City of Portland Admits Hiding Documents in Water Rate Payer Lawsuit

June 15, 2012

SHARE

The Portland Tribune is reporting that City of Portland officials admit to hiding, stalling, stonewalling the turning over of documents in the lawsuit against the City Water Bureau.

What are they hiding?

What they did with our money.

“This shows how political and disingenuous the city’s approach to the water and sewer controversy has become,” says John DiLorenzo, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit. “The city owes it to its ratepayers to admit that it has made many non-mission expenditures, to take responsibility, and to then move forward.”

DiLorenzo is fighting to find out what the Water Bureau spent tax dollars on that were outside the scope of the Water Bureau.  

But the City is fighting handing over documents on Water Bureau expenditures because it smells of a ‘fishing expedition’ on the part of the group fighting on behalf of rate payers. On Monday the City and the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, including DiLorenzo, were in court. The Tribune (here) reports the City doesn’t want to comply with discovery requests for spending documents. Another hearing on the lawsuit over Water Bureau spending is set for today.

DiLorenzo alleges the Water Bureau misspent taxpayers’ money on, among other things:

  • WATER BUREAU CONTRIBUTIONS TO PUBLIC CAMPAIGN FINANCING
  • PORTLAND LOO PROJECT
  • RENOVATION OF YEON BUILDING, CURRNTLY LEASED BY ROSE
  • CONSTRUCTION OF WATER HOUSE
  • HYDRO PARKS
  • DODGE PARK IMPROVEMENTS
    FESTIVAL FOUNDATION
  • POWELL BUTTE II DEVELOPMENT
  • ONE PERCENT FOR GREEN STREETS
  • FOUNTAINS

 
See my previous posts about the Water Bureau problems here,  here, here, here, for starters.

As Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, tweeted out this morning:
@McConnellPress: McConnell: “if disclosure is forced upon some but not all, it’s not an act of good government, it’s a political weapon”

Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com