Pound the normal people harder

Here we are, a city positively covered with crap graffiti, and one of our leading lights in government steps up to the microphone to address the problem. What's her answer? More cops? Stricter penalties for the taggers?

No. Of course not.

Her answer is to make life worse for the victims of the vandalism by making it easier for the city to hound them into cleaning up the mess.

City Commissioner Carmen Rubio plans to introduce an amendment to Portland city code this week making it easier to compel negligent private property owners to clean graffiti off their buildings.... Rubio’s change would let graffiti enforcers go to a code hearings officer instead of a judge, streamlining the enforcement process.

Sure, and your "hearings officer" will be some 20-something passive-aggressive know-nothing fresh out of Portland State planning class, or an arrogant lifer from the city attorney's office who couldn't care less what your problem is. It's the Portland Way®. Due process around here is limited.

For people like Chainsaw Rubio, the answer to every problem is to take it out on the regular Joes and Janes who are just trying to live. Not enough money to spend on "street diets" and bike toys? More vicious parking enforcement. Too much graffiti? Make the property owners pay up faster.

I'm looking around Portland, and the biggest offenders who do nothing to clean up the spray-paint blight on their property are government entities. I-5, I-405, the Vista Tunnel, the list goes on, all an absolute disgrace. But you are to do as they say, not as they do.

“I don’t need to tell Portlanders that the amount of graffiti throughout our city has increased exponentially over the last few years,” Rubio said in a statement. 

Correct! What you do need to tell them, Ms. Rubio, is what you have done to stop it. And that is, nothing. In fact, your performance as a city commissioner has made the problem worse.