Murmurs

[September 19th, 2007] Nancy Hamilton , Mayor Tom Potter’s ex-chief of staff, has landed a new job. As of Oct. 1, Hamilton (News Q&A, WW , Dec. 20, 2006) will become Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s director of strategic development. Hamilton, who resigned her $101,000-a-year City Hall job last December midway through the mayor’s four-year term, will work out of the Oregon Economic&Community Development Department. She will report to Kulongoski’s deputy chief of staff, Allen Alley. Hamilton, whose pay hasn’t been finalized, says her duties will include “looking at other states to see what strategies are working, and helping the department be more proactive and nimble.”

About 270 unionized Metro workers will vote on whether to authorize a strike vote Oct. 2 . The main sticking point between AFSCME Local 3580 and Metro is how much workers will pay toward their healthcare costs. Local 3580 president Amy Wilson says Metro is sitting on big reserves thanks to an improved bond rating and PERS savings. Wilson also notes that Metro councilors just got a healthy raise. The bump comes courtesy of a historical oddity —the Metro charter pegs councilors’ pay to county judges , whose annual pay was raised by the 2007 Legislature from $95,800 to $112,488 as of 2008. That’s great news for Metro President David Bragdon, who gets a judge’s salary. The other Metro councilors only get one-third of a judge’s pay.

The police get sued plenty in this town, but we’ve found a case where a cop is suing a guy he arrested. And, as first reported on WWire, there’s an added twist—the cop doing the suing is the son of Sgt. Brian Schmautz, media spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau. In a lawsuit filed Sept. 10 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Officer Aaron Schmautz says he sustained injuries to his hands, wrists and arms when a suspect resisted arrest on Aug. 6, 2006. But the suspect, Brian Alvarez, a utility project manager from Portland, says it was Schmautz who broke Alvarez’s arm outside Barracuda Bar&Grill in Old Town. Schmautz is suing Alvarez for $5,500. For more, go to wweek.com.

A parent who attended a meeting Saturday of the Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs says new Jefferson High School principal Cynthia Harris , who is black, refused to answer a mother’s question because the questioner isn’t African-American and doesn’t have children at Jeff. Lynn Schore had asked when Harris would announce possible changes to the school’s year-old policy barring students from leaving campus during lunch. Harris, who was a featured speaker at the meeting, disputes the account, calling the exchange a “drastic misunderstanding.” “The answer I gave was that it’s an in-house decision, ” Harris says. That sentiment isn’t new; former Superintendent Vicki Phillips publicly expressed resentment for schools activists without students at Jeff who questioned policies at the largely black high school. As for Schore, she wrote the School Board that Harris’ “approach of denying me answers based on my race is discriminatory.”

Mayor Tom Potter vs. the G-Men, Round 2. Potter pulled the city out of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2005. Now he wants to ensure city workers won’t be squeezed by the Homeland Security Department’s latest terror-iffic exercise, TOPOFF 4, set for Portland Oct. 15-19. Unlike Noble Resolve—the last doomsday drill earlier this year—“Top Officials 4” will put the city’s first responders in the field (make that Portland Int’l Raceway), play-acting their response to a nuke, germ or chemical attack. Potter had an ordinance on the City Council agenda Wednesday, Sept. 19, asking that workers not protected by federal labor laws be paid overtime for participating in TOPOFF 4. The OT’s estimated to cost $131,000, which the feds will pick up. Portland Emergency Management spokesman Kerry Dugan says us civilians can expect some “traffic issues” on I-5 during TOPOFF.