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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 23, 2014)
News Mudslide Trader Joe’s Pulls Plug continued from page 1 they don’t have anything they own, their friends or relatives are dead,” she said. “I think they need this.” At the request of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, Obama earlier this month declared shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas. Three soldiers died and 16 others were wounded in the rampage by another soldier, who killed himself. Obama also has mourned with the griev- that a major disaster had occurred in the state, making it and affected residents eligi- ble for various forms of financial aid, including help covering the costs of tempo- rary housing, home repairs and the loss of uninsured property. The Homeland Security Department, the Federal Emergency Man- agement Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers also are helping. The president repeatedly has stepped into the role of national consoler in times of mourning. Just two weeks ago, he met with families and comrades of those killed in a ing after carnage in Tucson, Ariz., Aurora, Colo., Newtown, Conn., Boston, the Wash- ington Navy Yard — and once before at Fort Hood. Tuesday’s stop in Washington came as Obama headed for Tokyo, the first stop on a four-country visit to the Asia-Pacific region. The president is scheduled to spend the rest of this week and part of next week confer- ring with the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. Associated Press writer Manuel Valdes contributed to this report. PHOTO BY LISA LOVING ‘They don’t now have houses any more, they don’t have anything they own, their friends or relatives are dead, I think they need this’ Officials from Trader Joe’s last week confirmed that they are walking away from the proposed store at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Alberta Street in Portland. The Portland African American Leadership Forum spoke out against the city’s process for bringing the store to the area earlier this year, prompting Trader Joe’s to cancel their offer. Activists then mended fences with city officials on the issue, including PAALF and the Portland NAACP, which held a press conference in support of the project. But the grocery store chain refused to reconsider. Sheriffs continued from page 1 anyone without a court order or warrant. Other counties are expected to follow suit. The ACLU has challenged the detentions in federal courts around the country, and the state of California and at least eight cities, including New York and New Orleans, have now stopped holding people for ICE. Elsewhere, even people arrested for minor misdemeanors can be held in jail for up to two days, before ICE picks them up and transports them to a detention center to await a deportation hearing. “Detainers raise serious constitutional concerns by depriving individuals of free- dom without due process of law and, in most cases, without probable cause of any criminal act,” the ACLU said in a press release. “Moreover, state and local corrections officials frequently violate the 48-hour lim- itation by continuing to hold individuals zens, lawful permanent residents, and Lati- nos in particular—without any charges pending, sometimes for days or weeks after they should have otherwise been released from custody… ‘State and local corrections officials frequently violate the 48-hour limitation by continuing to hold individuals beyond the period requested’ beyond the period requested. Detainers have resulted in the illegal imprisonment of countless individuals—including U.S. citi- “Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton took a positive but small step forward when he implemented a policy in 2013 to limit the stricted reserve funds” used for such pur- poses; his attorney charges that the fund transfer Graham suggested was openly debated as part of the city’s budget process and ultimately taken off the table. However Goward and Scott allege that Graham “tried” to pursue the funds transfer, which – also an important part of the law- suit – is just like an even bigger transfer that Scott did the year before, without censure or public comment, thus creating the appear- according to the first page of the report. Graham’s tort claim argues the investiga- tor was never asked to determine whether the transfer proposal was itself legitimate, but rather was directed to assume he was guilty of wrongdoing; Graham says the investigator herself did not understand the terminology or processes she was examin- ing. A number of comments made by Scott and Gower regarding what they say Graham instances in which his office would honor ICE detainers. “The ACLU thanks Sheriff Staton, as well as Sheriff Craig Roberts in Clackamas County and Sheriff Pat Garrett in Washing- ton County, for their decisions to now suspend this harmful practice altogether unless ICE provides probable cause for the prolonged detention in the form of a judicial warrant…” The issue of how to police communities when undocumented immigrants fear deportation is on the national agenda. Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com Graham continued from page 1 “Mr. Graham also faced an effort, moti- vated in part by his race, to remove the City’s budget operations from his purview and establish an independent Budget Office,” the tort claim says. “Mr. Graham complained that he was being subjected to discrimination based upon his race, but the City ignored his concerns.” Graham last month was granted a name- clearing hearing to allow him to give his side on what really happened when he was accused of fiscal mismanagement in 2012 – but, his attorney says, city officials would not allow any of his supporters to partici- pate nor would they allow City Human Resources Director Anna Kanwit to testify on her own investigation into the case, which contradicted an earlier report by the City Attorney’s office. Graham testified at the name-clearing that he’d been tasked by former Mayor Sam Adams to help find financial resources that could be used to support Portland Public Schools operations, which were in severe deficit that year. Graham says he asked his top manage- ment staff – the Office of Management and Finance’s Financial Planning Division Manager Andrew Scott and Chief Financial Officer Richard Goward – whether it could be possible to redirect reserve funds from the Water and Bureau of Environmental Services budgets for that purpose. Ultimately nothing happened with the funds, which Graham argues were “unre- ‘Mr. Graham also faced an effort, motivated in part by his race, to remove the City’s budget operations from his purview and establish an independent Budget Office’ ance of a double-standard in accountability, according to Kanwit’s investigation. A key part of Graham’s tort claim involves a report on his activities commis- sioned through the City Attorney’s office, a copy of which has been obtained by The Skanner News. It was prepared in 2012 by Yael Livny, a lawyer for Jackson Lewis law firm, who was asked to investigate whether Graham was warned about improprieties in the schools fund money transfer and whether he “engaged in potentially retaliatory conduct against Mr. Scott and Mr. Gower for com- plaining about his handling of the funds,” said to them appear to be repeated in Livny’s report without additional proof or corroboration, followed by Livny’s determi- nation that she believed the two but not Graham. Further, comments in Livny’s report attributed to former City Attorney James Van Dyke appear to suggest that officials judged Graham’s honesty based on whether he became “emotional” in discussing the case with former City Attorney James Van Dyke. “This investigator found it significant that Mr. Van Dyke reported that Mr. Scott and Mr. Goward appeared very credible to him when they first reported the conversations – e.g. they were upset and very troubled when they recalled the events,” the city’s investi- gator writes. “Mr. Van Dyke recalled thinking that if Mr. Graham truly thought Mr. Scott and Mr. Goward were lying, a more natural response would have been anger, not commendation. “We agree with Mr. Van Dyke’s assess- ment,” Livny concluded. Ultimately, Livny’s report discounts Gra- ham’s stated concern that he was being made a victim of racial harassment at the hands of white administrators. City of Portland’s Human Resources Director Anna Kanwit did her own investi- gation in late 2013, issuing a confidential memo to current Mayor Charlie Hales find- ing that Smith – with the certain knowledge of Gower — did an even bigger funds trans- fer in May of 2011, moving more than $500,000 from the Facilities reserve fund into the General Fund to pay part of the cost of the Portland Police Bureau’s new training facility at the Kelly Building. It’s unclear whether Graham’s predeces- sor, former Chief Administrative Officer Ken Rust, spoke out against or knew about that transfer at the time. Kanwit’s memo, obtained by The Skanner News, shows she is critical of Livny’s efforts in the case. Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com April 23, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3
