Ewww that smell

The Oregon liquor board's "egregious"-ly bad Canby real estate deal has stunk to high heaven from the get-go. But the stench got a little stronger today with the news that contrary to all previous announcements and plans, the agency isn't going to build the Shangri-La office complex that it thought it was going to build. The screamingly overpriced farm real estate they bought will have a new warehouse, nothing more. Their offices are getting moved from southeast Portland to some prosaic state property in Salem. Oh, the humiliation!

“Our circumstances have changed since those initial conversations when you and your managers were asked to envision the OLCC’s new work place,” [interim CEO Craig] Prins wrote. “The bottom line is, we cannot afford to build an office-warehouse complex as it was originally planned and designed.”...

Now, according to OLCC spokesman Mark Pettiginger, the agency is pulling the plug on new office space in Canby. The economics the agency is looking at are compelling. OLCC estimates it would cost $19 million to build the new headquarters, compared to renting space from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services in Salem for about $250,000 a year.

“We have to plan to build what we can afford and have permission to spend,” Pettinger says. “And as good stewards of state funds, we have to think like the taxpayer and ask, why build HQ in Canby if space is available in Salem?”

Now somebody should ask whether they really need a new warehouse. For years now, the OLCC has seen its mission as getting people hooked on booze and expanding its empire. Maybe whoever pulled the plug on the offices – and it sounds to me like the governor – ought to kill the warehouse, too. 

If I were an ambitious young prosecutor, or an old prosecutor looking to go out with a bang, I'd be having a lot of fun with the OLCC boys right about now. I suspect Bourbongate isn't even the half of it.