Ain't no sunshine

With the Mudface Caligula outrage factory working overtime, it's hard to keep one's eye on anything else. But when I was able to fight my way through all the Trump noise and get to the local news this week, one thing kept jumping out at me.

Politicians and bureaucrats hate it when you get to watch what they do. They like operating in rooms, real and virtual, from which the public and the media are barred. And in this regard, the flaming liberal politicians are every bit as bad as the fascists. Oregon and Portland are prime examples.

We start with the governor, the Komet Ko(hou)tek. She's rightly worried about the fact that the Republican Party, in charge of the country at the moment, is perfectly willing to let poor people starve, or die of disease, so long as it lowers tax bills and furthers white supremacy. Impending cuts to Medicaid, coupled with the never-slowing inflation of medical care costs, are creating a crisis. 

So what does the guv do? Convene one of her famous task farc forces to advise her. And as is her wont, the planning is all going to be done in secret.

The folks at OPB (who know a thing or two about Republicans' letting things die) are all over this.

 Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has quietly chosen a group of health care executives, union representatives and care providers to advise her on how to tackle the looming budget crisis in the state’s Medicaid program.

The group met for the first time Nov. 5 and will meet every two weeks. Its recommendations are due to the governor no later than July 2026....

OPB learned of the Medicaid workgroup last week and asked to attend its first meeting. The governor’s office said the meetings are closed to the media and the public, citing an exemption in state open meetings law that allows some types of advisory groups to meet privately.

Kotek declined to explain why it was necessary for the group to meet privately....

The advisory group has 18 members, according to a roster provided by the governor’s office. They come from all over the state and represent major financial stakeholders in the Medicaid program, including hospitals, doctors, dentists and labor unions.

Coordinated care organizations, which are local networks of doctors and insurers that contract with the state to run Medicaid, have the most seats in the group, with five CCO executives participating.

Also at the table is the Oregon Latino Health Coalition, the nonprofit that helped advocate for state-funded coverage for people in the country without legal status.

One notable omission: apart from the Latino Health Coalition, no consumer, disability or patient advocacy groups were chosen to participate.

Not holding public meetings of a group like this is an appalling violation of the principle of open government. And it's not as though all the secrecy is going to improve the quality of the work product. When the governor assembled one of these blue-ribbon coffee klatches a couple of years ago to solve Portland's street problems, it wound up being a big fat dud. "Broadcast positive narratives and interesting stories in Central City on social media." Sure, that'll do it.

At the county level here in Portland, the tyrannical Multnomah County chair, Jessica "Chevy" Vega, is even bigger on the smoke-filled-room stuff. Public observation of most of her "work" is out of the question. Heck, even her fellow county commissioners are kept in the dark half the time about what she's up to. This bubbled up a few days ago in connection with a damning report that showed conclusively that Vega's stubborn, begrudging approach to treating the plague of hard street drugs has been not just a failure, but an enormously wasteful, expensive failure. The Weed explains:

Multnomah County commissioners were less than dazzled by the performance of the county’s drug deflection center during its first year of operation, which ended Aug. 31....

Multnomah County elected to open the the Pathway Center as a place for police to bring people they pick up on drug charges. During its first year of operations, officers brought violators to the center 606 times, the county said. Not counting repeat visitors, the center served 520 people. Using either figure, the number of visits works out to fewer than two a day for the year....

Brim-Edwards said outcomes could be improved if commissioners and the public could attend meetings where management of the center is discussed.

Among the commissioners, only Chair Jessica Vega Pederson attends those meetings, along with city officials and law enforcement leaders. The attendees, Vega Pederson said, are set by state statute.

“Doing it behind closed doors is a disservice to the county,” [commissioner Julia] Brim-Edwards said.

Vega Pederson held firm, calling for Brim-Edwards to stop interrupting her and vowing to continue deflection meetings without county commissioners or the public.

“That is the way we will continue to operate so we can continue to have frank discussions,” Vega Pederson said.

Chevy will be up for reelection in less than a year. Her opponent, whoever it is, could not possibly be worse for the job than she is.

But the real howler came the other day when it was revealed that the bi-state buffoon posse that spent $200 million "planning" a bridge into oblivion are up to their old stunts again. The recently revived Interstate Bridge Replacement crew is about to pay out $140 million of your money and mine to businesses who are supposedly going to be ruined because the bridge won't be high enough over the water. 

Oh, and the terms and conditions of this $140 million payout? Sorry, you can't see them. As OPB explains:

The bi-state effort to build a new bridge spanning the Columbia River reached a deal to pay four companies a combined $140 million, the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program announced Tuesday.

The agreement is part of the process to compensate businesses that could be affected by a new 116-foot, fixed-span bridge since the bridge height would impact marine vessel traffic traveling on the river....

“These agreements are really intended to focus on businesses that use the river and are trying to ensure that those jobs stay here locally, that they’re still able to be viable, and that we’re really ensuring that with the fixed bridge, they can stay in business,” said Frank Green, assistant program administrator for the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program.

The four Columbia River companies -- JT Marine, Advanced American, Thompson Metal Fab, and Greenberry Industrial -- are shipyards, industrial fabricators and marine contractors. The details of those agreements are protected by non-disclosure agreements, according to Green.

These people are whizzing on our shoes and remarking about the rain. I hope some bright young advocates grab hold of the public records laws and really throw the book at them. And if that doesn't work, I hope the media sink their teeth into the secrecy issue and don't let go until we see the fine print on those nine figures.

Wouldn't it be something if the companies got the $140 million, and the taxpayers still didn't get a bridge? Yes, it would be something – but certainly not a surprise.

So as you grind your teeth over the latest gaslighting from our nation's capital, keep in mind that the arrogance and shadiness are not only partisanship. Some of it comes with the job.