Murmurs: Dribbling Out A Little Justice.

1. Score one for girls’ high-school basketball. On March 30, the Portland Public Schools board voted 4-1 to hear the gender discrimination complaint that PPS dissed girls’ teams by routinely making them play before boys’ teams when the squads played at the same venue. (“Ladies First,” WW, March 18, 2015). The complaint, filed by Allison Horn, mother of a Wilson High School girls’ varsity player, alleges PPS violated federal law that requires “prime time” equity for boys’ and girls’ sports. PPS Superintendent Carole Smith previously rejected the complaint while suggesting only slight changes to next year’s schedule. The board’s vote suggests it wants a different approach. “I think we may need to take the opportunity to expand the discussion,” said PPS board member Bobbie Regan, who’s up for re-election in May. The board will vote on the substance of Horn’s complaint in April.

1. The alleged leader of a crime family running prostitution out of Portland strip clubs is behind bars, and it’s not clear how his arrest affects plans in the Cully neighborhood to wipe away his operations’ seedy legacy. A group called Living Cully wants to buy a strip mall that’s the former home to the Sugar Shack (now Peek-a-Boo’s) on a triangle of land where Northeast Killingsworth Street, Cully Boulevard and Highway 30 meet (“Sugar Shackup,” WW, Nov. 26, 2014). As WW reported, Living Cully agreed to pay $2.75 million to what the feds called a prostitution and money-laundering syndicate led by Lawrence Gary Owen, 73, who lives in Mexico when (courts records say) he’s not busy running a Milwaukie-based prostitution ring. In February, the feds charged Owen in a secret indictment with illegally using interstate cash transfers—that is, ATM machines—to promote prostitution. The Oregonian first reported on the charge this week. In December, Living Cully raised $54,094 through an Indiegogo campaign to buy the Sugar Shack site. Living Cully officials didn’t respond to WW’s questions.

1. It took nearly two years, but a city of Portland watchdog has successfully pursued a construction company she suspected of minority-contracting fraud. In 2013, City Ombudsman Margie Sollinger questioned whether work on $88,000 in contracts with Elkins Masonry Restoration Inc. was simply passed on to a white-owned business (“Mortar Combat,” WW, June 19, 2013). After the state agency responsible for policing public contracts with minority-owned businesses wouldn’t help, Sollinger pushed the case to the Oregon Department of Justice, which last week settled the allegations, requiring Elkins to give up its minority- and women-owned business certification and pay $15,000. (Elkins denied wrongdoing and didn’t return WW’s calls seeking comment.) Sollinger is now backing state legislation to let the city run its own investigations of minority-contracting fraud. 

WWeek 2015