Alumni Notes

This blog has been in operation long enough that maybe it should have a "Where Are They Now?" column as a regular feature. I could try to track down one-time Oregon public figures who have fallen out of the limelight. I got this bright idea the other day when I read that Billy Williams, the ex-county counsel of Clackamas County, had lost his job and was planning to sue the county, saying he had been wrongfully fired.

Williams is reportedly accusing some county commissioners of intimidation and retaliation over his supposed push for an independent review into the hiring of Commissioner Ben West's father for a county maintenance job. Williams' lawyer has sent a letter naming Commissioners Ben West, Paul Savas, Diana Helm and Martha Schrader as possible defendants. Tom West is still on the county payroll, apparently.

Old Billy Bob is remembered quite well in Portland. He had been the U.S. attorney for Oregon during Trump 1.0, and he was steadfast in sticking up for the jackboot thugs that the White House sent to Portland to stomp on the George Floyd protesters. The federal "agents" were mean and incompetent, needlessly tear-gassing the heck out of everybody and even shooting a few people in the face with "less lethal" ammunition. One guy's life was ruined forever. There was Billy Bob on TV, telling us all that the militia weren't roaming the downtown streets looking for trouble, when everybody with a cell phone could plainly see that they were. Williams was commuting into Portland from Hood River at the time.

When Biden moved into the White House, Billy was out, and as I recall, he was in a private law firm in Bend for a while, but then Clackamas County hired him to be the interim county counsel, and then the permanent county counsel. Of course, many words have different meanings in Clackistani culture, including "permanent," and now Williams is out again. He lasted about a year and a half. At this point, he's around 70 years old, and so maybe this means retirement. But what the heck, he might as well try for a nice severance check on the way to the golf course.

Speaking of Covid-era comedians, the current chaos in the Oregon state health department got me wondering whatever happened to Patrick Allen. You remember him, the guy from the building permit office who somehow got elevated to run the health authority, in keeping with then-Governor Kate Brown's philosophy that state bureaucrats are completely interchangeable. Then Covid hit, and it was up to this motor pool manager to save everyone's lives. There were many mishaps along the way. It's a wonder a lot more people didn't perish. Meanwhile, fentanyl took over the streets of Portland, and the state did little or nothing to help the situation.

Anyway, Tina Kotek made a point of getting rid of Allen as soon as she took over as guv in 2023, and he landed on his feet in New Mexico, where remarkably, they made him head of the state health department once again. I lost track of him at that point, but now I see he didn't last two years in Santa Fe. The announcement of his departure was made on his last day in the office. No gold watch was presented.

It looks like it took him nearly a year to find another steady gig, but now he's surfaced as the IT director at something called the Montana State Fund. It looks like a workers' compensation insurance company of some kind. Oh boy, what could go wrong? Plus, now Allen's a tech expert. Plug and play, I guess.

You wonder whether he'll make it to retirement over there in Helena, or whether one more bounce is in his future. I think he's in his mid-60s.

Okay, readers, so much for this trip down memory lane. I feel like that guy Joe Franklin in the early days of New York TV. A blog for the old people! But if readers want to play "Where Are They Now?" with other luminaries of Portland-area governments past, nominatons are open. I'll do my best to track them down.