Botched housing application calls out for accountability in Clackamas County government

Botched housing application calls out for accountability in Clackamas County government
From the outset, it looked like a winner: Take a World War II-vintage housing complex and convert its 100 rundown public units to 283 new, energy-efficient homes for a mixed population of Clackamas County's needy and lower-income citizens. The $88 million project, known as Clackamas Heights, involved a thorough and fruitful community outreach as part of the planning and was to have snagged more than $21 million in federal grant funds to move it forward.
But U.S. officials had something terrible to report, The Oregonian's Yuxing Zheng found: The county's application for the grant was configured improperly, and so federal officials were withdrawing their consideration -- this following two years of groundwork and the expenditure by the county of about $600,000 in mostly federal money.

On the final application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Clackamas housing officials miscalculated the number of units that would be considered public. The federal formula required 118, but the application called for only 100.

One Clackamas housing administrator called the error "an oversight."

We'd call it a costly blunder for which there remains no administrative account.

No, the federal grant was not a dead-sure thing. But some county commissioners, Paul Savas among them, had thought it likely and were counting on it. And, no, the project isn't dead. The smart overhaul of a public asset in use can move forward with alternative streams of funding, but it will take more time. That's as some 2,700 Clackamas County citizens go homeless this holiday season, about 1,200 of them children.

The botched application represents government slippage of the kind that just won't do in a time of fewer and fewer social service dollars. The problems running beneath the Clackamas Heights setback, however, are both political and administrative.

Outgoing county Commissioner Ann Lininger, whose portfolio of county operations includes housing, learned of the faulty application and HUD's decision more than a year ago. Yet she remained pitched about it in an interview on Friday: "I'm mad about how this turned out. From the day I heard about this, I advocated to have a stronger (administrative) response.... I'm picky and demanding and think we can do better in government."

But nothing happened. Nothing changed at the Housing Authority of Clackamas County, authors of the error. That, to our mind, tarnishes government.

Sometimes, it's enough to say Oops! But in this case -- a longterm project with millions of dollars aimed at meeting an acute public need -- that or anything close to it is the wrong response. Citizens, meanwhile, and especially those withstanding the current three- or four-year wait for public housing in Clackamas County, would be right to sometimes doubt their concerns are met by true professionalism in government.

There is no shortage of people trying to do the right thing, in and out of Clackamas County government. But a new Clackamas County Commission holds its first session in January. And it should make as a top priority full accountability from the county government's many offices, all supported by tax dollars.

Clackamas Heights still can and should be a winner. So, too, can elected leaders who demand staff excellence and evidence of it.