Update on the Portland City Hall mega-boner

I see some new details are trickling out about the $1.4 million that the City of Portland mistakenly sent to the wrong place back in April and has now apparently lost forever. And is it any surprise? The cash was supposed to be flowing to one of the nonprofit organizations in the homeless industrial complex.

It was Central City Concern, which in my limited experience is one of the better nonprofits at which City Hall sprays tax dollars. As I have understood it, CCC specializes in helping people who have shown some signs of being willing and able to clean up their acts and help themselves. It also used to run the "Chiers bus" that scooped up the inebriated street folks and drove them to a detox center, but I believe that operation is long gone.

According to OPB, the CCC types put in their customary order for a seven-figure tapper, to go toward construction of some monstrous apartment bunker they're building in Old Town, but when the city hit "send," the do-re-mi myseriously disappeared.

Anyway, as you sit and stew about the careless loss of $1.4 million in the swindle, think of it this way: There's probably way more than $1.4 million that goes out from the city in any given year to nonprofits that get nothing done but pay their "founders'" rent. And so in the larger scheme of things, the wire fraud scandal may not be so major.

But wow, what a résumé item for these people:

• Tom Rinehart, Chief Administrative Officer 
• Michelle Kirby, Chief Financial Officer
• Brigid O’Callaghan, City Treasurer 
• Mary Hull Caballero, City Auditor
• Robert L. Taylor, City Attorney

They need Indeed.

Meanwhile, for those of you who need some lottery numbers for the weekend, the exact amount stolen was $1,468,775.59.

And you have to suspect there's more.  

City leaders also have yet to say whether the breach was limited to just one payment or if there could be more money missing. A city spokesperson said an employee within the city’s housing bureau noticed the second attempt to reroute city money before it left the city’s coffers, though they were not clear what got that second payment flagged.

I'm sure we'll hear eventually whether heads are going to roll. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for accountability. Remember, it's Portland City Hall.