Skip to main content
GILLIAM PLEA DEAL LOOMS: The saga of Joe Gilliam, the former longtime CEO of the Northwest Grocery Association, will add a new chapter on March 14, when Gilliam’s son, Earl “Joey” Gilliam, is set to enter a plea in Clackamas County Circuit Court. The younger Gilliam faces six counts of criminal mischief and six counts of aggravated theft, all felonies. The charges stem from his alleged theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from his father’s accounts after the elder Gilliam was poisoned—twice—by an unknown person who tried to kill him with the toxic metal thallium (“Who Poisoned Joe Gilliam...Twice?,” WW, Nov. 3, 2021). The elder Gilliam remains at a long-term care facility in Washington, where he has lived since the poisoning. He cannot speak or care for himself and remains under the guardianship of his sister, Felicia Capps. Joey Gilliam was originally charged with stealing from his father in August 2022, and the case has dragged slowly through court ever since. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment. The question of who poisoned Joe Gilliam has never been answered and no suspect has been charged.
METRO ERECTS EXPANDED HOUSING DIVISION: The regional planning agency Metro, which administers the supportive housing services tax that’s brought in $577 million since 2021 to help the three Portland-area counties combat homelessness, is setting up its own 44-employee housing division. Metro is doing so as it chews on a plan to retrieve hundreds of millions of unspent homeless tax dollars from Washington, Clackamas and Multnomah counties—money the counties have budgeted but been unable to spend as planned on homelessness. Metro wants to claw back those funds and use them instead to produce affordable housing, a move that would require voter approval. Metro first set up its Housing Division in 2022 and passed the budget for its expansion last year. The organizational chart of Metro’s future housing division, obtained by WW, shows that subdivisions would oversee the supportive housing services measure, regional alignment of housing production, and a five-member team studying regional housing policy. Five staffers would run communications. Of the 44 employees at the division, 18 would be new hires. “Metro is expanding to meet the obligations of our governing documents and programmatic demands of regionalizing SHS,” says Metro spokesman Nick Christensen, “as well as our obligations to respond to management audits… All of this requires adequate staffing.”
LEGISLATURE DIRECTS $4 MILLION TO GRAFFITI CLEANUP: Much of the graffiti along state-maintained roads in Portland is likely to turn “ODOT Grey” in coming weeks as crews from the Oregon Department of Transportation begin to spend $4 million appropriated by the Legislature in its short session. ODOT doesn’t clean the graffiti off its roads, bridges and barriers. Instead, it paints over tags with gray paint that (roughly) matches the color of concrete because it’s less expensive. Highway signs must be replaced. Gov. Tina Kotek hadn’t signed the bill as of press time, but she had asked for the funding after her Portland Central City Task Force recommended it last year. The money “will bolster livability and beautification in Oregon’s largest city for residents and visitors,” Kotek said in a statement to WW. The governor wanted (and got) $20 million in total: $4 million for graffiti cleanup; $4 million to clean up camps created by houseless people; and $4 million for litter. The remaining $8 million will be used to construct barriers to deter camping and keep RVs from parking near bridges, retaining walls and bike paths. All of the money will be spent in ODOT Region 1 (most of the tri-county area and Hood River County). The department is desperate for the graffiti money, as the endless tags along Interstates 5 and 84 show (“Spray Anything,” WW, Jan. 31). ODOT spokesman Kevin Glenn says the department is ready to deploy the money as soon as it hits, noting that paint crews will be out in force in a matter of weeks. “We have things ready to go,” Glenn says.
CITY AND FIRE UNION FILE APPEALS IN FIRING CASE: Both the city of Portland and the Portland Fire Fighters’ Association are dug in on their positions regarding former Portland Fire & Rescue Lt. Peter St. John. As WW reported in a cover story earlier this year (“Family Ties,” Jan. 10), the fire bureau terminated St. John for a series of incidents, including a 2014 online conversation in which he and an unknown woman allegedly discussed swapping their young children with each other for sex. The Clackamas County district attorney declined to bring criminal charges against St. John, but recommended the city fire him, which it did in November 2022. The union appealed his termination to an arbitrator, who reduced St. John’s penalty to a month’s suspension and ordered him back to work, with back pay. The city refused to take him back and appealed the arbitrator’s decision to the state Employment Relations Board, writing in a Feb. 5 brief that St. John’s behavior was “so egregious” it met the legal standard for overruling the arbitrator’s decision. The union disagreed. “In short,” it argued in its March 5 brief, “the City agreed to final and binding arbitration; it cannot repudiate the agreement simply because it hoped for a different result.” The city’s reply is due March 15.
STATE TO TACKLE BACKLOG OF CHILD EXPLOITATION “CYBER TIPS”: Oregon lawmakers directed an additional $2.7 million last week to a state task force that investigates child exploitation online. When Google, Facebook or TikTok find child pornography being distributed on their platforms, they report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. NCMEC then sends it to state task forces to investigate. Here, that task force is run by the Oregon Department of Justice. And for years, the team at DOJ handling such “cyber tips” has been overwhelmed. Last year, the five-member team reviewed nearly 10,000 tips. Washington state, which receives a similar number of tips, has a team of 25. The result, as you’d expect, is a backlog in Oregon. Tips sit around for three months before investigators even pick them up. Previous requests for funding were ignored by legislators, but Salem has now taken notice. The allocation will be used to nearly quadruple the size of the team, as well as train local law enforcement how to assist with investigations.