Maybe the IRS and FBI should be running the City that Works. The insider corruptocrats running the City of Portland sure couldn’t get done in ten years what the feds could in a couple of months. But this story with the headline “McCoy’s Rule Bending Earned Little Discipline” describes pathetically the extent to which the City just couldn’t bring itself to fire the son of a friend and a minority. 

Ellis McCoy is of course accused of getting cozy with a parking meter vendor, funneling the company contracts and then setting himself up with a job with the company on the side.

Public records released late Tuesday to The Oregonian show city officials conducted at least a half-dozen investigations of McCoy, twice gave him written reprimands, and in 2009 suspended him without pay for one week for an inappropriate relationship with a city vendor.

City officials had hot and cold running workers and citizens complaining–LOUDLY–about Ellis McCoy and despite suspensions for “an inappropriate relationship with a city vendor” –whoa didn’t see that one coming or anything–they couldn’t get his ossified butt outtathere. 

But even after McCoy’s boss, Sue Keil, reprimanded him she gave him raises (hey, why not, it’s not HER money or anything)!

But despite repeated problems documented over seven years, leaders kept McCoy in his job — with a most-recent salary of $117,686 — and frequently gave him raises and extra vacation time.

I love this line another boss put in McCoy’s file:

“I believe you have a tendency to be far too nuanced in your interpretation of the rules to support your choices as appropriate and reasonable,” she wrote.

Dang son, ‘nuance’ is the new ‘lying!’ You just can’t make this stuff up!

As former professional planner class member, Richard Carson, wrote on this blog (here):

I find the whole Ellis McCoy parking scam story amazing. What is amazing is that I think the city of Portland is one of the most corrupt and nepotistic city governments in America and the residents are too stupid to realize it. Ellis McCoy is a person who inherited his well-paid position by virtue of the power of his father and mother. It is that simple. He was part of the Portland institution of giving people jobs that don’t deserve it on merit. People are given jobs based on nepotism. 

That even after–what was it again?– six investigations, two written reprimands, suspension they couldn’t fire him. It took the feds looking over the shoulders of the dysfunctional bureaucrats to get rid of him. And then HE was the one who quit.

We’ve got more problems than Ellis McCoy at City Hall.