Debbie does derogation

Here's a funny one. Remember Deborah Kafoury? How can we forget? She was the Multnomah County commission chair during Covid, and it's a wonder we all survived. For a while I was calling her Deadly Deborah. And she's a member of the Kafoury clan, which always has one or more members on the public payroll in Portland, the higher up the better. Hence, I sometimes refer to her as The Latest Kafoury, although I'm sure a younger generation of Kafoury politicians is on the way.

Anyway, these days Deborah's the "chief of staff" to the embattled superintendent of the Portland Public Schools. Given all the turmoil in the school administration, it's probably a stressful gig, but at $219,000 a year or more, Kafoury can probably handle it.

Okay, I promised you a funny part. Last week, at a long school board meeting, it appears that Deborah was texting with a honcho from Procedeo, the Texas company whose contract is causing a lot of trouble for the school district, reportedly including a criminal investigation. The board has handed over management of its enormous pork barrel of construction projects to that private firm, so much so that it's giving the usually sleepy auditors gray hair and acid indigestion.

During the meeting, Deborah texted the Procedeo executive, apparently someone named Sarah Norman, to express an opinion of Stephanie Engelsman, an elected member of the school board who has dared to question the Procedeo deal from time to time. Deadly Deborah called Engelsman, as the milquetoasts at the Oregonian might describe it, "a word often used as a synonym for an anal sphincter."

Somebody else at the meeting was taking photos, and they came up with one that reportedly showed what was on the screen of Norman's phone. Now the screen sniping has been made public. Tsk, tsk.

Max Steele, the über-blogger who recently exposed Mitch Green's infamous Tweets of Cop Hatred, has the full lowdown on the Deborah denunciation here. As Steele points out, the real story is not the word Kafoury used. It's the outrageous Procedeo contract, and how nasty a division it has caused. The whole situation is more sad than funny. You wish the U.S. attorney or the county D.A. would take a look at it. Sometimes I doubt that the state Justice Department can be trusted to turn over all the rocks.