Word: linn
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...March 2, commission chair Linn was in Washington on a college-scouting trip with her son. A county official called Linn on her cell phone to tell her that Sowle's final opinion had been issued. Linn gave the go order. Back in Portland, commissioner Roberts--who had successfully been kept in the dark since January--heard about the impending marriages on his pickup truck's radio...
...certainly changed the life of county chair Linn. The 45-year-old Portland native faces a recall effort, one that the left-of-center Oregonian has endorsed. Good-government types have excoriated Linn and the complicit commissioners for their concealment. "If they can't be trusted to make a momentous decision in an open, fair and respectful manner, they shouldn't be trusted to direct the daily operation of county government," thundered the Oregonian. "They have proved themselves unfit for public office...
...part, Linn suggests that much of the opposition to the county's process for issuing marriage licenses is really just conservative opposition to gay marriage. "Process will always be the argument against an outcome that ... made people uncomfortable," she says. Every day, "elected officials come up with approaches to a variety of different things, and they talk to certain people, and when it's brought to a point where it needs to be either announced or drafted into a piece of legislation, it goes public. This is standard." (In this case, of course, there was no legislation--just a directive...
...Linn also laughs at those who say she contrived the marriages for political advantage. "This has been miserable ... My political career is absolutely on the line," she says, at a time when her dad is dying of cancer, her son is graduating from high school and she is about to marry for the second time. Linn issued an apology last Thursday for the lack of "public involvement in decision making, including ongoing, open communication"--though she did say, as she often does, that it was her "obligation under the Oregon constitution to support marriage equality...
...Linn answers this way: "I only wish [opponents] had seen the looks on the faces of people outside our building the day I made the announcement ... For them, we opened up the opportunity for a lifetime dream." Sometimes you have to lay everything on the line to make a dream come true...