In an unusual letter sent last month, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler asked the state architect licensing board to investigate Raphael Goodblatt, an architect he said has harassed and bullied city employees for years.

“I ask that you conduct an investigation into the misconduct by Mr. Goodblatt,” Wheeler wrote on Feb. 12 to the Oregon State Board of Architect Examiners.

Goodblatt said in an interview Monday that the city has it backwards. He acknowledged he engaged in the conduct the city says he shouldn’t have, but said he was provoked into it. “I hate to say it, I don't know how better to say it, but this is the city harassing me,” he said.

In his letter, Wheeler includes five pages of excerpts of texts, emails or statements Goodblatt made to city development services employees. The excerpts include alleged incidents of name-calling by Goodblatt, including referring to people using crude terms for male and female genitalia, and other unsavory remarks.

Goodblatt doesn’t deny he said what’s in Wheeler’s letter. But he claims he only did so because city employees spread negative information about him and harassed his clients.

“Everything I did that’s on paper I’m not going to deny,” Goodblatt said. “But the things that I say are because of the way I’m treated.”

He cited three documents as what he said is evidence of city harassment – a 2011 email chain, 2014 letter and 2014 voicemail in which city employees share details of his conduct with others or implore him to stop.

Goodblatt worked in the city development service bureau from 2003 to 2009 but was laid off, according to Wheeler’s letter. He was subject to a human resources investigation in 2012, the mayor’s letter said, that found he “engaged in discourteous, bullying, disrespectful and menacing behavior towards city employees.”

State rules say architects may be disciplined for “any conduct that, through professional experience, is not an acceptable standard for architectural practice in Oregon.”

Lisa Howard, the architecture board director, said the agency has received Wheeler’s letter and the board will consider his allegations at its April meeting.

"I'm a big mouth who tells you what I think," Goodblatt said. "Hopefully the board won't punish me too much."

-- Gordon R. Friedman