Beleaguered FOLLOW-UP It turns out it's not just Beverly Stein breathing down Lawrence Dark's neck. If the president of the Urban League of Portland doesn't get his agency's financial house in ship-shape by the end of September, he risks losing $500,000 in funding from WORKsystems inc., a job-training provider that has contracts with the league. "We're taking a look at all our options," says John Ball, the agency's president. According to a memo obtained by WW, Ball's agency reviewed the League's accounting practices in mid-August and found problems similar to those Multnomah County personnel found two weeks later: unpaid bills, untrained staff and a substandard accounting program. In addition, according to the memo, the person who reviewed League finances for WORK- systems inc. was unable to locate the agency's grants or contracts for fiscal 1998 and 1999 or even find a current budget for fiscal 1999. The reviewer also found that the annual salary of the league's acting finance director jumped from $24,000 to $61,000 over three pay periods, without any apparent authorization. League Board Chairman Duane Bosworth declined comment on any aspect of the agency's situation, and Dark did not return WW's repeated phone calls. Ball says his agency currently has its own people on-site at League offices, helping to resolve the accounting deficiencies. He says some progress is being made. Meanwhile, county officials essentially cut off $1.1 million in funds to the League last week, after finding serious accounting irregularities at the Northeast Portland nonprofit in late August. Stein, the county chairwoman, is still waiting for the league to give the county a copy of a management letter prepared by an outside accountant and provide detailed answers to concerns she outlined in her Sept. 9 memo. What does Stein think of the league's response so far? "I'm very disappointed," she says. "I don't know what's being done to right the ship." Sources tell WW that the League will have the answers Stein's looking for on Sept. 23. --Philip Dawdy A River Runs Through Us As senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, Robert Kennedy Jr. says he knows a crime when he sees one. The Willamette River, he says, is grand theft. "Somebody stole the rivers," he says. "The constitution says the people own the rivers. They're not owned by the government. But now people can't fish in the river because it's dangerous." Kennedy is the national spokesman for Riverkeeper, whose 36 affiliates monitor the country's waterways. He hits town next week for a well-timed Willamette Riverkeeper fund-raiser. This year the Willamette has seen endangered-species listings, a potential superfund listing, controversial dredging proposals and, most recently, a public outcry against deformed fish. "It's ironic, because the Willamette was the model in the '60s for ecosystem restoration," Kennedy says. "At the first Earth Day in 1970, that's the river that gave everyone hope." Since then, according to Kennedy, the Willamette, like other rivers, has been destroyed. Though industry may cause much of the pollution, he says, the real villains are public officials. "Government agencies are generally in cahoots with the polluters," says Kennedy. That's why he defends the idea of using lawsuits to force governments to go after polluters. "We're not going to get a seat at that table unless we show we have the power to inflict pain," he says. Willamette Riverkeeper was not around when environmentalists sued the City of Portland, forcing it to reduce the amount of sewage flowing into the Willamette, but the group has been monitoring the legendary waterway since 1996. --Patty Wentz Strike Two FOLLOW-UP It seems that Howard Salyer cannot escape his past. On Sept. 8, Salyer resigned as co-director of Multnomah County's new residential drug and alcohol treatment facility, just five months after taking the job. WW reported last month that Salyer was placed on administrative leave with pay on Aug. 9 while county officials investigated facts surrounding his resignation as a Linn County deputy sheriff. Documents obtained by WW showed that Salyer engaged in what may have been a coercive sexual relationship with a direct subordinate ("Making a Correction," WW, Aug. 18, 1999). Linn County officials said they told Multnomah County why Salyer quit. Multnomah County officials said they didn't know all the details and launched their own investigation. Elyse Clawson, executive director of Juvenile and Adult Community Justice, declined to answer specific questions about the investigation. She did say, however, that the county would not have hired Salyer "had we known that information in advance." The county denied WW's request for a copy of the findings of the investigation. --Philip Dawdy The Final Ruling As of Nov. 15, it looks like Oregon's largest personal-injury law firm, Pozzi Wilson Atchison LLP, will file its last brief, and its partners will go their separate ways. The firm, which employs 13 lawyers and almost 50 support staff, has enjoyed a reputation as a zealous advocate of working people and accident victims. "It's tragic--the tragic fall of a great firm," says lawyer Greg Kafoury. "It was an anchor and resource for all of us. We all tapped into it." The firm was founded in the '50s by the late Frank Pozzi, a former longshoreman who tutored dozens of local lawyers in the fine points of fighting a trial. With his navy-blue suit and lopsided smile, Pozzi cut a striking courthouse figure. "For years, everybody knew that if you got hurt, you went to Frank," says former partner Larry Baron. In some ways the demise of the firm stems from the difficulty of carrying on that legacy. "The responsibility of employing over 60 people and trying to represent the interests of all working people became too big a responsibility for the current members of the firm," says managing partner Peter Preston. Other legal sources attribute the break-up to the declining number of worker's-compensation claims, which once made up a large proportion of the firm's caseload. The number of claims statewide has fallen from 39,000 in 1989 to 28,400 in 1996, a drop of more than 27 percent. "The economics of practicing law have changed," says former partner Jeff Mutnick. "It's really a very unfortunate thing." Trial lawyers are by nature a disputatious tribe, but even some of Pozzi's longtime opponents voiced regret at the firm's imminent demise. "They are worthy adversaries," said Thomas McDermott of Lindsay Hart Neil & Weigler as he prepared for a trial against the firm. "I've always had the greatest respect for that office." --Chris Lydgate Taking Aim All summer, gun-control advocates tried in vain to get the Legislature to close the loophole that allows people to buy firearms at gun shows without undergoing background checks. Metro Executive Mike Burton, himself a former lawmaker, thinks he may have finally found a way to force such background checks--at least at some Portland gun shows. Under current law, federally licensed handgun dealers must run background checks on potential customers, even at a gun show. But anyone else who sells guns at such events is freed from such restrictions. The state Legislature tried to change the law last session but fell short. Burton, however, says another state law bans anyone bringing a gun into a public building without first obtaining permission from the agency that controls it. Therefore, Burton argues, Metro has the ability to regulate gun shows held at the Portland Expo Center and the Oregon Convention Center, which are under Metro's control through the Metropolitan Exposition-Recreation Commission. He says the aim is not to ban gun shows, just to get their organizers to agree to require background checks on all sales, not only those conducted by licensed dealers. Burton and local law-enforcement officials have formed a task force and hope to meet with gun dealers next week to discuss the idea. --Nick Budnick Anti-Social Studies You'd think the Oregon Department of Education would have learned not to make Bill Bigelow mad. The biggest educational controversy of 1999 started when the Franklin High School social-studies teacher blasted the ODE's proposed social-studies exam for 10th graders. Writing on The Oregonian's op-ed page, Bigelow said the test was inaccurate and trivialized important subjects. And to prove his point, he publicized some actual test questions that the state ODE wanted to be kept under wraps. Some state officials wanted Bigelow fired, but instead, the group of 100 teachers he's associated with, the Portland Area Social Studies Content Team, kept the pressure on and ultimately persuaded the state to delay implementing the test for two years. Given the tension surrounding the social-studies standards, one might assume that when the job of establishing content for the state test opened up, ODE would have contacted the Portland group, either for suggestions or to see whether members might be interested in the job. That wasn't the case. When Mary Jean Katz, the Department of Education's social-studies guru, left her position on Aug. 11, ODE posted the available position on its Web site and placed an ad in The Oregonian, says Tanya Gross, an ODE spokeswoman. Gross adds that the opening was mentioned at August meetings of curriculum directors and school administrators. Somehow, word never made it to Portland. Bigelow, who runs an e-mail forum for local social-studies teachers, says he was never notified of the opening. The job was filled two weeks ago by Andrea Morgan, a teacher at Silverton High School who was cited earlier this year by Oregonian columnist David Reinhard as a supporter of the very tests Bigelow and company were railing against. There is, of course, no law that says ODE must reach out to its critics, but the bottom line, say local teachers, is that the gulf between educators and the state education agency continues to widen. --Nigel Jaquiss   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published September 22, 1999