MURMURS

[September 10th, 2003] * Things are perhaps a little too peaceful at the Oregon Peace Institute . First, the 19-year-old nonprofit lost its director and volunteer coordinator. Then, a campuswide crunch forced it out of its Portland State University digs. "We've hit the pause button," says board member Tom Hastings . OPI is no longer offering its conflict-resolution workshops and youth-violence prevention programs, but Hastings hopes to make the institute an official project of PSU, where he teaches. OPI is no stranger to conflict --last fall it engaged in a war of words with its founder, former congresswoman and Hatfield School of Government Professor Elizabeth Furse , over her endorsement of Gordon "attack Iraq" Smith.

* Crime-prevention specialists with the Office of Neighborhood Involvement filed an appeal with the city last week, hoping to save their jobs. The specialists, liaisons between cops and citizen groups, face layoffs in November, a move ONI brass says is necessary to add new responsibilities to the positions (see "Line of Fire," WW, Aug. 20, 2003). Meanwhile, the unionized specialists and neighborhood activists aim to bring political heat to City Commissioner Randy Leonard . Leonard, the commish responsible for ONI, backs the layoff plans. But revolt is brewing in the ex-firefighter's key constituencies . Labor is mad (unionized city employees are circulating buttons blasting the "Office of Non-Involvement"), while neighborhood activists in Southwest, North and Northeast are drumming up a letter-writing campaign. A hearing date for the crime-prevention specialists' appeal has not yet been set, so stay tuned.

* Mayor Vera Katz's new spokesman, Scott Farris , has a skeleton in his closet--he's newly imported from Sacramento, Calif. There, he worked as a senior planning advisor to Gov. Gray Davis , now in the middle of a recall election that could put actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California governor's mansion. Farris started on Tuesday, Sept. 2, just in time for the strange and sudden installation of new chief Derrick Foxworth. So can Stumptown match "Sacto" for political excitement? Based on his first week, says Farris, "it has the potential."

* It was a busy summer of millionaire-mansion musical chairs--and can there be any doubt that Taylor Clark's reporting for "Hydro Hogs III" (WW, Aug. 27, 2003) is what sparked it? Jordan and Mina Schnitzer, having only recently taken the top spot in the city water-usage ranks, on July 30 purchased the home of the second-ranked Jeff and Susan Grayson for a measly $2.3 million. Meanwhile, on Aug. 12, auto magnate Scott Thomason (occupying the HH No. 6 slot) sold his house for $3 million to Hydro Hog virgins Eric and Janice Hoffman, of the Hoffman Construction family.

* A think-tank report on Oregon's tough-sentencing law, Measure 11, is not even out yet, but the hullabaloo has already started. After the Rand Corporation's draft report found that Oregon's crime rates dropped no more than did other states which had no Measure 11-type law, Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk and the study's researchers exchanged letters that fell just short of bureaucratically mooning one another. On Aug. 26, Schrunk wrote that the drop in crime is due to Measure 11, and questioned the report's "interweaving of unsupported opinions with soundly based factual findings." On Sept. 4 , Rand's Nancy Merritt and Phillip Lemman of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission lamented that they were not able to obtain charging data from prosecutors, which "would have been of immense usefulness."