State Senator Avel Gordly was hired by the Multnomah County Health Department to help engage the community in efforts on health related issues.

Multhomah County overcharged some late paying tax payers when assessing penalties for the county income tax last spring.

The Multnomah County Citizen Involvement committee will give citizens the opportunity to discuss county programs with County Chair Diane Linn and department managers at two Saturday forums in November.

County Chair Diane Linn has resumed efforts to find money to open the closed Wapato jail.

Multnomah County Chair Diane Linn is trying to identify funding to open the new Wapato jail.

Multnomah County Deputies began work in the Gresham Police Department in an effort to increase coordination of joint investigations.

Laboratory tests found no indications of influenza among a dozen dogs at the Multnomah County Animal Shelter.

The city of Portland made good on its pledge to help pay for Multnomah County Jailbeds.

Multnomah County has made addresses and photos of sex-offenders available online.

The empty morgue in Northeast Portland will be sold for $1.2 million.

Multnomah County has taken over management of the family assistance center for hurricane survivors at Washington Monroe High School.

Multnomah County Library to continue its popular book groups for adults. Pageturners will meet monthly in 16 neighborhood libraries beginning in October.

East County leaders talk of seceding from Multnomah County after disputes with Commissioners.

Convicted predatory sex offenders now have their pictures posted on the Multnomah County web site.

For the project to survive in any form, most observers agree the next 30 days are crucial. They predict the need for quick fence-mending and, perhaps, a floor-to-ceiling redrawing of the idea.

Representatives of a man who was fatally assaulted by a cellmate in a Multnomah County jail filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday to recover $500,000 from the county

An audit of the County Health recommends more management needed.

Political and real estate complications may have doomed the Multnomah County proposal

The sheriff says the plan would benefit both agencies.

Because of tax limitations, funding more jailbeds would not increase the overall tax rate. But it could mean $2 million less for libraries, $825,000 less for the Children's Investment Fund, and about $800,000 less for city parks.

On paper, the county commission majority's plan to move seven Multnomah County corrections deputies assigned outside the county's jails back behind bars seemed a no-brainer. It wasn't.

The Multnomah County Corrections Officers Association has filed a grievance against a county decision to shift community oversight of people accused of crimes out of the Sheriff's office.

Patricia Pate, the Director of the Multnomah County County Department of Human Services, is stepping down September 30th. She is the ninth top county official to leave so ar this year.

Former County Sheriff Dan Noelle has agreed to help the county commissioners understand the Sheriff's budget.

Higher-than-expected collections of business income taxes will pump $6.3 million extra into Multnomah County's budget this year, officials said Wednesday, an unusual bit of good news for the controversy-plagued government.

Multnomah County will open 114 more jail beds with savings found by the county's new Business Services Director.

Efforts to reach an agreement between Multnomah County and Gresham on the transfer of county roads to the city have hit another bump.

Gresham will end up with 50 miles of county roads within the city limits and $1.52 million to pay for their maintenance.

Preliminary work will begin this fall on repairing or replacing the Sellwood Bridge, funded in part by $7 million Congress approved last week for the ailing span.

The county attorney says elected board members have no authority over the elected sheriff's conduct.

Person who stole CD's from library apologizes, sentenced.

Two years ago, there were only three titles by Native American writers in the Multnomah County Central Library's John Wilson Room, where the special collections and rare books are kept safe and cool. Today, there are hundreds of novels, plays and collections of short stories and poems by Native Americans, and the goal is to collect all such books published in the U.S. and Canada. It's an ambitious project but one that fits well with the other core collections in the Wilson Room, according to librarian Jim Carmin.

Officials from the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and Oregon Department of Corrections said they are starting the document exchange Aug. 1 to prevent attacks like the one in June allegedly between two cellmates inside the Justice Center Jail.

The county will pour $100,000 into electronic monitoring -- more than five times what it spent in 2004-05.

Multhomah County has a plan from Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation to build a new Sellwood Bridge but the proposal has remained confidential. Scant details brew concern for Sellwood residents, who fear a wider bridge with more auto lanes will saddle their community with more traffic.

After months of political pondering over the need for an East County Justice Facility, officials are throwing open the discussion, seeking public comment on the scope, criteria and sites for the proposed $13.5 million to $20 million project.

Name-calling. Tantrums. Refusing to share. School may be out for the summer, but tit-for-tat politics in Multnomah County government are straight out of the playground.

Multnomah County, angry about Gresham's support of a road bill, says it will no longer share the county business tax after July 2007. Commissioner Lonnie Roberts said he doesn't know what will happen. "Hopefully, we can sit this down and get it straight without the state's involvement. I hope that they forget this (legislative) bill and they go back to bargaining with Commissioner (Maria Rojo) de Steffey and we can come to an agreement."

Many of the leaders with the power to effect change in Multnomah County gathered around 10 conference tables to begin bridging the troubles that ail corrections and law enforcement. But the majority of Multnomah County Commissioners boycotted the meeting in a continuation of their ongoing feud over jailbeds.

This prompted District Attorney Michael Schrunk, a 24-year veteran of elected office and the vagaries of Multnomah County government, to call the continued sniping unseemly. "Egos and turfdom," Shrunk said. "We've got to get our priorities in order."

The FBI says a Multnomah County Sheriff's deputy will start work Friday on the Portland area Joint Terrorism Task Force. The force, which looks for local terrorist activity, has been short two officers since the Portland City Council voted to withdraw their forces this spring.

The FBI has found help replacing the two Portland police officers Mayor Tom Potter and the City Council recently removed from the Joint Terrorism Task Force -- courtesy of Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto.

Multnomah County Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey is fed up over jail beds, and she blames Sheriff Bernie Giusto.

Willlamette Week calls the Multnomah County Sheriff "Boss Hog".

Multnomah County will use two kinds of GPS (global-positioning system) tracking for certain offenders for pretrial, post-conviction and post-parole supervision. Officials think that the program, broadened in that manner, could help free up precious jail beds.

The state isn't coming close to covering costs of running jails and supervising felons in urban counties such as Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington. As a result, those counties had to backfill the state program with local tax dollars that otherwise would have covered their own jail needs.

thanks to ballooning overtime costs, most of Multnomah's highest paid employees work not in the county's clinics or office buildings, but in its four working jails.

A Multnomah County building constructed atop turn-of-the-century Chinese graves will be razed this summer, officials from the county, city of Portland and Metro announced Monday night.

The high numbers of lost CDs prompted library director Molly Raphael to ask librarians at branches where music discs are still shelved in the stacks to move them where patrons can't steal them. DVDs also will be relocated at every branch, said Cindy Gibbon, senior library manager.

It's hard for the average person to tell where exactly this year's cuts even landed. The county has yet to publish a complete list of programs targeted to end or facing cuts.

Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto is considering closing his five jails by July 1 to criminals who violate conditions of their parole or probation in order to open up jail beds for those who commit fresh crimes.

Most branches store only the plastic sleeves of disks in the library stacks, keeping DVDs behind circulation desks.

"theft from the library is "not that significant. It occurs, for sure. There's also plenty of people who check out books and forget to bring them back, and we have another way of dealing with that."

The county's general fund budget increased from $304 million this year to $324 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1, a 7 percent jump.

Multnomah County passed its budget for the upcoming year by a 4-to-1 vote Thursday. The dissenting commissioner says the budget doesn't spend enough on public safety.

If the Multnomah County district attorney's office had more prosecutors, if the sheriff had more open jail beds, if the judges did not leave early before holiday weekends, if the judicial process were more judicious in how it absorbs resources, then perhaps ...

Bowing to public pressure, board votes 4-1 to add space for 113 more inmates

More than 45 people signed up to address the county Board of Commissioners before the three-hour hearing began, and a dozen late arrivals added their concerns to the mix. A scant handful made jail beds a priority.

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