AT THE CAMPAIGN kick-off for Metro Council president
candidate Bob Stacey last week, a sign hanging above a table lined with
cake and cheese spelled out one of the key problems in the recently
launched race: “Metro? Where exactly is Metro?” Though the tri-county
agency has a $208 million budget and, arguably, pulls more strings
regionally than Portland City Hall, even the candidates for its top
position joke that the real fight in the race will be getting anyone
other than wonks to care about the agency.
Stacey and his competitor, current Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder,
have similar progressive credentials to run the agency, which sets the
region’s land-use and development policies. Both have worked for
decades on urban growth issues in Oregon. Both ride bikes. Both use the
word “sustainability” quite a bit.
But in Stacey’s kick-off (doubling as his 60th birthday
party—an apparently successful idea to raise more campaign
contributions), the former executive director of environmental
nonprofit 1000 Friends of Oregon harped on the major issue he hopes
differentiates him from Burkholder: the $4.2 billion Columbia River
Crossing Bridge.
“We can continue to pretend that the emperor has $4.2 billion or we
can say no to the bridge, restart the process, and come up with
something better,” said Stacey, to applause. While Stacey was one of
the first civic leaders to come out swinging against the 12-lane
bridge, Burkholder voted with the rest of Metro Council to support the
bridge project last year. Stacey told his supporters that he would push
Metro to rescind its support of the expensive project.
Burkholder says that painting him as the “pro-bridge candidate” is
unfair. “My consistent position is that we need to support something we
can afford,” says Burkholder. He supports cutting down the project,
including the number of lanes, to bring down the project costs, but
says going back to the drawing board would be wasteful. “That would
mean throwing away $80 million of work. That’s stupid,” says
Burkholder.
Both candidates have lined up some impressive supporters. Stacey has
raised $32,844 so far, thanks in part to high-profile support from
people like former Governor Barbara Roberts, who stood front and center
at the kick-off party last week while politicos like Steve Novick and
Oregon House Majority Leader Mary Nolan snacked on figs and garlic
cheddar cheese in the crowd. Meanwhile, Burkholder has snagged
endorsements from Mayor Sam Adams and City Commissioners Nick Fish and
Randy Leonard. His war chest is at $44,210 before having even
officially begun his campaign.
If he doesn’t win the president seat in the May 2010 election,
Burkholder says he might start looking for another job. “I’ve been
doing this for a pretty long time for pretty low pay,” he says.
What does a Metro councilor get paid? And what was Rex’s job before this?
It is like $20k a year. It is supposedly considered a part time job, except that all the meetings are in the middle of the day, so it isn’t like you could have another regular job and do it too. (A lot of low paid elected positions like this have meetings at night so that the people can work during the day, but Metro doesn’t…)
I think he was a school teacher, or at least I thought I remember reading that somewhere. But I believe his wife is fairly wealthy, so the wage actually isn’t a big deal to him and I don’t know why he brought it up.
Rex’s pre-Metro work included co-founding the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and serving as an environmental educator.
I had a chance to work with Rex in 2000 during the first anti-takings campaign (Measure 7). We spent the summer traveling the state enlisting coalition members and donors against the costly and unnecessary anti-regulatory measure.
Councilors are paid 1/3 of an Oregon Circuit Court judge – so about $38,000. President is paid equal to that judge – $111,000.
I went to the Bus project debate that Rex “moderated”. I told him afterwards that supporting the bridge was going to come back and bite him big time, looks like we are about to find out. He can backpedal all he wants but he was for the 12 lane CRC before he was against the 12 lane CRC…
I am writing to correct an error in this blog entry.
Not all of the Metro Council voted to support the current form of the proposed Columbia River Crossing. I have consistently and strongly opposed the mega-bridge proposal since the beginning of my service on Metro.
In the critical vote in July 2008, Councilor Hosticka and I voted for an alternative to the mega-project while the remaining five councilors, including Coucilor Burkholder, endorsed the mega-bridge proposal.
Robert Liberty, Metro Councilor
Finally, The Mercury has a fairly decent reporter. Thanks for your work, Sarah.
Burkholder will win because he has name recognition. Voters around here don’t know crap, which is why everyone at Metro and on the City Council are essentially the exact same person. It settles don’t to the same washed-out, lowest-common-denominator, namby pambies across the board.
“Green sustainable urban chickens drinking HUB beer are good! Here’s a photo of me doing the bridge race last year. Did I mention bikes? Vote for me!”
This town has gotten so unbelievably boring.
econoline: Right!
Blabby: Less so!
You might have a point about the boring.