Lights out at the White House, goodbye Turd Blossom.

[August 15th, 2007]

Relax, folks, our local ambulances should stay fully staffed for another three years. American Medical Response, the Colorado company that has an exclusive contract to run ambulances in Multnomah County, came to a tentative contract agreement

Aug. 9 with a union representing 500-plus local emergency workers. The proposed three-year contract is tentatively scheduled for a union vote Aug. 30. The deal would provide raises of 10 percent to 24 percent the first year (the union wanted up to 40 percent to gain parity with its counterparts on the West Coast) and a choice of health plans—the two major sticking points for the union, which had been threatening to strike. “Nobody’s happy, but we took the company for every dime they have to offer,” says union bargainer Jeff Birrer. Or did they? A well-placed source says company supervisors have been telling employees they could have gotten a better deal.

Call it the fluff tax. The Flying Focus Video Collective , a small Portland nonprofit that produces social-justicey fare for cable-access TV, launched an interesting fundraising pitch last week. The Flying Focus folks are demanding (their word, not ours) that local TV stations donate $10 anytime they lead the news with 10 minutes of “information citizens can’t do anything about” —i.e., weather, sports or “relatively trivial” fare like the live festival broadcasts that gave the world “Turtle Boy.” (Thanks, KGW.) Celebrity news would incur an additional $1 penalty , which is, by the way, tax-deductible. Murmurs bets OPB wishes it had thought of this first. Beats a pledge drive.

If Restore America has its math right, Sunday, Aug. 19, will be the day it gets enough signatures to put repeals of Oregon gay-rights legislation on the state ballot next year. The politically driven Christian organization and its Concerned Oregonians political action committee hope to collect 80 petition signatures at each of 800 churches . That would add up to 64,000 signatures —thousands more than needed to ask Oregon voters to repeal newly enacted domestic partnerships for gay couples and anti-discrimination laws. When asked for an interview, Restore America leader David Crowe wrote in an email, “Please don’t be offended, but I see no real reason to take time to be misquoted, which is oft the case [with WW ], to fit someone else’s agenda.”

Keeping our ear to the ground at the Fresh Del Monte Produce plant in St. Johns (“Chop Shop,” WW , May 2, 2007), WW posted a piece on wweek.com last week about the state Department of Environmental Quality fining the plant $8,085 for letting food waste run off into the Columbia Slough. The next day, Fresh Del Monte decided to take DEQ’s best offer—ponying up $6,487 in fines. Fresh Del Monte, already reeling from a federal immigration raid in June, didn’t return calls seeking comment.

City Council crankiness report : After the council rejected Commissioner Dan Saltzman ’s recycling revamp last week following hours of testimony, Commissioner Randy Leonard ’s anti-graffiti plan had its first reading. “If you’d handled the recycling issue like I’ve handled this,” Leonard told Saltzman, “we probably wouldn’t have spent so much time on it.” Mayor Tom Potter then complained to Leonard that he hadn’t had enough time to read his anti-graffiti ordinance. “That’s not my problem, that’s your problem,” Leonard snapped. Later, Saltzman downplayed his spat with Leonard. “No one had had lunch,” he told Murmurs. As for Potter, Leonard says: “He was, as far as I’m concerned, speaking for the Portland Business Alliance.” Potter’s response, via a spokesman: “I don’t believe that would be true.” Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!