Inside
Meeting Notices
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Page 6
Volume 113
Number 21
November 2, 2012
Portland, Oregon
Clackamas County becomes an electoral battleground
Labor mounts ground
game after foes pour
money into county races
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Clackamas County is like Oregon in miniature:
It has urban areas like Oregon City and Clacka-
mas Town Center, affluent suburbs like Lake Os-
wego and West Linn, and small towns like Esta-
cada and Mulino. It’s Oregon’s third most
populous county, with 380,000 people — one in
10 Oregonians — calling it home. And its econ-
omy runs the gamut from heavy manufacturers
like Precision Castparts and Oregon Ironworks to
farming, logging, and tourism.
So what happens in Clackamas County mat-
ters a great deal to the rest of the state, says Ore-
gon’s top labor union official — AFL-CIO Presi-
dent Tom Chamberlain. And right now,
Chamberlain says, “What’s happening in Clacka-
mas County is scary.”
Chamberlain said the state labor federation is
backing the Northwest Oregon Labor Council on
Clackamas County races — after several long-
time statewide foes of labor put hundreds of thou-
more like Portland. “Protect Clackamas
sands of dollars into defeating a pair of in-
County from Portland creep,” said bill-
cumbents on the county commission.
boards put up by the PAC in the spring.
John Ludlow, a real estate broker and
Since 2010, Clackamas County voters
former mayor of Wilsonville, has raised a
have rejected an auto registration fee to
quarter of a million dollars for his chal-
pay for an upgrade to the Sellwood Bridge;
lenge to union-endorsed incumbent
barred the creation of new urban renewal
County Chair Charlotte Lehan. [By con-
districts without a public vote; and barred
trast, former Clackamas County chair
spending new funds on light rail without a
Lynn Peterson spent less than $37,000 on
public vote. Ludlow in particular was a
her successful 2008 campaign.] The ma-
supporter of those campaigns (with much
jority of Ludlow’s contributions —
of the funding coming from Parks, Stim-
$155,343 as of Oct. 29 — are from Ore-
son and the Oregon Transportation Project
gon Transformation Project PAC. That
PAC), and that helped him come in first in
group, headed by Oregon Republican
a four-way primary in May.
Party treasurer Rob Kremer, has so far re-
But Chamberlain calls their argument a
ceived $370,000 from Loren Parks, Ne-
vada millionaire and longtime funder of Clackamas County Chair Charlotte Lehan (left) signed a hoax: “I think these folks are trying to bam-
anti-union ballot measures; $100,000 from labor-backed resolution last January that calls on the county boozle the citizens of Clackamas County.
Karl R. Miller, CEO of the Avamere nurs- to prioritize local source hiring and family wage jobs when They’re trying to instill fears of ‘Portland
ing home chain; and $630,000 from Stim- letting contracts. To her left is Commissioner Jamie Damon. creep’ in areas of the county where that will
son Lumber, whose CEO Andrew Miller Corporate interests, some from out of state, are pouring never happen.”
hundreds of thousands of dollars into defeating Lehan and
Under state land use law, development
is one of the group’s leaders.
in the Portland metro area is limited out-
Oregon Transformation Project PAC is Damon in November.
side an Urban Growth Boundary, to pre-
also backing former Republican state rep-
resentative Tootie Smith in her challenge to in- their launching pad to turn Oregon,” Chamberlain serve farm and forest land and prevent sprawl.
cumbent Clackamas County Commissioner Jamie said. “Their goal is to make Multnomah County The boundary currently extends to Oregon City
an island.”
and Damascus, and it has grown only by relatively
Damon.
In fact, part of Ludlow’s and Smiths’ message
“If the 1 percent gets a toehold there, and gets
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control of the county, they’re going to use that as is an appeal to keep the county from becoming
Construction workers find jobs building ‘the cloud’ in Central Oregon
By STEFAN OSTRACH
Special Correspondent
PRINEVILLE — Remember floppy
disks and zip drives? As computer tech-
nology develops, the trend is away from
storing digital data on a PC or laptop.
Tablets like the iPad and netbooks don’t
even come with hard drives. Digital
photos, e-mails, and data files — even
software and backups — are more and
more likely to be stored “in the cloud.”
The term “cloud computing” wasn’t
even coined until 2006. But the com-
puter cloud is not up in the sky. It’s on
the ground in massive buildings filled
with computer servers. The buildings
are called data centers.
Oregon, east of the Cascades, is be-
coming one of the world’s prime loca-
tions for these data centers. And no city
is experiencing a bigger data center
building boom than Prineville. Located
in the heart of Oregon in Crook County,
Prineville has important attractions for
Internet infrastructure companies: the
dry climate of the high desert (sunny
days, low humidity, and cool nights),
cheap and reliable electric power, avail-
able land, and tax breaks.
Central Oregon also has a highly
trained and available unionized con-
struction workforce.0
Facebook was in Prineville first,
buying 124 acres of sagebrush- and ju-
niper-covered land in 2009. It is now
completing its second 330,000-square-
foot data center at the location. A third,
smaller building is planned, and there is
room for at least one more large data
center. Facebook’s capital spending on
This 330,00 square foot, union-built Facebook data center is located in Central Oregon’s Prineville. Data center
construction is booming in Central Oregon, creating hundreds of good-paying union jobs. (Photo by Alan Brandt)
the first building alone brought $24.4
million in direct local economic activity.
Apple acquired 160 acres of land
across the street from Facebook, and re-
cently broke ground on a 338,000-
square-foot, 100 percent green, data
storage complex. A 10,000 square-foot
modular server array has already been
built at the location. Apple reportedly
has plans to invest more than $250 mil-
lion and the site and could build as
many as 14 additional data halls.
All of the Facebook construction,
with the exception of excavation, has
been done with union labor. More than
2,500 people have worked at the site,
with 50 percent hired locally and the
other half coming from elsewhere in
Oregon.
Apple also is using union contrac-
tors.
David Burger, executive secretary of
the Central Oregon Building Trades
Council, said union crafts on the high
tech projects include IBEW Local 280,
Plumbers and Fitters Local 290, Sheet
Metal Workers Local 16, Iron Workers
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