Tonight I read Shane Dixon Kavanaugh’s piece titled “Portland mayor lambasts critics of Moda Center deal as county questions investment”. Worth the read - but here’s a quick synopsis:
Mayor Wilson sent out a letter doubling down on the city’s $120 million pledge and going after the councilors and critics who’ve raised concerns about the deal. Less than two hours later, Multnomah County held its first public hearing on its own $100 million-plus ask — and commissioners spent most of it asking a questions to nobody because Representatives from Dundon and the Blazers couldn’t be bothered to show up. It’s NBA lottery night after all!
Preamble before my reaction: I want the Blazers to stay. I’m willing to support spending public money to make that happen. But the price tag is closing in on a billion dollars, for a team a ne’er-do-well billionaire just bought for $4.25 billion, and three things from Tuesday tell me the people pushing this deal don’t think it can survive public scrutiny.
1. Dundon is treating elected officials as an obstacle to manage, not a partner to convince. He's headlining the Chamber event the day after skipping the county meeting where actual accountability questions were on the table. That's not a scheduling accident — it's a strategy of applying donor-class pressure on commissioners rather than answering Singleton's, Moyer’s and Brim-Edwards' direct questions. You don't avoid the room with the hard questions if you think your case can survive them.
2. The information asymmetry is the real scandal, not Krolewicz’s presence. The only published numbers on this nearly billion-dollar deal come from a volunteer with no government access, while the city, county, state and team — the parties with the actual financial models — have offered nothing comparable. Wilson’s energy should go into rebutting Krolewicz’s analysis if it’s wrong, not attacking him for filling a vacuum nobody else would fill.
3. Personal attacks on a critic are a tell, not a rebuttal. When an elected official with a strong factual position gets challenged, the move is to show the math. Wilson reaching for “Brooklyn-based tech bro” instead of “here’s why his numbers are wrong” suggests he doesn’t have a confident answer to the substance — and it’s beneath the office regardless.
Here’s where I land: if the case for this deal is good, somebody please make it, with numbers, in public, to the people asking. Sell it. Show us what we’re missing. Lead - don’t lash out at people who are honestly skeptical or who are asking the same questions we would expect of them for any deal of this magnitude.
(Source: Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, The Oregonian, “Portland mayor lambasts critics of Moda Center deal as county questions investment.”)
