Faxing it in

I see that Jesse Beason, the interim Multnomah County commission member, is finally admitting what everybody's known since he got the gig last November: that he can't really, with a straight face, be claiming to do the full-time job on the county board while he continues to hold down his full-time post as chief execuive of a big "dark money" political outfit.

And so, after 10 months of pulling everyone's leg, Beason has decided to cut back his remaining salary at the county to a part-time pay level: $32,000 on an annual basis instead of $144,000. He apparently makes about another $200,000-plus a year running the mysterious Northwest Health Foundation.

But Mr. Moonlight is not giving up his vote on the commission. Oh no, even though he can't do most of the work of a commissioner, he'll still be the full third vote for that hideous county chair, Jessica Chevy-Vega, along with the empty suit known as Lori Stegmann. This means that the two sensible commissioners, Sharon Meieran and Julia Brim-Edwards, will continue to be outvoted for another few months on everything that matters. (Then Meieran is term-limited off the commission.)

Beason was literally handpicked for the temporary county post by Sushi Jayapal, who stepped down from the commission last fall for her disastrous attempt to join her sister in Congress. The county's odd succession process has left us with Beason for what will be more than a year before a regular replacement is seated. We had a primary in May, and there will be a general election in November. Whoever wins will serve out the rest of Jayapal's term, which ends at the end of 2026.

Beason's shift to part-time pay makes you wonder whether he was doing merely part-time work all along. We're told here that he underwent surgery and was recuperating from it in June and July, while his sweet dual paychecks continued to roll in on schedule.

If Beason really wanted to do the right thing, he wouldn't have taken the county job to begin with. And if he's unsure now whether he can do the work, he should resign. But Chair Chevy-Vega needs his vote to continue her wacky agenda, and so he's sticking around. 

The county charter ought to be revised so that this sort of thing can't happen again. No one should be serving on the board, no matter how temporarily, if they're getting paid for full-time work elsewhere – especially if that elsewhere is a "dark money" political organization. And when a commissioner steps down, a single, most-votes-wins special election should be scheduled as quickly as possible to elect a successor. 

Meanwhile, I wish somebody besides me would poke around that Northwest Health Foundation outfit. It looks like an enormous can of very gnarly worms. For one thing, it funnels six figures a year to another mysterious organization down in Ashland, of all places. There's a strong odor. It's all quite strange.