HAP Denies Public Access To Its Board 9/16/03
In a disturbingly undemocratic and unprofessional action, HAP's Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Shelley Marchesi, choose to personally censor an email communication intended for HAP Board members.* Ms. Marchesi deliberately deceived the sender into thinking the messages had been delivered to the intended audience then, when the misdeed was discovered, refused to acknowledge it. This type of behavior is dishonest, unethical, and a gross dereliction of duty. It is time for Ms. Marchesi to find employment elsewhere.
Unlike other government institutions, e.g. the Portland Development Commission** and the Portland Planning Commission***, the Housing Authority of Portland**** provides almost no information about its appointed board members. HAP's unelected board controls the spending of hundreds of millions of tax dollars and affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Multnomah county. Withholding email messages from HAP's board members is outrageous in the truest sense of the word.
HAP does not provide any contact information to its board members. So, in order to communicate with them a citizen must either send a letter to the board member in care of HAP or send an email to HAP's Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Shelley Marchesi, and have her forward the message. Ms. Marchesi has no more right to censor a citizen's email message than she has to confiscate mail sent through the United States Postal Service. If Shelley Marchesi had destroyed US mail addressed to individual HAP board members as she did with the email intended for HAP's board she would possibly be in jail today having been caught committing a felony. There is no difference here.
Portland's mayor Katz, Gresham's mayor Becker and Multnomah county chair, Linn are responsible for appointing the HAP board. All three of them need to investigate Ms. Marchesi's behavior in this matter. Each of them need to assure the public that we have every right to contact members of public boards and commissions, including and especially HAP. It is totally unacceptable for the staff of any board or commission to prevent communication between the public and the members of any board or commission. Board and commission members are not required to respond or even read communications from the public but they MUST be allowed to get them in order to make their own choice.
* See below &&&&&&
** http://www.pdc.us/about_pdc/leadership/leadership.asp
*** http://www.planning.ci.portland.or.us/pc_about.html
**** http://www.hapdx.org/About/board.html
Richard Ellmyer
North Portland
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org
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From: Richard Ellmyer <ellmyer@macsolve.com>
Date: Tue Sep 16, 2003 10:20:12 AM US/Pacific
To: Shelley Marchesi <shelleyM@hapdx.org>
Cc: Steve Rudman <stever@hapdx.org>, Paul Parker <paulp@hapdx.org>, Margaret Van Vliet <Margaret@hapdx.org>, Nick Fish <nf@meyerwyse.com>
Subject: Who's Responsible?
Hi Shelley:
I am bewildered and considerably surprised by your atypical lack of response to my simple albeit important question: Did you forward my email of September 5th to all of HAP's board members on or before September 11th? Your silence is leading me to the logical and inescapable conclusion that your answer is NO. This is now my working assumption.
Your cooperation and professional behavior in the past make me very reluctant to make you the sole focus of any public comments I might express on this matter. However, you will leave me no choice if you do not affirm that you have passed on my messages in a timely fashion, as has been our long time understanding, or that some superior of yours ordered you not to perform this task.
Please correct any misconceptions I may have about your role in this matter before 5 PM today. Thank you.
Richard Ellmyer
From: Richard Ellmyer <ellmyer@macsolve.com>
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 1:38:23 PM US/Pacific
To: "Shelley Marchesi" <ShelleyM@hapdx.org>
Subject: Re: The HAP Board Must Answer This Question
Hi Shelley:
While I am interested to hear anything the HAP Chair has to say on the matter of public disclosure, I need to know if you have forwarded my email of September 5th to all of HAP's board members. If you have then I thank you for continuing to forward my communications to the HAP board as has been our long time understanding. If you have NOT passed on my message to the HAP board then I need to know whether this decision was yours or whether a superior told you not to pass along my email. Thank you.
Richard
On Wednesday, September 10, 2003, at 02:11 PM, Shelley Marchesi wrote:
Hi Richard:
Our Board Chair will respond to your 9/5 email by the end of next week.
Also, I wanted you to know that we are now projecting that we will issue the RFP for home builders in mid-October.
Shelley
>>> Richard Ellmyer <ellmyer@macsolve.com> 09/05/03 07:57PM >>>
HAP Board Members:
I recently requested your response to two important questions.*
Apparently I have not communicated the essence of my request. The
Housing Authority of Portland needs to make available to neighborhood
leaders and the public the same client location data that it currently
provides by zip code (which is politically useless), instead, by
neighborhoods (which is politically useful.)
My suggestion to work with the city of Portland was only one option.
HAP needs to provide this information regardless of whether it works
with the city of Portland or does it entirely on its own. [Another
option, get the mostly written code from the city and have your own
people enhance it.]
You may remember the great umbrage taken by Howard Shapiro when HAP was
challenged in an Op-Ed piece in the Oregonian. Howard was very quick to
demand equal time from the Oregonian and yet he never offered nor
allowed anyone equal time to rebut the tens of thousands of dollars HAP
spent and continues to spend on its print propaganda in my
neighborhood. It is totally disingenuous, indeed ludicrous for HAP to
say that it doesn't have nor will it spend a few thousand dollars to
provide important public information.
The issue of HAP's responsibility to provide useful political and
public information of client location by neighborhoods is now put
before every member of HAP's board. You are certainly free to hold any
opinion on this matter you choose. However, you are not free to ignore
the issue.
Surely each of you understands that this issue will not go away. Surely
each of you understands that this is a significant matter and that you
have an obligation to give it serious consideration. Surely each of you
understands that there is a large constituency of Oregonians interested
in how HAP spends the public's money and conducts the public's business.
I would like to hear from each of you directly, as soon as possible.
Please tell me what you think. If a motion was made to provide HAP
client location information by neighborhood how would you vote and why?
That is the question. This is a matter of WILL NOT WALLET. We eagerly
await your answers.
Thank you.
Richard Ellmyer
North Portland
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org
PS
Shelley, some of what you report is inaccurate, inconsequential and
misleading. My purpose was to hear what individual Board members have
to say on a matter of public information disclosure policy. That has
yet to be answered by all the people who make HAP policy as opposed to
those who get paid to carry it out. Please make sure this goes directly
to every member of HAP's board of directors. Thanks.
On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 01:55 PM, Shelley Marchesi wrote:
> Hi Richard:
>
> I'm sorry this reply has taken me longer than usual, but I wanted to
> take the time to make sure I understood from the city what the
> situation was regarding the software you described in your September 1
> email to me.
>
> As we understand it, the city has no plans to develop this software
> (they have no internal need for it, and the only request the person I
> spoke with, whom I believe you also spoke with, knew of was yours).
> If they were to develop it, they would charge $90/hour and believe the
> work would take at least two weeks, which would put the cost at $7,200
> at a minimum, not counting overhead charges they said they would have
> to add, and costs involved on our side.
>
> Also, they told me that if they were to develop the software
> capability for batching zipcodes, it would be for their computer
> system — i.e., we couldn't use it here. That would not work for us,
> as our Section 8 client data base is confidential information.
>
> So, for reasons of cost, which we continue to believe aren't
> justifiable for us, and confidentiality, we are not going to pursue
> this.
>
> Shelley
>
>> *
>> From: Richard Ellmyer <ellmyer@macsolve.com>
>> Date: Mon Sep 1, 2003 12:23:14 PM US/Pacific
>> To: Shelley Marchesi <shelleyM@hapdx.org>
>> Cc: HAP Board <shelleyM@hapdx.org>, Randy Leonard
>> <rleonard@ci.portland.or.us>, David Lane <dlane@ci.portland.or.us>,
>> Tom Griffin <npno123@teleport.com>, Erik Sten
>> <erik@ci.portland.or.us>, Marshall Runkel
>> <mrunkel@ci.portland.or.us>, Jim Francesconi
>> <jfrancesconi@ci.portland.or.us>, Dan Saltzman
>> <dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us>, Vera Katz
>> <mayorkatz@ci.portland.or.us>, Sam Adams <samadamspdx@comcast.net>,
>> Nick Fish <nf@meyerwyse.com>, Earl Blumenauer
>> <hillary.barbour@mail.house.gov>, Gary Hansen
>> <rep.garyhansen@state.or.us>, Margaret Carter
>> <sen.margaretcarter@state.or.us>, Serena Cruz
>> <serena.m.cruz@co.multnomah.or.us>, Diane Linn
>> <mult.chair@co.multnomah.or.us>, Rob Fussell
>> <weldon@ci.gresham.or.us>, Rex Burkholder
>> <burkholderr@metro.dst.or.us>, David Bragdon
>> <bragdond@metro.dst.or.us>, Steve Schneider
>> <stephen.schneider@state.or.us>, Nancy Goss Duran
>> <Nancy.Goss-Duran@state.or.us>, Matt Hennessee
>> <Matt.Hennessee@quiktrak.com>
>> Subject: For The Record - An Update
>> Hi Shelley:
>> Although I have written and emailed you, HAP board members and staff
>> about this subject several times, I wanted to make absolutely sure
>> that HAP, through you, is aware that the city of Portland has computer
>> software that will identify any address in the city of Portland by
>> neighborhood. And, that there is currently a request to enhance this
>> application so that it can automatically repeat the neighborhood
>> identification for bulk requests. This means that it will soon be
>> possible, both easily and quickly, for HAP to identify its clients by
>> neighborhood not just zip code which is unsuitable as a politically
>> useful designation.
>>
>> So, the following questions arise:
>> As a gesture of public forthrightness,
>> 1. Would HAP be willing to contribute to the trivial cost to complete
>> the neighborhood identification bulk program enhancement?
>> 2. When the neighborhood identification bulk program enhancement is
>> complete will HAP immediately use the program to provide neighborhood
>> leaders and the public with the resulting information?
>>
>> When you respond please note which members of HAP's board support or
>> oppose an affirmative answer to the above questions. Thank you.
>>
>> Richard Ellmyer
>> Portsmouth neighborhood
>> North Portland
>>