The Bully Pulpit

[June 14th, 2006] The head of a Portland nonprofit says Multnomah County Commissioner Serena Cruz Walsh threatened to pull funding for her program because she wanted to speak up for another program championed by Chairwoman Diane Linn.

That account from Susan Stoltenberg, executive director of Portland Impact, marks the latest example of collateral damage from the endless infighting between Linn and Cruz, who's allied on the five-member county board with Commissioners Lisa Naito and Maria Rojo de Steffey. The trio of Linn opponents styles itself as the "Mean Girls."

Stoltenberg says she got the threatening call from Cruz chief of staff Mary Carroll on June 5, less than 30 minutes after Linn emailed out her regular newsletter of upcoming events. The weekly "Linn Line" newsletter listed Stoltenberg as one of the speakers at a June 6 press conference in defense of the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods Initiative, better known as SUN Community Schools.

The so-called Mean Girls want to cut $1.6 million in county funding to SUN, a program of after-school offerings and classroom support that Linn considers among her proudest achievements. The cut would amount to more than half the county's $2.9 million support for the program, which also gets money from grants and the City of Portland.

Stoltenberg says Carroll told her that, if she spoke at the news conference, she would no longer have an appointment to speak with Cruz and Rojo de Steffey about $2.6 million in county money for Portland Impact, which helps seniors, poor children, the homeless and disabled adults.

Stoltenberg decided not to speak, but regrets the move.

"Nothing like that has ever happened to me," she told WW. "I feel like I compromised my personal integrity."

Cruz refused to comment on any threat against Stoltenberg, but told WW that she proposed the cut to SUN to save money that the county could use to help other worthy programs such as one that provides food to women and children.

"I don't have any doubt that SUN Schools is a good program, but we've had four years of cuts at the county, and we're down to choosing among good and important things," Cruz says. "You have to look at your core responsibilities."

Meanwhile, the threatened cut to SUN advocated by Cruz, Naito and Rojo de Steffey (the fifth commissioner, Lonnie Roberts, is in the minority with Linn opposing the cut) has generated more than 100 emails plus dozens of letters and phone calls in support of the program.

"We have already 'thinned the soup' as much as possible," City Commissioner Dan Saltzman wrote in one of those letters.

About 200 SUN supporters packed a board hearing on the issue Monday night, and at least that many backers also demonstrated outside the county building.

SUN, which works in cooperation with dozens of nonprofits, has a presence in 52 county schools. SUN proponents say the proposed cut would force cutting all site managers to half-time, or closing the program entirely at 16 schools.

"It's truly a violation of the community collaboration we've been doing," says SUN interim director Dianne Iverson. "We can't just cut everyone in half."