Back in the not-really-so-old days, students turned in homework assignments that were — shock! — written on paper, not a screen. (Maybe this still happens in our digital age; I’m clueless about modern homework practices.)
The classic excuse for not turning in an assignment was “the dog ate my homework.”
“The dog ate my homework“, or “my dog ate my homework“, is an expression which carries the suggestion of being a common, poorly fabricated excuse made by children to explain why they have failed to turn in an assignment on time. The phrase is also referenced outside of an academic context, as a sarcastic response to any similarly insufficient or implausible explanation for failure.
This sure seems to fit Salem Mayor Julie Hoy’s excuse for not signing a February 5 letter from Governor Tina Kotek regarding ICE that also bore the signatures of 31 mayors of Oregon cities. As I wrote about on February 6, Hoy was criticized by Councilor Vanessa Nordyke, Hoy’s opponent in the May mayoral race, for not taking a stand against ICE actions that hurt innocent Oregonians.
A February 5 story in the Salem Reporter, “Oregon Gov. Kotek, mayors, call for pause on immigration enforcement,” said (I’ve boldfaced the mention of Hoy):
Gov. Tina Kotek and mayors of 31 cities have a message for the federal government: Stop all immigration enforcement in Oregon until recent violent incidents in Minneapolis, Portland and elsewhere are fully investigated.
Kotek and the mayors sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House border czar Tom Homan on Thursday, saying they represent communities that are afraid of and morally opposed to federal officers’ tactics.
…Most of the 31 mayors who signed onto the letter represent cities in the Portland region and Willamette Valley, but it also includes signers from the coast, Central Oregon and Rogue Valley.Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson, both of whom have navigated recent incidents of federal officers using tear gas on protesters outside federal buildings in the state’s largest and third-largest cities, signed the letter. Salem Mayor Julie Hoy, who voted in December against declaring a state of emergency over increased immigration enforcement in Oregon’s second-largest city, did not.
While most of the mayors who signed come from liberal-leaning cities, the list of signers also includes the mayors of the deeply Republican city of Detroit, which President Donald Trump won by 45 points in 2024, and Carlton and Dayton, two small Yamhill County cities he won by double digits.
Since the actions of ICE are about as popular among progressives and independents as a root canal, Hoy’s failure to sign the letter was shaping up to be a major drag on her reelection campaign. What to do?
Why, repurpose “the dog ate my homework” excuse for political purposes. A February 9 Salem Reporter story, “City, mayor, say governor’s office never asked Salem leaders to sign immigration letter,” says:
Gov. Tina Kotek didn’t include Salem’s mayor in a recent request to sign a letter demanding the federal government temporarily pause federal immigration enforcement in the state, Mayor Julie Hoy said.
The letter, sent from the governor’s office to federal officials on Feb. 5, was signed by Kotek and 31 mayors from cities across the state including Portland, Eugene, Monmouth, and Woodburn.
…In a Facebook video early Monday, Feb. 9, Hoy said she never heard from the governor’s office about the letter. She made the announcement following a critical statement from Councilor Vanessa Nordyke, who’s challenging Hoy for mayor.
“It was confirmed by the governor’s office last night that that letter was never sent to the city of Salem, nor to my office,” Hoy said in her video. “Had it been, I would have brought it to the attention of the full council, and we would have had the opportunity to weigh in, come to consensus, and move forward appropriately.”
…Courtney Knox Busch, the city’s strategic initiatives manager, confirmed Monday that neither Hoy nor anybody else at the city received any correspondence regarding the letter.
Lucas Bezerra, a spokesman for Kotek’s office, said Monday that he couldn’t answer whether Hoy had been sent the letter because he hasn’t been able to confirm information internally.
While it’s possible that the Governor’s Office failed to ask Hoy if she would sign the letter, I’m skeptical about this excuse for several reasons:
(1) It seems highly unlikely that the Governor’s Office would neglect to send the letter to the mayor of Salem (pop. 180,406), Oregon’s second largest city, especially since the mayors of Carlton (pop. 2,273), Dayton (pop. 2,663), and Detroit (pop. 189) were asked to sign.
(2) There is no evidence that what Hoy said in her Facebook video is true — that on Sunday night the Governor’s Office told Hoy that the letter was never sent to Hoy or the City of Salem. If that were the case, then why would a spokesman for the Governor’s Office say on Monday, the following day, that he couldn’t answer the question of whether the letter had been sent?
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission has determined that Mayor Hoy violated Oregon’s public meetings law when she orchestrated a series of illegal private meetings with city councilors in an effort to get rid of Keith Stahley, the City Manager at the time, without going through an open public deliberative process.
Hoy lied three times in the course of this ethics debacle, as I laid out in “Mayor Julie Hoy lied about not wanting City Manager Stahley gone. That’s her third lie about Stahley.” So this is another reason why I’m not inclined to accept what Hoy says about not getting the letter from the Governor’s Office until there’s absolutely solid proof that the letter never was sent to her. When Hoy is under pressure, she lies. Here’s those three lies about Stahley:
Lie #1: Hoy claimed that in her illegal private conversations with members of the City Council, a majority wanted Stahley to resign. Actually, the Ethics Commission investigation found that zero city councilors wanted him to resign. Only Hoy favored this.
Lie #2: Hoy claimed that she never told council president Linda Nishioka a majority of the city council wanted Stahley to resign. The Ethics Commission investigation concluded that this did happen, confirming Stahley’s statement to that effect in his resignation letter.
Lie #3: Hoy claimed that her motivation in talking with city councilors about Stahley’s employment status was his performance audit that showed some deficiencies in his management style. But this wasn’t true, since Hoy wanted Stahley gone for reasons that had nothing to do with the performance audit.
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