Economist pokes holes in projects

Joe Cortright’s appearance belies a feisty critic unafraid to speak out

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Jul 10, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (12 Reader comments)

JAIME VALDEZ / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Economist Joe Cortright (left) speaks during a debate with Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder about the Columbia River Crossing at a recent City Club Friday Forum.

With his thinning hair, neat mustache and conservative suits, Joe Cortright has the bookish looks of a college-educated economist, which he is.

Cortright is vice president of Impresa Consulting, a Portland firm providing economic advice to clients ranging from high-tech industry giant Intel Corp. to the Portland Development Commission, the city’s urban renewal agency.

He may be best known locally for his work on “The Young and the Restless,” a 2004 study that showed Portland’s economy was benefiting from an influx of educated young people dubbed the “creative class.”

But when Cortright opens his mouth, he frequently sounds like a progressive activist, singing the praises of sustainable living while bashing such expensive projects as the Oregon Convention Center hotel and the Columbia River Crossing bridge.

Cortright’s rhetorical skills were on full display late last month when he debated Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder over the proposal to build a replacement Interstate 5 bridge and a new light-rail line between Oregon and Washington. It was hard to tell the politician from the professional number-cruncher.

Burkholder, who favors the proposed bridge, offered statistics about growing congestion and delayed freight shipments to justify his position.

But Cortright, who opposes the bridge idea, talked about the politics of the project. Among other things, he compared it to the Mount Hood Freeway, the controversial east-side highway that Portlanders successfully organized against in the 1970s.

Cortright also predicted that Barack Obama would be elected president and usher in a new era of increased transit funding — asking whether the region really wanted its largest proposed project to be a “highway bridge” that could have been designed when Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.

“What would that say about the region’s transportation priorities?” Cortright asked the members of the Portland City Club, the longtime civic organization that sponsored the June 27 debate.

After the debate, Burkholder said he thought that some of Cortright’s arguments had been disingenuous. For example, the bridge and related work is estimated to cost $4.2 billion. At one point, Cortright asked the crowd to imagine what else that money could buy, such as 200 miles of streetcar lines or new schools.

“That’s a false choice,” Burkholder told the Portland Tribune. “He’s asking people how they would spend money they don’t have.”

Cortright offered a political defense for his question.

“If they’re willing to increase taxes to pay for the project, they should be willing to raise taxes to pay for other priorities,” he said.

No shrinking violet

Despite his high-profile stance, Cortright does not believe speaking out on the controversial project will hurt his business.

“I haven’t lost any clients yet,” he said.

Burkholder is not so sure, however.

“For those clients who are out of the area, it’s probably not a big deal,” he said. “But for some of them here, they might think, do we really want to go with a guy who’s so outspoken?”

This is not the first time Cortright has spoken out on controversial issues, however.

In 2004, he wrote an unsolicited study that argued the Oregon Lottery Commission was paying bar and tavern owners far too much to have video poker machines on their premises.

At the time, the commission was allowing the business owners to keep 32 percent of the net proceeds.

In the end, the lottery commission trimmed the rates slightly.

Then, three years later, Cortright came out against a project the Metro Council was considering — a publicly owned hotel intended to boost business at the Oregon Convention Center, which Metro owns and operates.

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit