When you get down to it, the Bureau of Emergency Communi-cations'
raison d'être is to ensure that a fire truck gets
to a burning house or a cop car gets to the scene of a
crime. But at least one BOEC manager also seems to have
been concerned with getting tourists from Pierre, S.D.,
to the Snake River.
WW has learned that Gary Bevans, BOEC's principal
management analyst, has used the city's 911 office to
help carry out a side job for a cruise company. What's
more, a former BOEC employee says it all went on right
under the nose of BOEC director Sherrill Whitte-more.
"She would have had to be blind to miss it," says Brenda
Wolfe, who worked at BOEC as an accounting clerk until
June. She left the agency in disgust, she says, because
it was a workplace where employees who were in with
Whittemore could do outside work on the public's dime
and choose their own hours, while everyone else shouldered
the load.
Last month City Commissioner Dan Saltzman asked the
city auditor's office to investigate BOEC. Among the
allegations are abuse of flextime and overtime, violations
of city contracting rules ("Bureau of Elusive Contracts,"
WW, Nov. 23, 1999) and employees running personal
businesses.
Bevans, who is paid an annual salary of $48,770, was
one employee who may have benefited from that system.
He worked part-time for Cruise West, a Seattle-based
company that offers seven-day cruises up the Snake River
to Idaho's Hells Canyon in the spring and autumn. The
cruises leave from Portland at Tom McCall Waterfront
Park.
WW has identified 23 instances in which faxes
from Cruise West, some of which exceeded 20 pages, were
received by Bevans on BOEC's administrative fax line.
Mary Novak-Beatty, Cruise West's vice president of
sales and marketing, says Bevans worked as the company's
Portland shore-support manager. He logged about 20 hours
a week, she says, primarily on weekends as a $10-an-hour
contract employee. She estimates Bevans' yearly take
at $3,200.
Novak-Beatty, who says she did not know Bevans worked
for the City of Portland, says it's common for the company
to keep its support staff aware of passenger-list changes
by fax. Some of the faxes to Bevans request that he
arrange for ground transportation for tourists from
Portland International Airport to the Port of Portland.
Other faxes are purchase orders for bourbon and vodka
to be delivered from a Southwest Portland package store
to the ship. All of the faxes obtained by WW
were received at BOEC during normal business hours.
Bevans declined to answer questions about his business,
citing the auditor's ongoing investigation of BOEC.
City Auditor Gary Blackmer refused to discuss any details
of his office's investigation. Whittemore, who is on
personal leave, was unavailable for comment. Paul Stein,
BOEC's interim director, also declined to comment, citing
the ongoing investigation.
BOEC does not have a written policy on outside work
by its employees, but the city code clearly prohibits
the use of city resources for outside business and personal
use.
According to BOEC phone records reviewed by WW,
Bevans did not make any long-distance calls or send
any faxes to Cruise West.
Even if Bevans did spend city time on his side job,
it's not exactly scandalous. But Wolfe says his activities
say a lot about BOEC's work culture. She says Bevans
made no attempt to hide the fact that he was using the
office fax machine for Cruise West business. In fact,
she says, the office secretary put his faxes in his
in-box and mail slot. "Once, he jumped down the receptionist's
throat because he couldn't find a fax," Wolfe says.
Yvonne Deckard, the city's interim director of human
resources, says the city employs a "progressive disciplinary
system" for employees who violate personnel rules. She
says that someone who misuses city resources and steals
city time could be fired.
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 1,
1999
