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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (May 28, 2014)
News Scroggins continued from page 1 with her.” Poet Emmett Wheatfall, whose jazz/spo- ken word recording “Them Poetry Blues” is receiving airplay around the nation, linked his collaboration with Scroggins on Spotify, called, “Janice Scroggins and Her 88 Keys.” On his Facebook page, he wrote, “Portland suffers the loss of a gift from God.” a go-to session musician regionally – she could literally jam with anyone, from Obo Addy to Akbar DePriest and the all-female blues reviews she graced for decades. Scroggins prized the four stars she was awarded by Downbeat Magazine for her 1994 recording with jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris, “Vexatious Progressions.” Three of Born in 1955 in Idabel, Okla., Scroggins learned piano from her mother and grand- mother as a toddler, and started performing at the age of three. She moved to Oakland, Calif., as a teen, attending high school and community college there before moving with her daughter, Arietta Ward, to Portland in 1979. A Grammy nominee for her 1987 record- ing “Janice Scroggins Plays Scott Joplin,” the artist was inducted to the Cascade Blues Association Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame last year. Her professionalism and experience, cou- pled with her unique style, made Scroggins her original songs appeared on Akbar DePriest’s 1996 CD “Central Avenue Roots.” She is widely remembered for her jazz duos with Reggie Houston; her gospel, blues and jazz music performances with Linda Hornbuckle; her session recordings with Harris and DePriest; and her perform- ances with Ten Grands, the annual benefit series created by Michael Allen Harrison to raise funds for music education. She is survived by her daughters, gifted musicians and vocalists Arietta Ward and Nafisaria Scroggins-Thomas. PHOTO BY HELEN SILVIS ‘Portland suffers the loss of a gift from God’ Janice Scroggins performed at the 50th Aniversary of the March on Washington —Portland in August 2013. Wright continued from page 1 Edelman says. “The biggest threat to America’s econom- ic, military and national security does not come from any outside enemy,” she says. “It comes from our failure to invest in and educate our children.” The Children’s Defense Fund’s latest report, The State of America’s Children 2014, (using statistics from the U.S. Census 2010 American Community Survey) show that of America’s 73.9 million children, more than 16.4 million are poor. And 7.4 million of them live in extreme poverty, with children under five worst affected. Edelman says the statistics make a mockery of The American Dream. The dream itself –a lofty vision of human rights –is a noble and worthy dream, she says. But resource- starved families have been locked out. “We’ve made huge progress, but we did- ‘The biggest threat to America’s economic, military and national security does not come from any outside enemy, it comes from our failure to invest in and educate our children’ n’t put the economic underpinnings beneath the political and civil rights,” she says. “We have this incredible income inequal- ity –taking from the bottom and the middle to give to the top –and our Congress seems to absolutely have no sense that they should stop. In recent weeks, with the Ryan budg- et and the Ways and Means Committee, they have just extended corporate tax cuts to the tune of $310 billion…giving again to the top. And at the same time they voted against a $12 Million foster care bill giving children identification and the paperwork they need to succeed as adults. “What Kind of country does that?” In the Ryan budget, Edelman points out, more than two-thirds of the cuts come from programs that help poor families, such as: the food program SNAP, Medicaid, school lunch programs, tax credits and childcare assistance for low-income workers. These programs are not without some possible recovery,” where it remains. In the beginning, Kraft wrote letters to former Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who led the Water Bureau; then former Mayor Sam Adams, and every mem- ber of the Portland City Council. They told her there was nothing they could do. Then she wrote the Multnomah County Commission, Gov. John Kitzhaber, mem- Law Firms Evolving into Collection Agencies flaws, Edelman says. No program is perfect. Yet in 2010 the federal Earned Income Tax Credit lifted 3.3 million children out of poverty, and the Child Tax Credit protected another 1.4 million children. Which is why she is hopping mad about the proposed cuts. “The country is really in crisis and noth- ing reflects it more than the fact that you can have members of this Congress voting to give to those who have most, and to cut safety net programs that work. “The last thing we should be doing is let- ting more children go hungry, letting more children go without healthcare; letting more children go homeless, when we’re giving to those at the top.” Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com HOA continued from page 1 city knocked the water debt down to $600,000 and placed $10-15,000 liens on every home in Snoozy’s to pay it off; the city added the cost of installing new water meters for each home, an upgraded sewer system and road improvements. Meanwhile, in their lawsuit, the HOA’s attorney argued that Kraft’s decision to stop paying her assessments was indefensible whether she received any services from her management company or not, because, under state law, “The Association need not Prove that it Provided Anything of Value to Defendant to Collect Assessments,” (sic). (This principle was also just upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court http://www.caion- line.org/about/press/Pages/IllinoisSupreme CourtRulesonUnpaidAssessments.aspx ) Even now, Kraft’s voices rises to a yell when she talks about it. “What do the assessments go towards? How can the HOA make all of us pay for the past unpaid water bill from before I even lived here? How do we know they are pay- ing it now?” In fact, Water Bureau officials last week confirmed to The Skanner News that in Sep- tember of 2012 the HOA’s past-due water bill was referred to a collection agency “for All homeowners association experts agree: Never, ever get behind on your assessments, no matter what. That’s because Oregon and Washington, like other states, allow HOA law firms to shift all their attorney fees to homeowners if the firm is involved in collecting on a lien. ‘I stood next to one young man, his association was after him for a $200 charge — and $70,000 in attorneys fees, $70,000’ bers of Congress and Oregon state legislators, and more recently to Mayor Charlie Hales. But almost everyone has given her the brush-off because, they say, they have no jurisdiction. Kraft’s experience is unfortunately typical of the nightmare faced by homeowners around the nation who fall behind in their HOA fees or, God forbid, decide to protest the management by refusing to pay. In Kraft’s case, legal documents show the law firm representing the HOA charged $100 and more for individual phone calls, $450 for a site visit to the HOA, and hun- dreds of dollars to send emails and conduct online searches. University of Chicago law professor Evan McKenzie, an HOA expert and author of “Privatopia: The Rise of Residential Private Government,” stresses that the law firms are not the bad guys – but the industry is evolv- ing with few brakes on the sky-high fees that firms can charge. In an interview last year, McKenzie described the efforts some states have launched to cap the financial devastation such legal fees can have on homeowners. “I just testified last week before the Mary- land State Senate, there’s a bill they’re considering right now to limit attorney fees in these cases because of the abuses,” McKenzie said. “I stood next to one young man, his asso- ciation was after him for a $200 charge — and $70,000 in attorneys fees,” McKenzie said. “$70,000.” An emerging trend in the industry is that many HOA law firms are themselves also collection agencies that offer their services to HOAs to recover their own fees that they imposed on homeowners, on the HOAs’ behalf. So the same firms that prosecute alleged deadbeat residents get unlimited ability to rack up legal charges in the lawsuit which they then act as the collections company to recover — racking up even more late charges. Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com May 28, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3
