143 Weeks And Counting

What we need is less invitation to citizen participation from Portland's mayor and more demonstration that Multnomah County's Public Housing Czar knows and shows that he is in control of his twenty-nine subordinate public housing appointees.

ORS 456.ll0 gives the power to the mayor to remove from office any appointed commissioner, "For inefficiency or neglect of duty or misconduct in office."

During a public Portland City Council meeting on January 26, 2005, HAP’s Chair, Kandis Nunn, was told by mayor Potter to make available HAP's public housing data by neighborhood. As of May 23, 2005 there continues to be no public evidence to prove that Kandis Nunn has complied with that order.

The Housing Authority of Portland is not a private club. It is an arm of government. While the mayor of Portland is the only person with the authority to compel HAP to provide public housing data by neighborhood it is not the mayor’s data. Neighborhood public housing information belongs to the voters, the taxpayers and the citizens of Multnomah county. And on their behalf I demand that this information be made publicly available immediately.

The task HAP Chair Kandis Nunn was publicly instructed to accomplish is technically trivial. It merely requires converting street addresses into neighborhoods. The software to do this has been available online for many years through ONI and now through Portland's mapping site. To run approximately 35,000 HAP records would take very little time.

To spend more than 17 weeks trying to accomplish a task that requires only minutes or hours at most is certainly "inefficient' by anyone's standards. Failure to accomplish this task after 17 weeks is arguably "neglect of duty" and insulting the mayor by ignoring his public instructions for 17 weeks is certainly "misconduct in office."

Kandis Nunn’s failure to provide a tab delimited text file containing approximately 35,000 records each with two fields, one with a neighborhood, one with a HAP designation of median income (0-30,31-50,51-80%) after 17 weeks is just cause under ORS 456.110 for dismissal. Mayor Potter, please consider this a formal public request for the removal of Kandis Nunn from the HAP board. You will find a lengthy list here, http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/FireHAP.html , of previous dismissal quality infractions which provide additional, though unnecessary, support to this case for her removal.

For several years Kandis Nunn has vigorously refused to provide HAP's public housing data by neighborhood. Now, even with public instructions from the mayor she continues to belligerently withhold vital public information which is absolutely necessary to evaluate the official public housing policy of distribution throughout Multnomah county not concentration of public housing clients into a few select neighborhoods.

While Kandis Nunn must be dismissed she is not alone in the blame for gross negligent failure to provide the fundamental information by which every citizen in Multnomah county can judge for themselves whether or not the official policy of distribution not concentration of public housing into a few select neighborhoods is actually being ENCOURAGED and ENFORCED by the mayor of Portland and the twenty-nine public housing commissioners that serve at his pleasure.

There is NO public evidence that any of the following elected officials, who are directly connected to members of the HAP and HCDC boards, have ever done anything to bring public housing data by neighborhood to the citizens they ostensibly represent. To the contrary, most of them have actively opposed any attempt to identify public housing data by neighborhood. Ask them.

Charles Becker
Shane Bemis
Shirley Craddick
Serena Cruz
Karylinn Echols
Randy Leonard
Diane Linn
Jacquenette McIntire
Lisa Naito
Lonnie Roberts
Maria Rojo de Steffey
Dan Saltzman
Dave Shields
Erik Sten
Paul Warr-King

Richard Ellmyer - DRAFT Testimony to be presented to the Portland City Council 5-25-05

On August 27, 2002, citizen Richard Ellmyer publicly displayed public housing data by neighborhood for all 117 neighborhoods in Multnomah county on a map and tables which were also published on the Internet*. Although Ellmyer publicly, loudly and persistently pleaded with HAP, the mayor and the Portland city council to produce an official accurate accounting document of his estimated unofficial version they were not only mute but defiant in their refusal to provide this public information.

126 weeks after Ellmyer's map debuted at a candidates fair in SW Portland which included Randy Leonard, Serena Cruz and Nick Fish, mayor Tom Potter tells HAP's Chair, Kandis Nunn, during a city council meeting to produce HAP's public housing data by neighborhood. 17 weeks later does the city now have a map and tables that are as understandable to the voters, taxpayers and citizens of Multnomah county and yet more accurate than the work of citizen Ellmyer? NO.

143 weeks and still waiting.

143 weeks and now the public housing policy establishment has come up with yet another diversionary postponement. This time it's called the Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice project. This HUD mandated report is being used to delay the release of neighborhood public housing data by an unnecessary additional 17 weeks. It may be comforting to some that the person statutorily responsible for public housing policy and the annual expenditure of $200,000,000 in Multnomah county is a patient sort and doesn't mind casually waiting 34 weeks for information which has been available for years and would take minutes or perhaps hours to produce not 34 or 143 or 160 weeks.

Although told by both HAP staff and the mayor's office that the "AI" report will include public housing data by neighborhood, when asked, no board member nor staff at HAP, HCDC, PDC nor the mayor's office could produce a single piece of evidence to prove that anyone anywhere has been instructed to produce public housing data by neighborhood.

This dance of evasiveness has got to stop. 143 weeks is enough for me and most citizens of Multnomah county. We are not interested in waiting 17 more weeks to hear a chorus of compliant consultants who will sing whatever song they are paid to perform in a HUD orchestrated opera.

The voters, taxpayers and citizens of Multnomah county have a right to their data. Yes, the neighborhood public housing data belongs to the citizens of Multnomah county. It does not belong to a small elite club of unaccountable appointed officials nor the staffs at HAP, PDC and HCDC. It does not belong to the Multnomah County Chair nor the mayors of Troutdale, Gresham and Portland. It belongs to the 700,000 citizens of Multnomah county and the mayor of Portland must give it to them and give it to them now.

The most basic data we need is a tab delimited text file containing approximately 35,000 HAP client records each with only two fields, one with a neighborhood, one with a HAP designation of median income (0-30,31-50,51-80%). This data needs to be reproduced and published on HAP's web site every month because it is in constant flux. It is not a static one shot deal done every 9 years to satisfy some federal agency.

Do whatever you want to for HUD. But don't confuse a report for the federal bureaucracy with the mayor's responsibility to regularly give the citizens of Multnomah county the facts and the truth about how the mayor of Portland is guiding, monitoring and supervising the annual spending of $200,000,000 of their money on public housing in their neighborhoods.

Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth - formerly the 18%, currently the 6% solution neighborhood, North Portland
* http://www.goodgrowthnw.org
Click to download (768Kb) and hear a short relevant message. http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/HAPCommentary5-2-05.mp3

P.S.
From the beginning of the Potter administration on January 1, 2005 until May 1, 2005 I asked this question to mayor Potter's office staff with notification to every HAP, HDCD and PDC board member, "Have you asked for and received public housing data by neighborhood from HAP, HDCD and PDC?" During that four month period no one from HAP, HDCD, PDC nor the mayor's office answered that this HUD-mandated Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice project was currently underway and would include neighborhood data. No one. Nor as of May 23, 2005 did anyone from mayor Potter's office staff nor HAP nor HDCD nor PDC ever mention or provide evidence that mayor Potter had publicly rescinded his instruction of January 26, 2005 to Kandis Nunn to provide HAP's public housing data by neighborhood.

Jamall Folsom, the mayor's assigned person to deal with me on matters of public housing policy in January 2005, "disappeared" from the mayor's office without telling me of his departure. Nor did anyone in the mayor's office indicate to me that Jamall had gone and that they were taking up Folsom's portfolio. Requests to speak directly with the mayor were shunted aside. Unaware of his status and concerned about the lack of response from Folsom I contacted the mayor's chief of staff, Nancy Hamilton. After many weeks she responded by shuffling the responsibility to another staffer, Sara Culp. Sara's response came after the well announced deadline for the May 1 HAP Watcher commentary. None of these people would make themselves available to talk with me, face to face, about public housing policy despite my public offer of help.

It has been my experience over the last thirty years as a political player both inside and outside of government that when public officials and their staffs won't talk to you about legitimate public business it's generally because they have something to hide. Usually the facts or incompetence or both.

I presented questions and answers months in advance to the mayor's office in the form of a "take home exam" because it was fair, reasonable and an easy concept for the thirty-five hundred HAP Watcher readers to understand. It was abundantly and indisputably clear that this was not a "sneak attack" or a "gotcha." After four months in office my readers wanted to know, "how is Potter doing?" with regards to public housing policy. With the lone exception in the mayor's office, no one, not a single reader challenged or criticized the questions, the time frame or the grade as unfair.

Sara Culp, a newly minted "public housing policy" person, apparently replacing Jamall Folsom - though unnoted on the mayor's web site, took umbrage at the form of my questions - submitted months in advance to Jamall Folsom without comment or complaint - and indicated that the mayor's office would only respond to questions submitted in a form they found acceptable. This, of course, immediately reminded me of the time former HAP Chair Howard Shapiro and his board - which included Kandis Nunn - decided to censor my communications and deny me direct email access to HAP public officials - a violation of the First Amendment right to "petition the government for redress of grievances" - because I had the temerity to ask them to tell the public their views on public housing policy regarding concentration versus distribution of public housing clients throughout Multnomah county's 117 neighborhoods. To this day they refuse to publicly explain their behavior and expose their thoughts on this public policy issue.

It is not for the mayor's office staff nor the HAP Chair to decide what form or what questions will be asked by the press or citizens inquiring into the workings of their government. If you believe Abraham Lincoln's description of government as, "of, by and for the people" then you don't accept, "government of, by and for the personal convenience and ego protection of those temporarily in power."

The Portland City Council and the Housing Authority of Portland board have more than a four year record of refusing to provide public housing data by neighborhood and refusing to publicly discuss much less defend - which they can't do without neighborhood public housing data - Portland's public housing policy of distribution not concentration of public housing clients into a few select neighborhoods. Mayor Potter and his twenty-nine public housing commissioners have a very very long road to travel before they can speak a credible sentence that includes the words, "public housing policy."