Creative Accounting

[June 10th, 2009]

Thirteen of Mayor Sam Adams’ 29 staffers have their salaries fully or partly paid by city bureaus at a time when those same bureaus are cutting back on programs and laying off workers.

This practice of creating “interagency” positions for people who work directly under the mayor but get their paycheck from a bureau is not new. Former Mayor Tom Potter was paying the equivalent of five and a half of his 24 staffers with bureau money when he left office in 2008.

In Adams’ first year as mayor, however, the practice has proliferated. In the upcoming budget, bureaus will cover $628,000 in salaries and benefits for mayoral staffers, compared to $431,000 from bureaus during Potter’s last full fiscal year and $521,000 in 2006-07 when his “interagency” budget was at its highest.

Richard Beetle, head of the union that represents many of the workers in the Portland Bureau of Transportation, where Adams made $5.4 million in cuts this year, called Adams’ budget decisions “horrible.”

“We can’t deliver if we have any further decreases,” says Beetle, head of Laborers Local 483. “For him to divert any of that money away comes at the expense of the public, as far as I’m concerned.”

And in five of 13 cases in Adams’ office, the 2009-2010 proposed budget masks the extent of the “interagency” practice.

For example, Adams’ chief of staff, Tom Miller, and deputy chief of staff Warren Jimenez draw half their salaries and benefits from the Office of Management and Finance. With benefits, Miller earns $129,100 and Jimenez collects $106,845. But that is not specifically disclosed in the most recent budget documents.

Nor are there any line items that show Terry Richardson, the mayor’s labor liaison, is paid by the transportation bureau and the Office of Management and Finance. Emerald Bogue, the mayor’s public advocate in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and Dan Anderson, who performs a similar role in the Bureau of Transportation, are both paid fully by their respective bureaus, even though they report to the mayor.

The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, which eliminated seven positions under the mayor’s budget, is also paying the salaries and benefits of Adams’ three sustainability advisers. With benefits, Lisa Libby, his planning and sustainability director, costs the bureau $86,115. Libby’s assistant Amy Ruiz, former news editor at the Portland Mercury, costs the bureau $76,464. And Megan Ponder, a policy coordinator for planning and sustainability, costs $58,658.

The Bureau of Transportation, which cut 51 jobs, also pays the entire salaries and benefits for two of Adams’ staffers, Catherine Ciarlo and Shoshanah Oppenheim. The Portland Development Commission pays half the salaries and benefit packages of Adams’ economic development advisers, including Skip Newberry, Kimberly Schneider and Clay Neal.

If Adams didn’t pay these salaries with the bureaus’ budgets, the burden would fall instead to the general fund. But that justification only goes so far; for example, the planning department pays its salaries with general fund dollars, while the transportation bureau depends on the revenue it generates from taxes and fees.

To a far lesser extent, commissioners also depend on bureaus to cover some salaries in their smaller offices.

Commissioner Randy Leonard uses the water bureau to pay one staffer. Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees police, pays two people with police bureau funds. Commissioner Amanda Fritz pays the salary of a staffer who works on water-quality issues with money from the Bureau of Environmental Services. (Saltzman oversees that bureau, but the water-quality program has moved to Fritz’s portfolio.) Finally, Commissioner Nick Fish pays for one staffer’s salary with money from Parks and Recreation and a second staffer with a combination of funding from the PDC and the Bureau of Housing and Community Development.