Writers’ strike? We’re still working.

[November 7th, 2007]

Two candidates have surfaced to replace retiring Department of Environmental Quality director Stephanie Hallock. One is Sen. Brad Avakian (D-NW Portland), a lawyer who chaired the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee. The other is Gail Shibley , a former three-term legislator from Portland who’s now administrator for Oregon Department of Human Services’ office of environmental public health. Shibley declined to comment. Avakian says he’s focusing all his energy on his current campaign for secretary of state, but says the DEQ post would be “intriguing.” With the enviro-friendy Dems controlling the Capitol, the DEQ job is perhaps state government’s most attractive opening.

Portland Public Schools hosted its monthly meeting of principals and administrators at a spacious banquet hall last week for $3,000. But the real shocker to some parents, and to Basic Rights Oregon, was the meeting’s location: Mount Olivet Baptist Church. In 2004, Mount Olivet gave $20,000 to the Measure 36 campaign , the initiative defining marriage as an act between a man and a woman. PPS Superintendent Carole Smith, a lesbian, wouldn’t criticize the decision to host the Nov. 1 meeting at the North Portland church, though district policy prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But parent Cindy Young would. “It’s beyond inappropriate,” Young says. BRO’s executive director, John Hummel, says he’s “concerned” about the use of public funds to hold a meeting in an institution hostile to gays and lesbians.

The Hemp&Cannabis Foundation isn’t ready to toke the peace pipe yet over what it alleges was an attempted coup . Paul Stanford, director of the local foundation that’s helped 24,000 patients in five states get medical marijuana permits, filed suit Nov. 2 in Multnomah County Circuit Court against Portland lawyer Frederick Smith. The charges in the suit seeking $20,000: Smith and his alleged co-conspirators tried to steal the foundation’s name by registering it with the Secretary of State and take over its Southeast Portland headquarters in November 2005. Smith declined to comment.

The Oregonian ’s total paid circulation is down —about 1.2 percent on Sundays, to 371,000 copies, and about 0.4 percent weekdays, to 309,000. But it could be worse, according to new Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the six months ending in September. Other large dailies, such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , suffered declines as big as 9 percent. These are the first numbers since the O launched its extra special newsstand-only edition in June, designed to capture pedestrians’ pocket change with huge photos and sexy (ick) headlines that pump up sports, woodland creatures, rape and TV reruns.

Portland Mercury reporter Scott Moore is moving on. The hirsute cyclist starts next Tuesday as the new spokesman for Secretary of State Bill Bradbury .

The William Temple House, a Portland nonprofit that helps the working poor, looks likely to be moving from its longtime Northwest Portland home to outer Southeast. William Temple House, which has been at 2023 NW Hoyt St. since 1969, is making the move because it would be closer to many of the 17,000 or so people it serves each year, says executive director Allen Hunt. Also driving the move: An estimated $5 million for needed improvements to William Temple’s Mackenzie House, which is on the Historic Registry, and Abbott Hall.