A documentary record of conduct that may constitute ethics violations, procurement irregularities, or misrepresentations to the public and legislators — compiled from public records requests filed March–May 2026. This document does not address the merits of the deal; it addresses how the deal was made.
Beginning before the new Portland City Council was sworn in, Blazers lobbyists Dan Jarman (Crosswater Strategies) and Ryann Gleason (CFM Advocates) ran a systematic sequence of gifts and access events targeting councilors who would vote on $871 million in public funds. The campaign is documented in PRRs C454690, C454698, and C454692.
On November 26, 2024, Jarman obtained OGEC Advice No. 24-537I — a formal letter from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission confirming that newly elected councilors who had not yet been inaugurated are not "public officials" under ORS Chapter 244. This meant the $50/year gift limit did not apply to them before they took office.
The Blazers then timed their introductory game event to January 11, 2025 — nine days after inauguration — and extended suite tickets to Councilors Koyama Lane and Kanal. The pre-clearance letter was obtained specifically to establish cover for this event. The sequence — obtain ethics opinion, time event to exploit the window, extend gifts — is documented and deliberate.
After the councilors were sworn in, the $50/year gift limit applied. The following events occurred after inauguration:
Women's History Night (March 16, 2025). Gleason and Jarman sent invitations to Councilors Pirtle-Guiney, Avalos, and Morillo offering complimentary suite access at Moda Center. The same invitation went to Oregon state legislators and BOLI Commissioner Christina Stephenson. Suite access — including tickets, food, beverage, and parking — has a market value significantly exceeding $50 per recipient. The question for OGEC is whether required disclosures were filed under ORS 244.060.
The child ticket dispute (March 2025). When Pirtle-Guiney's office asked to bring her daughter as a complimentary guest to Women's History Night, the City Attorney's office ruled that city administrative rules are stricter than state law.
July 2025 tour and lunch. Jarman invited Councilors Morillo, Novick, and Koyama Lane — in a single coordinated email — to lunch at Moda Center with a tour of summer construction, explicitly to brief them on the ECOnorthwest economic impact study. Councilor Morillo's aide confirmed attendance and asked whether a staffer could be brought along. Councilor Novick's aide replied: "Councilor Novick would love to attend!" The invitation was CC'd to Natalie King and Dewayne Hankins. A private lunch and tour at a venue whose management is lobbying for $871 million in public funds has value exceeding $50 per person.
Additional access cultivation — Novick. On July 22, 2025, Charles Boyle (Blazers Director of Public Affairs) separately invited Novick and his dog "Barley" to a dog walk charity event at the Rose Quarter. Novick declined (already booked). The same email thread confirmed the earlier tour/lunch was already scheduled. This was a secondary access touch — a casual, low-stakes event designed to build personal rapport alongside the formal briefing.
The thank-you loop closes (February 2026). After Pirtle-Guiney signed a letter of support for SB 1501, Blazers SVP Natalie King emailed her office specifically to thank her for the support and request a follow-up meeting. The access pipeline ran directly from gift events to a favorable political outcome.
Relevant law: ORS 244.060 (public official gift limits and disclosure); ORS 244.040 (prohibited gifts); Portland City Code Title 2, Chapter 2.10 (City Ethics Code — stricter gift limits than state law).
Between February and March 2026, Blazers lobbyists told at least four Portland city council members that their political careers would suffer if the team left Portland. The threats were delivered in private — never in public testimony where they could be denied or challenged on the record.
Neither the Trail Blazers nor their lobbyists denied the accounts when OPB published them on March 12, 2026. The threats are consistent with the broader pattern: the same lobbyists running the suite ticket access campaign (building goodwill) were also delivering private career warnings (applying pressure). Access cultivation and pressure tactics operated in parallel, from the same team, toward the same vote.
Relevant consideration: Oregon's lobbying statutes (ORS Chapter 171) prohibit threatening conduct toward legislators. Whether these communications constitute actionable threats under state law is a question for the AG's office. City of Portland lobbyist registration and conduct rules may also apply.
The city's financial advisor on the Moda Center deal is Stafford Sports, LLC, engaged under Contract No. 30007849. Public records requests C449379 and C454414 have produced a record with four distinct irregularities.
The contract's only formal task order — Task Order 1 — was valued at $15,750 for the 2021 bridge lease extension. That is the only scope of work with a formal authorization on record.
Part 6 of the Stafford time sheets (670 pages, delivered April 24, 2026, PRR C449379) documents Carl and Andrew Hirsh billing for: drafting and reviewing SB 1501 during the 2026 legislative session; attending joint planning meetings with Blazers executives; the December 2025 Charlotte/Raleigh trip; and reviewing the SB 1501 bill draft during the legislative vote. None of this falls within the scope of Task Order 1.
City systems analyst Bryce Henry, in his April 29, 2026 PRR response, added an unprompted observation: "it did seem like there were invoices being submitted fairly regularly for this agreement," and suggested periodically submitting new requests for them. This is a city staff member informally acknowledging regular billing with no traceable authorization.
Stafford Sports' own website lists prior business planning work for "Moda Center (Trail Blazers)." The city hired the Blazers' former consultant — without competitive bidding — to advise Portland in a negotiation against the Blazers about the same building. No conflict-of-interest disclosure or waiver appears in any released document. The contract's scope section is fully redacted, preventing any verification of the nature or extent of the prior relationship.
The engagement is structured as a "City Attorney Consultant Contract," designating all Stafford work product as attorney work product. Every financial model, deal memo, and negotiating recommendation is shielded from public records requests. Portland is committing $871 million based on analysis its residents cannot see. This structure was a deliberate choice — standard consulting contracts do not carry this shield.
Carl Hirsh flew first class on the December 2025 Charlotte/Raleigh trip — a city-paid trip — and billed the city for an economy ticket. This specific discrepancy is documented in the Part 6 time sheets.
Relevant law: ORS Chapter 279 (Public Contracting Code); City of Portland Procurement Rules; Portland City Code Title 5 (Financial Administration).
In December 2025, city staff flew to Charlotte and Raleigh on a city-paid trip accompanied by Blazers executives and Stafford advisor Carl Hirsh. They visited exclusively 100% publicly funded arenas. They did not visit Milwaukee, Sacramento, or Seattle — markets where private capital contributed to renovations.
The city's official response to PRR C454407 (April 2026) described the trip as city-organized and stated that Blazers reps were "invited to participate if interested, at their own cost."
The actual trip itinerary (NC_TRIP_ITINERARY_12-2025_FINAL.pdf) directly contradicts this.
The itinerary's selective site selection — visiting only 100% publicly funded arenas, never privately funded ones — also bears on the market comparables issue. The same Blazers-favorable sample that appeared in the legislative pitch deck was baked into the trip's design from the start.
Beginning November 3, 2025, city officials held weekly Monday planning meetings under the codename "Project Mt. Hood." OregonLive first reported these meetings in March 2026. PRR C454415 produced the original calendar invite, which shows the full attendee list.
Joth Ricci is a private citizen — former Dutch Bros CEO and founder of Rip City Forever, the pro-deal advocacy group. He has no city appointment, no disclosed contract, and no formal public role. He is listed not as a guest or observer but as a required attendee, on equal footing with the city CFO and deputy administrator. He is also the person who forwarded the calendar invite to city officials.
In January 2026, Dan Barrett of CAA Icon — the Blazers' lead negotiator — prepared the financial comparable analysis that legislators and the city used to justify public funding. Barrett previously served as the lead negotiator for the public in both Sacramento and Milwaukee, where he secured roughly 50% private contributions from team ownership. In Portland, representing the Blazers, he prepared a pitch deck that excluded those deals along with every other deal that would have made 90% public funding look unusual.
When city staffer Karl Lisle suggested adding Milwaukee and Sacramento, Barrett rejected both the same day.
Barrett asked city staff to "support the position" — on an email that included the Blazers' entire team. The city's financial advisor (Hirsh) was CC'd and raised no objection.
The next day, Coghlan distributed the Blazers' own "Rip City Runs Deep" advocacy toolkit to state legislators at a meeting on January 15, 2026 — the same document that contained the cherry-picked comparables and the $670M economic impact figure. The city circulated the Blazers' marketing materials as though they were independent government analysis.
Mayor Wilson publicly proposed using $75 million from the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) to help fund the Moda Center renovation. PCEF is a voter-approved fund dedicated to climate investments in frontline communities — not a general discretionary fund. The city framed PCEF as a potential funding source available for this purpose. Internal documents obtained in PRR C443668 show the city knew this was not accurate.
The city internally acknowledged that PCEF use would require canceling or deferring existing climate commitments — then publicly described PCEF as a funding source that "could potentially" support the renovation, without disclosing that existing commitments would have to be cut.
Separately, Councilor Clark told constituents that the PCEF committee had said Moda was "a good use of funds." The same records document only an "awareness" site visit by committee members on January 16, 2026 — arranged at the request of city leadership, not initiated by the committee. No formal determination was ever made.
On February 9, 2026, Mayor Wilson went to the Oregon Capitol to lobby for SB 1501. His office prepared separate talking points for Democratic and Republican legislator meetings. PRR C443668 produced both sets. They contain structurally different descriptions of the city's financial commitment — presented to different audiences in the same building on the same day.
These are not rounding differences or presentation variations. The Democrat version is $105 million larger than the Republican version. They have different upfront amounts, different annual amounts, and different totals. The public figure that ultimately became the city's stated commitment — $405 million — is a third number, different from both versions used that day.
On March 13, 2026 — one week after SB 1501 passed the Oregon legislature — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver visited Portland for a private reception at Moda Center, organized by the Trail Blazers. The city's own event memo, produced in PRR C454416, states the desired outcome was to "Celebrate the recent passage of SB 1501 that directs $356 million for the Moda Center renovation." This was not a neutral community visit. It was a victory lap hosted by the Blazers for the officials who had just delivered the bill.
The full attendee list, from the event memo, includes:
Prior reporting had noted that Nike founder Phil Knight personally called Commissioner Silver to advocate for the deal, and that Nike CEO Elliot Hill had emailed Mayor Wilson urging him to keep the Blazers. The C454416 records show that Hill attended the post-passage reception alongside Nike President Amy Montagne and Jordan Brand President Larry Miller. Nike's full Portland corporate leadership was present at the same event as the legislators who had just voted for the bill and the city councilors who would still need to vote on the city's $405 million commitment.
The invitation from Natalie King (Blazers SVP) to District 2 councilors Pirtle-Guiney, Kanal, and Ryan was sent March 10, 2026. The email headers show Ryann Gleason (CFM Advocates — the gift campaign lobbyist) was CC'd on the councilor response threads. The same lobbyist running the AAPI Night and Women's History Night suite ticket campaign was directly involved in routing the Silver reception invitations to councilors.
On February 2, 2026 — while SB 1501 was still moving through the legislature — the mayor's office urgently scheduled a three-way call between Mayor Wilson, Governor Kotek, and Commissioner Silver. The scheduling emails (marked "Importance: High") show Coghlan and the Governor's scheduler working to find a 20-minute window the following day. The commissioner was being used as a lobbying asset before the vote as well as a celebration asset after it.
On April 26, 2026 — while the city council's vote on $405 million in public funding remained pending — Councilors Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Sameer Kanal, and Dan Ryan attended a Trail Blazers playoff game at the invitation of the team and met privately with owner Tom Dundon. The event was reported by Willamette Week on April 30, 2026.
The tickets were in Section 218, lower bowl — a section that regularly sells for over $200 per seat in the regular season and significantly more in the playoffs. Pirtle-Guiney's spokeswoman confirmed the councilors accepted the tickets under the "ceremonial purpose" exemption — they helped pass a basketball onto the court before tip-off.
Pirtle-Guiney's spokeswoman said the councilor "emphasized with him the critical importance of lease negotiations striking a good deal for Portlanders." That a sitting councilor is conducting substantive lease negotiation discussions in the context of a comped ticket event — while the vote is pending — is itself notable.
In May 2024 — eighteen months before SB 1501 passed and a full year before any public deliberation — the City of Portland commissioned an independent Facility Condition Assessment of the Moda Center and Garden Garage from Venue Solutions Group (VSG), a national sports facility consulting firm. The 121-page report, dated May 14, 2024, was produced in response to PRR C462239 filed June 1, 2026. It was never disclosed to the public, the city council, or the Oregon legislature during the SB 1501 debate.
VSG and a team of national consultants conducted an on-site review on March 18–19, 2024, and developed a 20-year capital expenditure plan covering all building systems. The Recap sheet of the accompanying Excel model (Moda_Center_FCA_Cap_Ex_5-14-24.xlsx) shows the following totals:
An internal city memo from Karl Lisle (Spectator Venues Program Manager) to Donnie Oliveira, dated June 3, 2026 — the same day The Oregonian first reported the FCA's existence — provides the city's own analysis of the document. The memo is candid about what the FCA does and does not measure, and it is fair to quote it directly: the FCA "looks only at what investments would be necessary to maintain the building in its current configuration in good working order for 20 years. It does not contemplate the transformative renovation that is being proposed publicly by the Blazers."
The memo states it is "not appropriate to directly compare FCA cost estimates with the potential cost of the proposed major renovation," because the renovation would include amenities and expansions not contemplated in the FCA. This is a legitimate distinction, and any fair characterization of the FCA must acknowledge it: the $505M is the cost to keep the existing building operational for 20 years, not the cost of the proposed renovation.
The same memo performs its own breakdown of the $505M figure, and the results are notable:
The memo also confirms a fact directly relevant to who should pay for these improvements. Under the Arena Ground Lease (Section 10.2), Rip City Management was contractually obligated to maintain and improve Moda Center to a "first-class" standard at its own expense. This obligation was carried forward into the 2024 Bridge Agreement and the Arena Operating Lease (Section 10.2), and "Rip City Rising assumed all these obligations at closing of the transaction in March of 2026."
The information-control pattern documented throughout this dossier — the withheld cost assessment, the privilege shield over the Stafford work product, the closed-door briefings, the "trade secret" designations — has an origin point. On February 22, 2022, the City of Portland signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Rip City Management LLC and Trail Blazers Inc. The agreement was produced in response to PRR C467662 in June 2026. It predates the city's August 2024 acquisition of the Moda Center by more than two years, and predates SB 1501 by nearly four.
This is not a standard mutual NDA in which two parties protect each other's information. It runs in one direction: the city agreed to protect the Blazers' information. The recitals, signed by the city, are notable for what the city conceded:
The significance is in Recital E. The city — a public body, the owner of the building — contractually agreed in 2022 that disclosing the Blazers' information to the public "would harm the public interest." A public entity accepted, as a premise of the negotiation, that keeping information from its own residents serves them. Every downstream act of information control inherited this framing.
The agreement's "Confidential Information" is not limited to the arena. Recital A defines the covered "Facilities" as the entire Rose Quarter campus: the Moda Center, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, One Center Court, all four parking structures (East, West, Annex, and Garden Garages), the Entertainment Complex Phase II Lot, the Benton Lot surface parking, and related undeveloped land. The confidentiality framework was established for the whole district that SB 1501 would later monetize.
Each finding in this document is independently documented. Taken together, they describe a coherent pattern rather than a series of isolated incidents.
The gift campaign began before councilors were sworn in — timed to exploit an ethics exemption Jarman had pre-cleared with OGEC. It continued with suite tickets and arena access events. It included private briefings on the Blazers' own economic impact study. It culminated in a thank-you email from the Blazers SVP to the councilor who signed the SB 1501 support letter. The sequence runs from first contact to favorable political outcome, with each step documented in the public record.
The market comparables were prepared by the Blazers' negotiator and stripped of unfavorable data points. The site visit was to cities with only publicly funded arenas. The Blazers' own advocacy toolkit was distributed by the mayor's chief of staff as government analysis. The city's financial advisor had a prior relationship with the Blazers and operated behind a privilege shield. At no point did anyone with decision-making authority commission an independent analysis of what the market would pay for the right to operate a building Portland owns.
Dan Jarman obtained the OGEC pre-clearance letter, organized the gift events, delivered the career threats, and was a required attendee at Project Mt. Hood. Natalie King was CC'd on the tour/lunch invitations, sent the SB 1501 thank-you email, and was a required attendee at Project Mt. Hood. Dan Barrett prepared the cherry-picked pitch deck, rejected better comparables, asked city staff to "support the position," and was a required attendee at Project Mt. Hood. Carl Hirsh (city's advisor) was CC'd on Barrett's email asking for support and traveled alongside Blazers executives on the city-paid trip.
The City Attorney — appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the mayor — is simultaneously the office that: structured the Stafford contract to shield its work product from public view; provided legal guidance on the Blazers' gift campaign; and will interpret the city's legal obligations under SB 1501. The mayor is the primary political sponsor of the deal. There is no independent ethics oversight mechanism for the mayor's own conduct. This is not a personnel problem. It is a structural design problem that the Moda case has made concrete.
Document sources: All findings in this document are based on records produced by the City of Portland in response to public records requests filed under ORS 192.311–192.431. The complete set of source documents is available at: this public folder.