it is finished

Confession ... I wrote this post months ago to help me get through the last push of my bureaucratic life.

Today, August 18th was my last day as an employee of "the man" - namely, the City of Portland, Oregon Auditor's Office. I've avoided giving many details about my work life on the blog, wary on the one hand of those repercussions you hear about by employers against blogging employees. But mostly, it's just that my job has been occasionally semi-high profile and I didn't really want people to know that I'm me, if you know what I mean. My cover was of course blown a few months ago when I was selected "Rogue of the Week" by the local weekly paper for doing my bureaucratic duty and then outed as a Nun-to-Be by the same paper a few weeks later, which included a link to the blog. The passing of time has mellowed my feelings on that particular incident in my life, but it's still the number two hit if you google me - the blog having recently moved to number one!

In any case, I now no longer work for the City so I can say whatever I'd like. Especially as I'm skipping town any day now to begin my new life (where one might say I plan to work for THE man - J.C.).

Looking back on my 10 years and almost 9 months of public employment, what am I most proud of?

• Helping to create the first municipal system of full public campaign financing in the United States. For better or worse, the way we now elect our City officials has changed and has my fingerprints all over it. Of course towards the end it resulted in my rogue-dom and some minor scandals, but still it was a pretty tremendous undertaking & accomplishment.
• Working with over 120 candidates for City office (40 of them in one election back in 2004) - making sure they follow all the rules, cross their t's, dot there i's. (The numbers don't do them justice - we attract a cast of characters. Literally. One year a clown was running for Mayor.)
• Overseeing 9 ballot measure campaigns and working with a number of citizens as they navigated Oregon's initiative and referendum system.
• Migrating the publication of our City Code & Charter to the internet - this one was a real team effort but I played a key part. Now our citizens have 24 hour access to our laws.
• Creating the online Portland Policy Documents, the first ever compilation of all our City's policies and administrative rules. Again, the 24 hour access thing.
• Starting our office Cinco de Mayo Party. Mexican food. Mock Margaritas. Fun. And it will continue I'm sure years after I'm gone.
• Helping citizens decode our democratic system and cut through the red tape.
• Winning the office Halloween Costume party costume contest once as an individual(Vegas Elvis complete with white jump suit - yes there are pictures, they ended up on the goodbye party invite - no you can't see them) and once as a work group (we were the Magic 8 ball in action).

There's lots I'll be happy to no longer deal with on a daily basis. Disgruntled citizens, pointless bureaucracy, office politics, working under a microscope, being the subject of lawsuits, and being quoted in the paper to name a few. But I've grown, I've changed, and I've learned a lot in this job. One might say it's where I grew up.

And now it's finished. Whew!