News
Scroggins
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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
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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
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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