Portland Mayor Sam Adams’ staff gets the best end of the deal with salaries from bureaus.
Many Adams staff members get paid through city bureaus at a time when those bureaus are making large cuts. Is this OK or should it stop?
This practice of creating “interagency” positions for people who work directly under the mayor but get their paycheck from a bureau is not new. Former Mayor Tom Potter was paying the equivalent of five and a half of his 24 staffers with bureau money when he left office in 2008.
In Adams’ first year as mayor, however, the practice has proliferated. In the upcoming budget, bureaus will cover $628,000 in salaries and benefits for mayoral staffers, compared to $431,000 from bureaus during Potter’s last full fiscal year and $521,000 in 2006-07 when his “interagency” budget was at its highest.
Read the full story in the Willamette Week.
