Isaac Laquedem

The CRC replacement bridge collapses before it's even built

The Washington legislature adjourned without passing a transportation funding bill, meaning that our northern neighbors declined the invitation to chip in $450 million toward the Columbia River Crossing Freeway/Bridge/Light Rail project.  Today Governor Kitzhaber acknowledged that without that funding, the CRC project is dead, and stated that the planning effort will be shut down.

It's time for the proponents of light rail to accept reality: because of the preexisting needs of river commerce, the only ways that Portland's light rail system can be extended across the Columbia River are (1) through a tunnel, (2) over a drawbridge, or (3) over a high fixed bridge in east Multnomah County.  The Yellow Line isn't going to run to downtown Vancouver while the Columbia River is still serving oceangoing commerce at Vancouver.

The fun part will be watching the blame game begin on Monday, as disappointed contractors and consultants point fingers at the people who cost them $4 billion of mostly federal money.  Their fingers should point at Portland City Hall.

Portland insisted that the replacement bridge include light rail.  The technical limitations of light rail mean that a fixed-span bridge can't be built high enough at Hayden Island to accommodate existing river traffic.  That conflict, and the hundreds of millions carelessly spent on planning an inadequate bridge, doomed the project.  Without the light rail albatross, the Interstate Bridges could easily have been replaced for $500 million for new bridges and another $500 million for access improvements.

On to the next project!  Isaac predicts that the collapse of the CRC effort will result in Portland and TriMet redoubling their push to construct light rail to Sherwood along Barbur Boulevard and Pacific Highway.  We have a lot of people who need to be kept busy.

Isaac dissects one of the Supreme Court's decisions on same-sex marriage

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued its decisions in two cases connected with same-sex marriage, one involving a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (the Clinton administration's law that defined marriage, for all federal purposes, as between one man and one woman), and the other involving California's Proposition 8, a voter-approved initiative that defined marriage in California as between one man and one woman.  The results of both cases will go down as landmarks, but the opinions themselves suggest that the Justices would benefit from some graduate courses in constitutional law and legal writing.

The first case, United States v. Windsor (opinion here, in PDF), is a tax case.  Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, both women and residents of New York, were married in Ontario, Canada in 2007, where same-sex marriage was legal.  Ms. Spyer died in 2009 and left her entire estate to Ms. Windsor.  Legacies to spouses are exempt from federal estate tax.  Ms. Windsor paid $363,053 of estate tax and then sued for a refund, asserting that as Ms. Spyer's surviving spouse, the gift to her was exempt from the federal estate tax.  The IRS asserted that under Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, Ms. Windsor had not been married to Ms. Spyer within the meaning of the estate tax laws, even if New York considered them to have been married.  A trial court held Section 3 unconstitutional and ordered a refund.  The United States appealed, sort of, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the District Court.  The United States appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, sort of (I say "sort of" because in its appeal the United States asked the Supreme Court not to reverse the Second Circuit, but to affirm the decision and hold that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional.)

In his opinion for the Windsor majority, Justice Kennedy gives a good analysis of whether the Court can hear the case at all: is there a real case or controversy if the United States and Ms. Windsor are advocating the same position?  When he gets to the merits of the case, he wanders afield from the legal principles, and loses track of time.  For instance, he describes New York's marriage law as follows:

By its recognition of the validity of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions and then by authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond. For same-sex couples whowished to be married, the State acted to give their lawful conduct a lawful status.  This status is a far-reaching legal acknowledgment of the intimate relationship between two people, a relationship deemed by the State worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages.

Justice Kennedy then continues:

DOMA seeks to injure the very class New York seeks to protect.  By doing so it violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. * * * The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States.

Justice Kennedy recognized earlier in his opinion, but forgot it here, that Congress passed DOMA before New York or any other state permitted same-sex marriage.  That is, using his reasoning, DOMA sought to injure a class that didn't yet exist.

I predict that legal scholars will mostly celebrate the result of the Windsor case even as they tactfully gloss over the argument the Court used to get to that result.  What saves Justice Kennedy's opinion from being considered bad (as a piece of legal writing) is that Justice Scalia's dissent is even worse.  I'll have more to say about that in another post.

Let's face it: Washington doesn't care much about the CRC

I missed a lot of news in the last two weeks, including the Washington legislature defeating a transportation bill that would have provided the Evergreen State's $450 million share of the cost of the Columbia River Crossing project.  Richard Read's article in the Oregonian (here) includes one sentence that Oregonians should take to heart.  It's this one, eight paragraphs into the story:  "Despite its $3.4 billion total price tag, the CRC is a relatively minor item in the current debate for most Washington House members, who concentrated Wednesday on the package that would raise state gas prices by 10.5 cents per gallon."  This is significant for two reasons.

First, important as the Portland-Vancouver bridges may be for Portlanders, they aren't much on the minds of Washington's legislature.  I doubt they collectively pay more attention to the Interstate Bridges than we here in Portland do to the I-84 bridges over the Snake River that provide the vital link between Malheur County and Idaho.

Second is that the debate that Mr. Read describes is one of the few instances in which the debate about the project is tied not just to the project's cost, but to who is going to pay for it, and how.  People are a lot more enthusiastic about projects that they don't have to pay for themselves.

Venerable Mom asks for help on a math test

Though advanced age has made her eyesight mostly theoretical, Venerable Mom still maintains a lively interest in the affairs of the day, and we talk every week or so about something that's caught her roving mind.  Her question of a few days ago was off her regular pattern: she called to ask me how to count backward from 100 by sevens.  "100, 93, 86, 79, 72," I said, continuing until she insisted that I stop.  "No, no," she said, "I don't need to know the numbers, I want to know how to do it quickly."  I said, "Imagine that you're looking at a number line that shows all the numbers from 1 to 100 (my fourth-grade classroom had one).  Then start at 100 and move 7 places to the left and call out the numbers as you go."

"That won't work," VM told me, "you know I can't see a thing."  "No, Mother," I replied, "you don't have to see it; you just have to imagine it."  She rejected the idea, and also quickly rejected arranging 100 dots in a 10-by-10 array and visualizing 7 dots at a time being removed.

"By the way, Mother," I asked, "why do you need to count backward by sevens?"  She told me that it's part of the mental test that her physician gives her to see if her mind is functioning properly, and she wants to be able to score well.  "I can't believe this, Mom," I told her.  "You're asking me to help you cheat on a senility test?"

After a fit of laughter, she replied, "Well, that shows I haven't lost my mind yet."

 

Leon Bullier hits a bridge twice and becomes an officer

Leon Bullier (1895-1971) was one of the first to waterski on Oswego Lake, in the late 1930s.  He was a lively and daring man who treated with insouciance the boating rules enacted and enforced by the Lake Oswego Corporation, owner of the private lake.  One fine day he was towing his daughter, who was waterskiing, when he decided to run his boat under a low and narrow bridge, in violation of the corporation's safety rules.  His aim was less than true and the boat bounced off first one and then the other side of the bridge.  His daughter avoided hitting the bridge only by some fast and clever footwork.

It was not possible to hit a bridge twice in one passage and not have the corporation take notice.  Rather than fine Mr. Bullier or suspend his boating privileges, someone on the corporation's board had a better idea.  The board appointed Leon Bullier the boating safety officer, and put him in charge of seeing that everyone on the lake, himself included, would follow the rules.  For much the same reason, Mrs. Laquedem reminded me, Franklin Roosevelt appointed Joseph P. Kennedy to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A local business tries to sell the Laquedemitasse an early Father's Day present

I'm mostly over my irritation at the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) inviting me to join that fine group more than two decades before I expect to retire, and of occasionally qualifying for "senior citizen" or "honored guest" discounts at restaurants.  American businesses often look for younger markets.  Still, one business, I thought, has overshot the mark:  yesterday the Laquedemitasse, not yet old enough to obtain a driver's license, received a solicitation from Neptune Cremation Service of Northeast Portland, inviting him to "plan for a dignified resting place to memorialize [his] loved ones," and to enter a drawing to win one free cremation.

Much as I would appreciate the sentiment that the gift would carry, I will be just as happy if tomorrow morning he presents me with a tie.

One part of the government that believes your mail should be private

The National Security Administration sweeps up everyone's phone logs

I hadn't thought that the Obama Administration would take so literally my desire that it listen to a broader section of America than the privileged few who had President Bush's attention.

Should the Planning Bureau ask compound questions in a land use survey and oppose building a freeway through Alameda?

As state law requires it to do every five years, the City of Portland is updating its comprehensive plan, the document that sets out in broad terms what land uses the City will allow, and where, and on what  conditions.  (The zoning ordinance, which by law must be consistent with the comprehensive plan, provides more specific day-to-day rules.)

As part of this process, the Planning Bureau solicits public comment, both through traditional means such as open houses and mailed questionnaires and through modern methods, including e-newsletters, online surveys, and the Bureau's Facebook page.  One of the Bureau's surveys ran through May 1, and the Bureau told the good citizens that their answers would "help refine and amend many of the goals and policies in the Working Draft Part 1 of the Comprehensive Plan" and "help staff answer some critical questions around infrastructure investments, watershed health, industrial land development and housing choices."

The survey was composed by people knowledgeable about planning, but not so much about surveys.  One responder noted that almost all of the questions were compound questions that combined two questions into one, so that you could answer "yes" to both parts, or "no" to both parts, but not "yes" to one and "no" to the other.  (An example of a compound question, not from the survey: "Do you support protecting social security for the elderly and instituting the death penalty for jaywalkers?"  The title of this post is another example.)  For example, one of the survey questions asked if you want to "promote 'ecologically friendly' industrial sites through monetary incentives and technical assistance."   I couldn't answer that question; I favor promoting environmentally friendly industrial sites through technical assistance (providing knowledge) and not through monetary incentives (paying people not to mess up the City).  Yet I would have to support both or neither. 

Another question asked if the City should "subsidize the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields."  These are two different things: the first part asks if the City should pay for part of the cost to clean up old industrial sites; the second part asks if the City should pay people to build new projects on the cleaned-up sites.  I might support the City paying part of the cost to clean up someone's environmental mess, in collaboration with DEQ and EPA and then pursuing the responsible party to repay the cost, but be less excited about the City subsidizing a project on private land, whether clean or dirty, under the benign if mistaken belief that the City is a real estate developer.

The Bureau says that it will release the results this month.  The results will be interesting, not so much for the answers as for the questions.  Also interesting will be learning whether the Bureau hired an outside consultant to write the rather sloppy questions.  For the record, I favor protecting Venerable Mom's social security and I oppose the death penalty for jaywalkers.

A troublesome air passenger is denied bail, with a double meaning

I can't be the only one who noted the story about Alexander Herrera, the Alaska Airlines passenger who was charged with trying to open an emergency exit door on the plane on May 27 while it was still in flight 10,000 feet above ground, not so much for the incident itself, but for what happened the next day when he was brought before federal magistrate Janice Stewart for a bail hearing.  Judge Stewart denied bail to Mr. Herrera because he has no ties to Oregon and might not show up for trial here.  The published reports I've read don't say whether Judge Stewart called Mr. Herrera, in both senses of the term, a "flight risk."