, the company's less than stellar customer service doesn't make me confident enough to give it unfettered access to the Laquedem credit card. 

TriMet's new bridge may come in higher than planned, and I'm not talking about its price tag

As TriMet prepares to break ground on July 1 for the MAX bridge for Milwaukie light rail, which will be between the Ross Island and the Marquam bridges, it still awaits federal permission to build the bridge.  The problem?  The bridge is designed to have 50 feet of clearance for river traffic at the 100-year flood level (the flood level 26.78 feet above the Columbia River datum, which is more or less sea level), and that isn't enough for one of the Portland Spirit's ships, and for some tall-masted sailboats.  KGW picked up on this story this week, but the issue has been percolating around the maritime community for several years.  The Coast Guard's clearance standard for a fixed bridge for this stretch of the Willamette is 140 feet above the 25-foot level, or about 139 feet above the 100-year flood, and about 65 feet higher than TriMet wants to build the bridge.

This puts the City of Portland into a pickle, as it's caught between its longstanding cozy relationship with TriMet and its desire to promote recreational and tourist use of the river.  It's approved the bridge, but the Coast Guard has the final word.  I think the Coast Guard will eventually approve the bridge at TriMet's proposed clearance, but there is a chance that it won't, and then the bridge's final price tag won't be its only characteristic that ends up higher than planned.

The Laquedem Plan to promote government-journalism fellowship

For some time concerned citizens have been lamenting the decline of the nation's newspapers.  The root cause of the decline is simple: advertisers are finding other ways to reach their customers, and are buying fewer newspaper ad pages.  Newspapers balance their budgets by cutting their editorial and reporting staff and printing fewer news pages.  Subscribers find less of interest in the shrunken publications and cancel their subscriptions (or, in the case of younger readers, never start).  The newspaper now reaches fewer readers and is even less desirable to the remaining advertisers, who consequently advertise less, and the circle goes around again.

Then came the Willamette Week story on the $7 million that eight local governments spend each year on public relations staff (often former reporters) to get their messages out to the public, employing 94 people at an average salary of $74,000/year for this task.   That's a lot of people engaged in getting out what is basically public information anyway, and it's harder for them to get their stories into the Oregonian, because the Oregonian isn't printing as many news pages as it used to.

On top of this, our recent college graduates can't find jobs in the state, partly because of our own economic troubles and partly because, like college graduates everywhere, they don't have any work experience.

Out of this combination of ideas comes the Laquedem Government-Journalism fellowship program.  Instead of the fleet of flackery on which these eight agencies spend their $7 million, they will each hire one supervisor at, let's say, $125,000/year.  That's $1 million.  With the remaining $6 million they hire 200 graduates of Oregon's public colleges at $30,000/year each, to be government-journalism fellows.  Each one will spend 4 days a week working on the agency's communications and advertising, and one day a week working on reporting for the Oregonian, the Tribune, the Skanner, the Examiner, WIllamette Week, the Daily Journal of Commerce, or any other local newspaper that would like their services.  Each would be expected to contribute one article a week to their assigned newspaper that did not relate to their government employer.  To reduce the possibility that their day job would influence their reporting, the fellowships would last for fixed three-year terms, and they could be fired only if their government employer and their newspaper agreed.  

The benefits: a ready employment market appears for graduates of Oregon colleges.  The local newspapers get an added staff to bolster their news reporting and attract their subscribers and advertisers back.  The agencies get about the same amount of work without any extra cost.  The interns become more politically aware as a result of their government work and their investigative reporting, and they get real-world work experience and a modest salary.  Our colleges have a selling point to attract students.  And our local governments wouldn't be any worse for knowing that two hundred of our brightest twentysomethings were looking over their collective shoulders.