The mayor’s office has postponed item 289—Thursday’s hearing on the report about the Independent Police Review—sending out a memo yesterday postponing it until March.

“The mayor’s office wanted to give Commissioner Leonard the opportunity to engage in the discussion because certainly a number of ideas are floating around on this,” says Ty Kovatch, Leonard’s chief of staff.

Leonard has been critical of the report, and is proposing that the mayor take responsibility for the shortcomings of the police review process, instead of scapegoating the city auditor, Gary Blackmer.

But the mayor’s office denies Leonard is the reason for the postponement. It says the hearing is moving because it’s budget season, and a work session was planned at some point following the hearing [it hadn’t been scheduled yet], but that it decided to combine the hearing and the work session into one council session.

“Certainly [Leonard]’s been very active in the discussion,” says Maria Rubio, the mayor’s public safety and policy manager. “I think the more commissioners we can get the better, but [the postponement] was mostly to combine the hearing and a work session into one session.”

By turning the council hearing into a “work session,” there won’t be an opportunity for public testimony. That has cop oversight activists hopping mad.

“We’re not taking this lying down,” says Portland Copwatch activist Dan Handelman. “We’ve already registered our complaints with the mayor’s office, and we’re hoping the hearing will be reinstated.”

“This only serves to reinforce the idea that the IPR is doing the public’s business out of the public eye. We’re hoping that the mayor’s office will reverse its decision by the end of the day.”

It’s also interesting that the mayor’s office is saying it hasn’t moved the session because of Leonard—here’s an email the mayor’s chief of staff sent around city hall yesterday:

From: Raglione, Austin
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 3:09 PM
To: City Elected Officials Exec’s
Cc: Douthit, Dan; Rhodes, Jessi
Subject: IPR Work Session

Dear Fellow Execs,

In order to have a more thorough discussion of the IPR Report, the Mayor would like to take it off this week’s Council calendar and schedule a Council work session for sometime in March. I need your approval to do this, (per Council Work Session scheduling rules!), so I can ask Jessi to work with the schedulers to get it on the calendar. I am hoping you all will agree; it allows us to have a forum for actual dialogue and gives Commissioner Leonard an opportunity to participate as he is out of town this week.

Tom has communicated this to the Auditor and he appears to be in agreement. Could you get back to me ASAP so we can get it pulled from the calendar and scheduled for a work session?

Thanks so much. Austin

Austin Raglione
Chief of Staff
Office of Mayor Tom Potter
503.823.4799