Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 7, 2017)
LET’S MAKE A DEAL B Y B O B WA R R E N The Long Con OREGON GOVERNMENT AND THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE M y son Chris recently gave me a post- er from the 1973 movie The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, as a couple of conmen in the 1930s who pull off a compli- cated con on their mark, a ruthless gangster played by Robert Shaw. It’s one of my favorite movies, and it’s a nearly per- fect parable for my time in the Governor’s Regional Solutions Center. The movie was inspired by the 1940 book The Big Con by David Naurer. It documents a time in America during the Great Depression era when big cons, not un- like the one portrayed in the movie, were not uncom- mon. There was a “con” subculture employing thou- sands of people across the country. Every big city had its own semi-permanent “store,” the make believe lo- cation where the con takes place. These “stores” were rented for the expressed purpose of pulling off “big cons,” also called “long cons.” In the movie, it was a phony off-track betting parlor. Toward the end of my career in the state’s economic development department, I was forced to suspend real- ity and move my office to a “store.” It was the Gover- nor’s Regional Solutions Center in Eugene. A totally make-believe state office. It was the equivalent of the phony off-track betting parlor in the movie. Shortly after Gov. John Kitzhaber started his third term in 2011, the director of Business Oregon, Tim McCabe, told a gathering in Portland that we would all be required to move our regional offices into the new Regional Solutions Centers. McCabe told us, “We all know this is ridiculous, but it’s what the governor wants, so we will do it.” This phony state office was hidden away on the Need or third floor of a nondescript office information, building on 13th Av- assistance enrolling enue near the University of Oregon campus. This was health a legitimate state agency for office the way insurance? Pioneertown, the old movie set in Southern California, is a legitimate Western town. It was like I had moved my office into the Twilight Zone, into an alternate reality. There was no useful purpose for me, or any of the other state agency reps, to be located in the “store.” In fact, it got in the way of doing our real jobs because it was not a real state office. No one would ever come there looking for any of the five state agencies forced to be there. It was all about smoke and mirrors and ap- pearances, nothing about reality or doing anything real. Every Regional Solutions “store” had a coordinator assigned from the governor’s office, who functioned much like the Paul Newman character in the film, Henry Gondorff. The only people who ventured into the “store” were the marks invited in by Gondorff: mostly city, county, and state officials and their staffs. Gondorff would bring them in for make-believe meet- ings, in a make-believe meeting room, surrounded with white boards with make-believe flow charts, showing make-believe projects. The Regional Solutions Center was created to solve problems that did not exist. After forcing the relocation of state agencies into a make-believe state office, each center then needed to create “projects” so they could say the team was working on, well, something. Which, of course, we weren’t. We had real jobs to do instead. The Oregon Department of Transportation staffer was constantly traveling across town to the real ODOT office for real ODOT business. The Department of Environmental Quality staffer needed to be out in the field, and in the real DEQ office, in order to get real DEQ work done, not sitting in the “store.” I worked in three counties, and I needed to be in those counties, not sitting in the “store” waiting for the next mark. But, since the “store” existed outside of re- ality, the governor’s office insisted that we be in the “store,” and Gondorff would complain to our directors when we were out doing our real jobs. Need information, information, or or Need assistance enrolling assistance enrolling Need Need information, information, or or am-9 pm for health 9 insurance? Aaron Burns Insurance Need information, or for health insurance? for health enrolling insurance? assistance assistance enrolling Need information, Need information, or or ome to our 233 W 7thAvenue, Suite A, Eugene, Oregon 97401 assistance enrolling nrollment Event! assistance enrolling for for health health insurance? insurance? assistance enrolling Come to our ember 15th, 2017 for health insurance? For information call: for health insurance? 9 Open am-9 pm Enrollment Event! for health insurance? 541-844-3544 Come to Come to our our Need information, or Come to our Need information, or assistance enrolling Open Enrollment Event! for health insurance? assistance enrolling December 15th, 2017 (parking in back) Come Come to to our our n Burns Insurance Come to our information, or Open Enrollment Event! Open Enrollment Event! Open Open Enrollment Enrollment Event! Event! assistance enrolling Open Enrollment Event! Aaron Last Burns Insurance Come to 15th, our day for Open Enrollment is December 2017! Come to our for health insurance? 233 W 7thAvenue, Suite A, December 15th, 2017 December 15th, 2017 2017 December 15th, 2017 December December 15th, 15th, 2017 Open Enrollment Event! Eugene, Oregon 97401 9 9 am-9 pm am-9 pm Open Enrollment Event! am-9 am-9 pm pm 9 9 9 am-9 pm *Representatives 15th, 2017 from the Oregon Health Plan (OHP), W 7thAvenue, December Suite A, HealthCare.gov (the market place) and Private Insurance Agents Need ene, Oregon 97401 9 will am-9 pm to answer your questions and help you apply. be available (parking in back) r information call: 541-844-3544 rom the Oregon Health (parking Plan (OHP), in back) arket place) and Private Insurance Agents wer your questions and help you apply. Aaron Burns to Insurance Come our Aaron Aaron Burns Burns Insurance Insurance Aaron Burns Insurance December 15th, 2017 233 W 7thAvenue, Suite A, Aaron Burns Insurance December 15th, 2017 233 233 W W 7thAvenue, 7thAvenue, Suite Suite A, A, Open Enrollment Event! Eugene, Oregon 97401 233 W 7thAvenue, Suite 9 am-9 pm 233 W 7thAvenue, Suite A, A, 9 am-9 pm (parking in Oregon back) Eugene, Eugene, Oregon 97401 97401 December Oregon 15th, 2017 97401 Representatives from the Oregon Health Plan (OHP), Eugene, Aaron Burns Insurance (parking (parking in call: in back) back) 97401 Eugene, Oregon For information hCare.gov (the market place) and Private Insurance Agents 9 am-9 pm Aaron Burns Insurance (parking in back) For information call: 541-844-3544 nrollment is December 15th, 2017! 233 Suite Insurance A, e available to answer your questions and help W you 7thAvenue, apply. Aaron 541-844-3544 (parking in back) Burns 233 W 7thAvenue, Suite A, call: For For information information call: 233 from W 7thAvenue, Suite A, Plan (OHP), *Representatives the Oregon Health Eugene, Oregon 97401 y for Open Enrollment is December 15th, 2017! For information call: 541-844-3544 541-844-3544 Eugene, Oregon 97401 For information call: 541-844-3544 541-844-3544 For information call: Oregon HealthCare.gov (the Eugene, market place) and 97401 Private Insurance Agents (parking in back) (parking in back) (parking in back) will be available to answer your questions and Health help you Plan apply. *Representatives *Representatives from from the the Oregon Oregon Health Plan (OHP), (OHP), HealthCare.gov HealthCare.gov (the (the market market place) place) and and Private Private Insurance Insurance Agents Agents For for information call: Last day Open Enrollment is Oregon December 15th, 2017! *Representatives from the Health Plan (OHP), For information call: 541-844-3544 will will be be available available to to answer answer your your questions questions and and help help you you apply. apply. *Representatives from the Oregon Health Plan (OHP), 541-844-3544 HealthCare.gov (the market and Plan Private 541-844-3544 *Representatives from the place) Oregon Health (OHP), Insurance Agents HealthCare.gov (the market place) and Private Insurance Agents HealthCare.gov (the market place) and Private Insurance Agents Last Last day day for for Open Open Enrollment Enrollment is is December December 15th, 15th, 2017! will be available to answer your questions and help you 2017! apply. *Representatives from the to Oregon Health Plan (OHP), will be available answer your questions and help you apply. will be available to answer your questions and help you apply. *Representatives from the Oregon Health Plan (OHP), 6 HealthCare.gov (the market place) and Private Insurance Agents HealthCare.gov (the market place) and Private Agents day Open for your Open Enrollment is December 2017! day Last Enrollment is Insurance December 15th, 2017! will be Last available to for answer questions and help you 15th, apply. is help December D e c will e m Last b be e r 7 available , day 2 0 1 7 • for e to u g answer e Open n e w e e k l your y Enrollment . c o m questions and you apply. 15th, 2017! Last day for Open Enrollment is December 15th, 2017! Last day for Open Enrollment is December 15th, 2017! Fourteen years earlier, in 1997, Kitzhaber created the Community Solutions Team (CST). The CST con- sisted of the directors of the same five state agencies: Economic Development, DEQ, Land Use Planning, ODOT and Housing. The agency heads would meet as a group with the governor monthly, while regional teams also met monthly, hosted by a different commu- nity each month. There was no co-location of agencies into make-believe offices. The CST, renamed in 2003 to the Economic Revi- talization Team (ERT), was replaced by the Regional Solutions Centers nonsense even though it was work- ing just fine. I suspect the team in the governor’s office that dreamed up Regional Solutions was clueless as to the existence of the CST/ERT. Maybe it was a “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be cool if … ” moment. How could this have happened? How could Gov. Kitzhaber, someone I respected and admired, someone as savvy with government as he was, create something as dishonest and dysfunctional as the Regional Silly Centers? I don’t think he did. I believe it was someone with no government expe- rience and no history with regional economic develop- ment or knowledge about how state agencies actually functioned. Someone so close to the governor, a self- proclaimed expert in all things green and sustainable, that his or her ideas would be treated as brilliant and followed without question. It was probably my worst experience in state gov- ernment in more than 20 years. Such a silly waste of everyone’s time. And it left me with two questions. How could so many seemingly smart people spend so much time pretending it was real? And why didn’t Kate Brown just pull the plug on this nonsense? Bob Warren retired in 2012 as the regional business development officer for Business Oregon for Lane, Lincoln, Linn and Benton Counties. Prior to that he was a political advisor to state and federal offices.
