The fallout continues over City Commissioner Dan Saltzman's failure to disclose a conflict before voting to give $600,000 to his girlfriend's charity last year ["'Ethical Breach'?" News, May 6]. One of Saltzman's rivals, Rudy Soto, filed a complaint with Attorney General John Kroger last Friday, May 7. Soto drew attention to Saltzman's introduction of his girlfriend, Liz Burns, at a recent City Club debate and in a Portland Tribune article. "If he can so readily highlight his relationship in order to secure votes," wrote Soto, "he should be prepared to do so when spending taxpayer dollars." Kroger's office said it didn't have the "legal authority" to investigate an alleged violation of the Portland City Code of Ethics. On Monday, May 10, another Saltzman rival, Jesse Cornett, said he would remove the "aspirational" language from the city's ethics code. He would "require the city auditor [to] enforce these rules in the future and levy fines when they are broken," he says. MATT DAVIS

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Fire investigators are sorting through the ashes of four mysterious arsons that lit up Southeast Portland on the night of Monday, May 10. Four apparently random cars, ranging from a pickup truck to a red Toyota Tercel were torched around Southeast. The Tercel was hit at about 4 am at SE 45th and Ivon, parked in front of Portlander Shannon Greenfield's house. "I stumbled out of bed and a woman at the door said, 'Is that your car out front? It's on fire!'" says Greenfield. "There were smoke and flames billowing out of the car. I don't know how they would have picked this car, it's just a crappy red car from the '80s." Tipsters can call the arson hotline at 503-823-3791. SARAH MIRK

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The new one-way NE Couch Street opened with fanfare last month. But now construction workers are back on the street fixing some dangerous problems with its bike facility. After a bike crash on NE Couch wound up with a cyclist being carted away in an ambulance two weeks ago, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance agreed with critics that the expensive and extensively planned street is not ready for bikes. City Transportation Director Sue Keil responded last Friday, May 7, saying city crews will make the bike lane wider where it connects to the Burnside Bridge, paint a buffer lane, and install bumps "to keep drivers from drifting out of their lane." SM