Sand in the gears

I see that Jesse "Moonlight" Beason, the unelected Multnomah County commissioner handpicked by Sushi Jayapal when she ran off to get her butt kicked in the race for Congress, is in the news again. No, this time he wasn't preaching about how more taxes will solve every problem. This time he derailed Commissioner Sharon Meieran's proposal that the county let its private ambulance contractor run the show, as it does just about everywhere else, with one paramedic and one emergency medical technician in each vehicle, rather than two paramedics. The county's insistence on two paramedics is slowing ambulance response times to a frightening degree. Ask any cop or firefighter.

Although there were several procedural gyrations at the county board meeting, what it basically came down to, once again, was that Meieran could get only one vote out of her four fellow commissioners for meaningful change. And so her proposal failed. Remaining in favor of the status quo were the hideous county chair, Jessica Chevy Vega, Beason, and the enigmatic Lori Stegmann from East County, who never gets mentioned when any of this goes down but who always votes with the chair.

I still can't get over Beason being on that board. As far as I can tell, he's still moonlighting from a $200K-plus-a-year job at a dark money outfit called Northwest Health Foundation. (According to diocuments filed with the IRS, his salary from that outfit was $219,772 in 2022.) The public didn't vote for him. Under the goofball county charter, he was selected by Jayapal and confirmed by the rest of the board. He took over for Sushi last November 1, and he won't be gone until after the next election on November 5. That's a full year plus of the guy. County commissioners currently get paid around $145,000 a year. 

There are three things wrong there: One, a commissioner leaving the board to run for some other office shouldn't get to name her successor. Two, when there's a vacancy on the commission, an election for a replacement should take place within 60 days, and whoever gets the most votes wins. No primary. And three, no county commissioner, elected or otherwise, should be holding down a six-figure full-time job on the side, especially not running a shadowy political organization.

Not that any of this would necessarily have made a difference on the ambulance vote. It appears that when Mr. Moonlight is finally shown the door, the seat he's warming will be taken by more of the same.

Anyway, Chevy Vega and the ambulance outfit have been in mediation over the staffing issue, but that reportedly ends today, and it's been such a wicked standoff, I suspect the yakety-yak behind closed doors is going nowhere. Supposedly we peons are going to hear more from Her Council Crestness tomorrow. What a fiasco.