METRO FILE PHOTO
Metro Attorney Dan Cooper talks about the Oregon Convention Center hotel project in this 2008 photo. Cooper is stepping down as Metro Attorney and will serve as an advisor on discussions about adding more hotel rooms around the convention center.
Ask Metro Attorney Dan Cooper why he's retiring, and he points to photographs on his office door – grandchildren, six of them, some as far away as Boston.
Ask Metro chief operating officer Martha Bennett why she's asked Cooper to stay on until November as a senior policy advisor, and she'll point across the street, toward the Oregon Convention Center.
Cooper will step down as Metro attorney in mid-February, but will stay on until autumn to serve as a senior policy advisor, focusing on hotel capacity near the Oregon Convention Center, as well as Metro's Solid Waste Roadmap and a possible natural areas operations levy.
"Dan had involvement in this side of the house, and he enjoyed that," Bennett said in an interview Tuesday. "He has specific experience with issues like a room block for the convention center, and negotiating franchise agreements and hauling contracts with solid waste, and negotiating arrangements with Multnomah County and City of Portland relative to lodging tax. And it just so happens that a bunch of the stuff on the council's plate right now are just those things."
The outgoing attorney served as the agency's acting chief operating officer through most of 2011, and staff said discussions were underway about his transition out of that role through the second half of last year; Bennett started Oct. 31 as Metro's staff chief.
Cooper, 64, was hired as Metro's senior counsel since 1987, and has seen his policy role increasing in the past decade. He was one of the agency's lead negotiators on the convention center hotel conversations from 2006-2009, and briefed the Metro Council as a staffer at a Jan. 17 work session on the hotel concept.
"It was a gradual shift," Cooper said of his move into the policy arena, at the request of former COO Michael Jordan and Council President David Bragdon. "It was probably why, by the time Michael was leaving last winter, it became a rather easy step for me to put on that acting (COO) role."
In his time with Metro, Cooper has worked under three structures of government; he said he drafted the Metro Exposition and Recreation Commission's first legislation in 1987 and helped work on the rules changes that brought that board closer to the Metro structure in 2009.
It's that institutional background that Bennett is hoping to capitalize on.
"It's just right for this to happen," Bennett said."The opportunity to have Dan involved in these projects means we get to take advantage of his institutional history, and I get to do a little download from him over the next few months.
"He was in a meeting yesterday talking about buckets of funding, and it's like 'Oh, I'm looking forward to learning about these buckets and finding out which ones can be kicked and which ones can't be kicked,'" she said. "I just think it's an opportunity."
Metro Council President Tom Hughes will nominate deputy Metro Attorney Alison Kean Campbell to replace Cooper; Kean Campbell served as acting Metro Attorney through most of 2011, while Cooper was acting chief operating officer. Cooper will retain his $169,622 salary in his new role.
"Alison has 14 years of experience with Metro, and has served this council as acting Metro Attorney for much of last (year)," Hughes said in a statement. "She is everything we could hope for in a Metro Attorney."
Kean Campbell has been with Metro since 1996, and has served as Deputy Metro Attorney since 2008. She graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988, working in private practice before joining Metro. The Metro Council must confirm Hughes' nomination, something that will probably happen next month.
Both Hughes and staff said the agency didn't need to conduct a broader search for a new Metro Attorney, as it did to select its next chief operating officer. Cooper said the agency has had a succession plan in place for four years, with Kean Campbell's designation as deputy agency counsel the start of that plan.
There was also concern that opening a broader search would attract few applicants given the very public succession plan.
"It would be a waste of our time and resources to pursue a competitive search," Hughes said. "We would be unlikely to yield a strong candidate pool given that we have such a strong, capable internal candidate."