Mr. Linchpin is back

I see that Steve Stadum is going to be the interim president at the Oregon state med school, OHSU. Yeah, that Steve Stadum. The guy who was the chief operating officer up there in the 2000s, back when they were selling the wretched SoWhat District and the aerial tram [rim shot] to Vera Katz and the dolts on the Portland City Council. The lie that was told at the time was that the gondola was a $15 million project. It wound up being about four times that.

According to Stadum, the tram was the "linchpin" for the entire future economy of the state. And if he and then-president Peter Kohler didn't get it, they were packing up and moving OHSU to Hillsboro. 

And that wasn't all. OHSU built a fancy health club complex, which as I recall, was a bit of a scandal; and then they sent their biotech research jobs to Florida. Such sweet guys.

Once the tram deal reached the too-late-to-turn-back-now stage, Stadum left to run one cancer institute, then another. He retired, but now he's back, no doubt to ram through the merger of OHSU with the Legacy health system. It will probably wreck both institutions.

The distress caused by the return of Mr. Linchpin is heightened by the fact that he's been installed by the governor, who essentially vetoed the decision that had been made by the board of directors to name an inside candidate, Nate Selden, the next president. I thought that board was supposed to be independent, but this being Oregon and that being OHSU, apparently the decisions must be dictated by a single boss – as they certainly were when Neil Goldschmidt ran the place not so long ago.

Meanwhile, on goes a search for a new president. The last one produced a dud, and a really expensive one at that. I wish I could say I expect this one to fare better. In the meantime, watch your wallet.