We Hope The OEA Realizes This Column Is Not A Bill Sizemore Measure

[October 29th, 2008]

Allen Alley, the Republican candidate for state treasurer, told KPOJ-AM last week in an interview that he hasn’t said whom he’s supporting for president. Curious that, given that Alley’s Facebook page lists him as a member of “McCain – Palin 2008: Friendraising to a November Landslide!!” Alley didn’t return messages seeking an explanation.

It’s come to this on Senate Bill 10, the sweeping ethics-reform bill passed last year by the Legislature: Oregon AG Hardy Myers is suing Marion County judges in order to make one of those judges comply with a public records request for info that SB 10 said should be public—specifically the names of public officials’ family members. As reported Oct. 15 in Murmurs, judges in six counties decreed earlier this year that a portion of the new law didn’t apply to them. But on Oct. 27, Myers sued Marion County Presiding Judge Jamese Rhoades on behalf of the state ethics commission. “The legislative direction...is unambiguous and unequivocal: SEIs [Statements of Economic Interest], and all the information that they contain, are to be disclosed to the public,” the lawsuit says.

Meet the new boss. The race to replace Sgt. Robert King as head of the city’s powerful 900-member police union ended in a blowout victory for Southeast Precinct Sgt. Scott Westerman. He avoided a runoff by winning 53.7 percent of the vote Oct. 24 against four other contenders. Westerman, considered a middle-of-the-road candidate on the anger scale at a time when cops are seething about work conditions (see “Copping the Vote,” WW, Oct. 22, 2008), takes office Nov. 1.

Veronica Rodriguez gets a new day in court Nov. 4 when the state Supreme Court hears oral arguments in her case. The former youth counselor was found guilty in 2005 of first-degree sex abuse for holding the back of a 13-year-old boy’s head against her clothed chest (see “A Brush with Measure 11,” WW, Feb. 20, 2008). New in the 29-year-old Rodriguez’s corner are the Oregon Education Association, the Boys & Girls Club of Portland and the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Each filed briefs on her behalf as she fights serving the final five years of a mandatory minimum sentence of six years and three months.

More tough news for Oregon’s GOP: As first reported this week on WWire, former U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) is moving to California. Hatfield, 86, is leaving his home in Mary’s Woods retirement community in Lake Oswego for a condo in Palm Desert, Calif. Now in ailing health and in a wheelchair, Hatfield—who was Oregon’s governor before serving 30 years in the U.S. Senate—has round-the-clock care.