Portland’s political leadership has reached a new level of disconnection with the needs of the community and the basics of economic progress.  Mayor Vera Katz and cronies have long shown no regulatory or legislative support for our business community, a condition hitting a high point when a homegrown, internationally successful enterprise, Columbia Sportswear, chose to leave town rather than continue to wrangle with blind bureaucracy. 

Now we learn that Vestas Wind Systems , just proudly announced by Katz as a coming major addition to the local economic scene, is having grave second thoughts, perhaps best described by that old saw “familiarity breeds contempt.”…which could also explain why Gordon Biersch Brewing has set aside plans to be an anchor tenant in the downtown Portland Brewery Blocks Project.

This news is accompanied by the just announced departures to other states of three prominent Portland firms (Bioject, Radio Frequency Systems, Molded Container), undoubtedly influenced by incentives offered by municipalities in New Jersey, Arizona and Kentucky.

And then there’s the school mess

Meanwhile, we read of the continuing collapse of all attempts of the Portland School Board to replace a leadership vacuum, while Mayor Katz continues her total silence on a subject which should be of utmost prominence in her purview.  She recently did speak up to pledge city funding support for any attempt by one of the world’s richest residents, Paul Allen, to bring major league hockey to his Rose Garden arena. 

Vera, of course, had already forcibly demonstrated her affinity for athletic development when she railroaded a flawed PGE Park stadium project through her council.  That turkey quickly lost millions and caused Vera’s convincers, the original owners, to leave town.  We now learn the new owners can’t make ends meet, in the face of dwindling attendance for the minor league sports mistakenly expected to underwrite the new arena.
Only 21 of the 38 “luxury suites” created as a revenue source have sold…no surprise, when you figure businesses find no glory in hosting clients for ‘B league’ events.

Riding the rails

While Portland’s guiding politicians show no aptitude for creating community income, they continue to demonstrate a world-class knack for spending money, as in transportation schemes.  The city has just acquired two more million dollar cars for a streetcar line whose ridership will likely never pay for the first of the growing fleet.

And then there’s light rail.  Despite serious damage to retailers along a new Interstate Avenue route still under construction and whose need has never been justified, Rose City government has endorsed plans for an additional half dozen additions to Portland’s impossibly expensive light rail network.  And Vera, bless her heart, is the loudest voice for installing the controversial and incredibly costly tramway to the Oregon Health Sciences University…ostensibly to underline that institution’s ambition to be a biotech center.

The Biotech bamboozle

“Biotech”…that’s the latest buzz word in economic development circles across the country and overseas.  Portland is far behind established centers of this technology and failed, with OHSU, to have a presence at BIO 2002, the 16th annual International Biotechnology Convention held last month in Toronto…guess we were waiting for the tram to start running.   Joseph Cortright, an economist and author of a Brookings Institution (a think tank) report on biotech centers, declares “the current fascination with biotech…says more about the behavior of the economic development fraternity than it does about the location and economics of biotechnology,” and reports that “the scientific expertise, venture capital investment and management and labor pool necessary to compete (in biotech)” tends to rule new regional competitors out.and doesn’t “generate the kind of jobs and tax base that …justify a start-from-scratch investment.”

Local Portland activist Steve Schopp avers that “the whole biotech card being played in Portland is a blatant fraud,” intended he says, to support public funding of trams and trolleys and the necessary cleanup of proposed OHSU expansion sites which are now toxic waste centers.  He adds that “Portland’s leadership, weakened and panicked by its high unemployment rate and anti-business reputation, can no longer be trusted with the public’s interests.”  Note the phrase “public funding”…another testament to the ability of Katz and conspirers to spend your and my dollars on half-baked projects that they cannot truthfully underwrite as returning dollars to our economy.

Portland city hall is a liberal fantasyland populated by dreamers that fail the public trust at every turn and have not a scintilla of knowledge regarding how capitalism works.

© 2002 Oregon Magazine  Most of the photos are links to their source.