Did Minnis sic EPA on Portland?

Wow, the Portland City Council is really becoming dogged at investigating those who appear to want to cost the city money. Yesterday's Oregonian fronted the story of Wednesday's meeting in which commissioners, particularly Erik Sten, challenged PGE officials to explain why they kept money charged to ratepayers as utility tax. The exchange got quite testy, as you can see if you watch the video of the meeting.

Today brings more news of a different sort of antagonism--the report in today's Portland Tribune suggesting that House Speaker Karen Minnis encouraged the federal EPA to seek punishment against Portland for its sewage runoff problems:

During the 2001 session of the Oregon Legislature, rural Republicans and agricultural interests, citing news reports of farmers getting fined for letting a relatively small amount of cow feces to reach rivers, started complaining that Portland was getting fined less for doing a lot worse. House Speaker Minnis sponsored a resolution that asked President Bush and Congress to fine Portland for its sewage overflows. The measure — House Joint Memorial 13 — passed the House in a fiercely partisan vote, over Democrats’ objections. According to documents obtained by Wyden, a Minnis aide faxed a copy of the draft resolution to the EPA on March 29, 2001.
   Because the measure was never approved by the state Senate, it had no more legal significance than a used tissue. Legally speaking, “it had no impact,” says lobbyist John DiLorenzo, who conducted research for backers of the resolution. “It was never adopted.”
    This distinction appears to have been lost on staff at the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice. Even though it failed in the state Senate, Ciannat Howett, a senior enforcement attorney at Regional 10, sent an e-mail to her colleagues on March 26, 2001, that said the resolution “provides a window of strong support by the Oregon Legislature for EPA action against Portland for its CSO violations.”

Minnis aides both deny that her fax was the impetus for federal action, and call Commissioner Sam Adams "desperate" for "trying to pin Portland's environmental problems on the Speaker..."
Of course what he's actually doing is pinning the problem of being prosecuted on Minnis, for environmental problems the City is actively engaged in addressing.

There is background in the story to the effect that the EPA had asked its field offices to suggest cities with water runoff problems, and that region HQ in Seattle had reported Portland as one of those cities. But it was not until the Minnis fax that wheels appeared to begin turning towards punishing the city for those problems. And while there is some dispute over what was said, it seems clear that at a minimum, Republican lawmakers from rural parts of the state were intent on seeking punishment for the city as some kind of payback for infractions their own constituents had been noted for.

Minnis clearly knew that Portland was fully underway in its efforts to stem sewage runoff, and her ubsubtle statement to the feds of Republican support for action against the city suggests a partisan, rather than environmental, motive. Thankfully it appears that after intense lobbying by Council, EPA is now willing to extend deadlines for remediation, past the point at which the Big Pipe is scheduled to be finished.

Problem or not, there's simply something entirely unseemly about Minnis trying to get the EPA to force penalties on the largest city that she supposedly represents, or to encourage one part of the state to antagonize another as political payback. Throw another arrow in the quiver being assembled to unseat Minnis in next fall.

--TJ

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

God, I hate that woman.