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• BREAKING
NEWS
• GEO-LOCATING
BAR AND
RESTAURANT
REVIEWS
• CITYGUIDES
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PORTLAND’S POLICING OF AIRBNB? INTO THIN AIR.
An independent analysis of
Airbnb’s Portland hosts reveals
only 93 of 2,006 online rentals
in the city show they have a
city permit to operate legally.
That’s just 4.6 percent. The
city of Portland set a Feb. 20
deadline for Airbnb and other
sites to post hosts’ permit
numbers or face a $500 fi ne
for each violation. The dead-
line passed and the city is…
shrugging. City Revenue Bureau director Thomas Lannom says
he hopes companies will make “a good-faith eff ort” to follow
the rules. “What we’re looking for is that they are working
with us and trying to comply,” Lannom says. “If they appear
to be dragging their feet, that is when we can bring and will
bring penalties into play.” The analysis was done for WW by
insideairbnb.com, an interactive tool that compiles data taken
from Airbnb’s site, and was based on Portland’s permit data as
of Feb. 21—a day after the city’s deadline.
The Oregon Supreme Court on Feb. 20 dismissed all ethics
charges against two prominent Portland lawyers, Lois Rosen-
baum and Barnes Ellis, in one of the longest and most high-
profi le legal ethics cases in years. The Oregon State Bar had
accused Ellis and Rosenbaum of playing both sides of a same
case. The pair, then with Stoel Rives, represented FLIR Systems,
a Wilsonville high-tech fi rm, and company executives during a
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The
bar said Rosenbaum and Ellis improperly represented both
the company and employees when their clients’ interests were
at odds. The ethics case lasted nearly fi ve years and received
attention from The Oregonian and WW (“Crossing the Bar,”
WW, Nov. 21, 2012). The O fi rst reported the Supreme Court’s
76-page decision that all the ethics charges be dismissed—a big
loss for the state bar. Rosenbaum told WW in an email: “We
always believed, and the Court found, that our representation
was in all our clients’ best interests [and] involved no confl ict
of interest.”
Mark Callahan is back.
The otherwise obscure
Republican candidate
for U.S. Senate became
a right-wing hero in May
2014, when WW kicked
him out of a primary-
election endorsement
interview for interrupting
other candidates. Video
from
wweek.com—
replayed frequently on
CALLAHAN
Fox News—shows Calla-
han calling out WW reporter Nigel Jaquiss during the endorse-
ment interview for writing “blah blah blah” in his notebook while
another GOP candidate spoke. Callahan fi nished a distant third
in the primary, but seems ready to get back into politics. He’s
registered as a candidate for a seat on the Mt. Hood Community
College board of directors in this May’s elections. It’s an unpaid
position, and Callahan is currently unopposed. Asked by WW
if he had a second to comment on his new campaign, Callahan
said no. “I don’t have a second,” he said.
Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 25, 2015 wweek.com