Murmurs: Senator Subleases Office From Lobbyist

SENATOR SUBLEASES OFFICE FROM LOBBYIST: State Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward (D-Portland) has subleased Portland office space from Gary Oxley, a lobbyist whose big business clients include Altria/Philip Morris, Apple, Amazon, Fred Meyer and the health care giant McKesson Corp. Steiner Howard is one of Salem's most powerful figures by dint of her position as co-chair of the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee. A family physician and faculty member at Oregon Health & Science University, she's also one of the state's leading anti-tobacco voices and sponsored a 2017 law that raised the age at which Oregonians could buy tobacco to 21. So her position and politics make the sublease all the more surprising. Steiner Hayward asked the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for approval, noting she was paying market rent and would not grant Oxley or his staff special access. The Ethics Commission OK'd the deal. Steiner Hayward says the office space in the Medical Dental Building on Southwest 11th Avenue, owned by the Eastern Western Corp., is "a convenience, nothing more, nothing less" while the Capitol is closed during the pandemic. "It was important to me to be above board about this," Steiner Hayward says. "That's why I got the opinion from the Ethics Commission. If they had concerns, they would have said so."

POLICE UNION PRESIDENT RESIGNS AMID HARDESTY FALLOUT: The Portland Police Association abruptly announced the resignation of president Brian Hunzeker on Tuesday afternoon. The union said in a press release that Hunzeker, who had been in the role for less than five months, resigned due to a "serious, isolated mistake related to the [Portland] Police Bureau's investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner [Jo Ann] Hardesty." The announcement follows the release of a 23-page police report March 12 that cleared up some of the confusion around a flurry of news stories March 4 that initially—and wrongly—identified Hardesty as the driver in a minor March 3 hit-and-run in East Portland. The report showed that after an initial 911 report identified Hardesty as the perpetrator, Officer Ken Le added what he thought was Hardesty's license plate to the report. That detail was then leaked to the press. It is unclear what mistake, exactly, caused Hunzeker's resignation. Questions still loom about who within the bureau leaked the report to the media as well as far-right groups. The Portland Police Bureau said in a statement Tuesday that Hunzeker is still an employee of the bureau and that he "will receive an assignment within the bureau to be determined."

OREGON PRISONS REPORT RECORD-LOW COVID CASES: After months of outbreaks and 42 COVID-related deaths of inmates, the Oregon Department of Corrections reported its lowest count of active cases since the pandemic began. During a March 15 meeting before the Oregon House Subcommittee on COVID-19, DOC director Colette Peters said there are now 19 active cases among inmates—a major decline from a peak of more than 730—and nine active cases among staff. That decline follows a Feb. 2 order by a federal judge mandating that the state offer vaccines to all Oregon inmates "as soon as possible." During the Tuesday hearing, DOC's chief medical director Dr. Warren Roberts said every inmate who wanted a vaccine has now had at least the first dose. As of March 15, Roberts said, 9,156 of DOC's approximately 13,000 inmates have received their first dose, and 1,256 have received the second dose. "We will not stop until we have eradicated COVID-19 from our institutions," Roberts said.

FACEBOOK CABLE SAGA EXTENDED: Facebook's tortured efforts to land a trans-Pacific telecommunications cable ran smack into a state-imposed permit deadline this month. The deadline came amid the cacophonous banging of a pneumatic hammer removing drilling pipe that extended from the Tillamook County hamlet of Tierra del Mar half a mile under the ocean, where Facebook's contractor will punch a hole in the seafloor to connect the cable to land and the company's central Oregon server farms. But drilling mishaps prevented completion of the work, and Facebook asked the state March 4 for a year's extension on its permit. The state agreed, infuriating Tierra del Mar residents who are not mollified by a series of grants and contributions Facebook has made to local organizations. Lynnae Ruttledge, leader of opposition to the project, which brought industrial drilling to her sleepy beachside neighborhood, says Facebook never gave residents any warning it was seeking the March 26, 2022, extension. Ruttledge terms the extension "a new level of outrageousness." The company says the noisy work is done and what remains is lot restoration and pulling the cable through the now-installed undersea conduit to shore.