Back in the saddle

Raymond Lee, Portland's comical new city administrator, is back on the road again. City records show that through mid-April, he had already taken two "business" trips on the taxpayers' dime, in both cases to conferences at which he got to put "Portland, Oregon" on his name badge.

In March, he spent a few days in Philadelphia attending "Forum 2026," an event sponsored by an organization called National Forum for Black Public Administrators. In mid-April, Lee went to Dallas for a few days at the annual Transforming Local Government Conference put on by an outfit known as Alliance for Innovation. Both trips were approved by Mayor Keith Wilson.

Two trips in four months is nothing for Lee. When he was city manager in Greeley, Colorado – a gig that ended before he was named a finalist in Portland – he was racking up about a dozen of these trips a year. It's not clear whether to chalk up his slower travel pace in Portland to startup time on his new job, or to closer scrutiny here than he got in Colorado. He had to come back to Portland a day earlier than planned from Dallas. There was actual city business he was supposed to be attending to. 

That Dallas junket is interesting. Lee has just been named chair of the board of directors of the conference sponsor, the Alliance For Innovation, which is based in a Dallas suburb. This suggests that Lee will be making the round trip to Texas a regular thing. Which is convenient when you recall that he spent about a decade working in the Dallas city government and likely still has many social contacts there. I'm sure that if they called from Dallas City Hall and offered him better money than the princely $535,000-a-year compensation package he's getting in Portland, he'd be out of here faster than you can say Erik Sten.

What does the "alliance" do? It looks like an annual meeting or two where bureaucrats from around the country kick back and act important. There's an annual "vision council," and guys get up and sell Tony Robbins-type stuff like "Sustainovation." Lee, pied piper of the staff retreat and one of the most professionally coached people on the planet, is perfect for this.

Lee's new role as board chair for the Dallas-based nonprofit reminds me a little of Ivory Mathews, the erstwhile leader of Portland's troubled housing projects, whose employment in Portland terminated after she took too many trips and used too many bureau resources to run for board officer of something called the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. You wonder how much city time is going to be burned on Raymond's chairmanship of the "alliance." The organization appears to have a staff of just three people.

Oh, well. Wilson is a vocal promoter of all this. He said during the process of hiring Lee that he wants the city to shell out money for the guy's professional development. The mayor's quite supportive of the Portland taxpayers' sending the guy off to finishing school. But at age 41 or 42, you wonder how much more development is really possible.

At least Lee's apparently not living it up on a City Hall credit card, the way he did in Greeley. So far, the records that Portland has shown me (and funny thing, they didn't charge me anything to see them this time) indicate that he stayed at normal hotels, and his meals and incidentals were covered by a standard per diem. If he gorged on filet mignon, crab, and endless bacon, the way he did in his northern Colorado days, nowadays most of it would be on his own dime. And I think his $900-a-night stays at the Sofitel in D.C. are probably a thing of the past. Until he moves back to Dallas, anyway.