Photo doctored to include the hat.One of Portland city administrator Raymond Lee III’s close henchpeople in his old gig in Greeley, Colorado – a guy who abruptly departed city government there, without explanation, at the same time Lee did – has surfaced in Oregon. Paul Trombino III, who was Lee’s “managing director” in Greeley, has
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Frank's wild cheers
In the gold-stained fortress next to the swamp, there are many flying monkeys. One is a guy named Frank Bisignano. Formerly one of Jamie Dimon’s boys, these days he’s running the Social Security Administration, which is responsible for keeping a lot of old and disabled Americans alive. Nervous, but alive.When our nation’s Dear Leader couldn’t
Wiz kid whizzes out
Well, you knew there would be some inconvenient news dumped on the eve of the holiday weekend. And so it is that we learn today that the director of the Oregon Health Authority, Sejal Hathi, is stepping down. She’s been on the job for two and a half years and accomplished not much. Her
Tuesday on the doom loop
When the politicians preach about “affordable housing,” I just have to laugh. Here in Portland, where all landlords are reviled as greedy and evil, the City Council thinks nothing of loading more and more financial burdens onto the backs of property owners, who of course have to pass the pain on to the tenants.Here’s the
Ja never know
Well, that’s interesting. The Blazers have traded for Ja Morant.Everyone in Portland will have an opinion. He’s a controversial figure, that’s for sure. I don’t expect to see him kissing babies in a team promotion event at a Fred Meyer any time soon.But will he be a bum and a lout and a menace?
Don't stand so close to me
It’s hard to believe, but the local government in and around Portland may be coming to its senses about the downsides of handing out free hypodermic needles, meth pipes, and who-knows-what-else to drug addicts. At least the local politicians are starting to question the propriety of handing them out on the streets near schools.It’s about
Trippin' with Candy
We’ve had roughly a year and a half of the new Portland city charter, and as I and others predicted, it’s been a fiasco. The question is whether the ship will right itself, or whether the city government will degrade further, all the way into a disaster.There’s a lot at stake. Potland’s downtown was just
Actually, the Blazers' arena has been renovated plenty
Amid all the noise about whether public money should be the only money spent on a proposed renovation of the Moda Center arena, a falsehood keeps being repeated, and it’s time somebody called it out. The oligarch Blazer owners reaching their hands toward the taxpayers’ wallets keep saying (and the lazy media keep repeating it)
Putting the finis in Xfinity
It took one last pain-filled half-hour on the phone with some poor soul in a third-world country (who kept calling me “Sir John,” and thanking me repeatedly), but today I cancelled the last of our services with Comcast, a.k.a. Xfinity. We had been on their treadmill for 30 years – a “diamond” customer, they kept
Four-alarm grudge
Portland city administrator Raymond Lee must have had his ear ringing the other night. And not his good ear. His name came up again at the City Council meeting in Greeley, Colorado, where he used to work. A guy from the firefighters’ union got up and said how nice it was to work with other