Presented With Pride

[June 11th, 2008]

• Portland divorce lawyer Allan Knappenberger, accused by an Oregon State Bar panel of having a “broken” compass after repeated ethics violations (see “S.O.B., Esq., WW, March 22, 2000”), got a break June 5 from the Oregon Supreme Court. The court overturned a bar panel’s decision to disbar Knappenberger and instead suspended him for two years. The court noted that “something is seriously amiss” with Knappenberger’s ability to follow rules, but not enough to “justify the most severe punishment that this court can impose.” Knappenberger, already under a one-year suspension, did not return Murmurs’ calls.

• Metro’s transportation funding wish list for the 2009 state Legislature has two items of note for drivers: First, there’s a proposed 14-cent statewide gas tax increase. If the Leg OK’d that increase—which would be Oregon’s first gas hike since 1993—the state would match Washington’s tax at 37.5 cents per gallon. Here’s another fact: None of that increase would go toward an anticipated local $1 billion-plus contribution for a proposed I-5 bridge replacement project, says project critic Metro Councilor Robert Liberty. Second, Metro wants to remove state restrictions on tolling Willamette River bridges. Senate Transportation Committee chair Rick Metsger (D-Welches) says all options for increasing transportation funding are on the table.

• An emerging critique of Portland’s public finance system in candidate interviews at the Citizens Campaign Commission: $150,000 isn’t enough to run a Council race. With that amount, “it’s going to be hard for the system to create winners,” says Jim Middaugh, who lost the May 20 primary by 40 percentage points to Nick Fish. John Branam —a loser in another Council race—thinks 150-large was enough, but that some training would help. Says Branam, “I felt like I was in the middle of a storm.” Memo to future candidates: Instead of following Branam’s spending $20,000 on a campaign manager (Phil Busse), buy a compass and an umbrella.

• Lewis & Clark College has withdrawn its Measure 37 claim on 3,600 acres of open pasture in Umatilla County—months after Oregon voters tightened state land-use rules with Measure 49. L&C’s original claim might have let it subdivide its donated Eastern Oregon land into 19-acre “farmettes” to raise money. But the claim, dropped because of the stricter Measure 49, angered Umatilla County residents like Pendleton lawyer Robert Mautz. “This episode for Lewis & Clark,” says Mautz, “is a dark mark against them.”

• A green idea ahead of its time? Fred Meyer stocks a bottled water called Primo, which uses compostable bottles made from a corn-based resin called polylactic acid, or PLA. That seems like a good idea, since 80 percent of water bottles end up at the dump. But there’s a problem, says veteran local recycling guru Jerry Powell: Primo’s bottles look like plastic, so people try to recycle them. But because they aren’t plastic they gum up plastic-recycling machinery, and there’s no efficient way to separate them. Fred Meyer spokeswoman Melinda Meyer acknowledges the problem but says critics may be overreacting: “It takes a lot of PLA to contaminate the waste stream.”