Proposed Portland City Charter Amendment

Twenty Portland citizens volunteered for and were appointed to a City Charter Commission to consider amendments to the existing City Charter. What they proposed was a brand new form of government for the Portland. The resulting measure is quite controversial. Here is a brief summary of the proposal and reactions to it: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/29/portland-oregon-government-charter-november-ballot/ . As the article notes, the proposal was approved by the Commission on a 17 to 3 vote. Because the proposal received at least 15 votes, it goes to the ballot without input or review by the City Council.

The question becomes, what is this change intended to accomplish? The proposal places “legislative authority” in a 12-member City Council, with 3 members elected from each of 4 districts. The mayor, who already has more limited authority than most US mayors, is reduced almost to a figurehead. The mayor is not a member of the Council and has no vote except to break ties. The mayor also has no veto power over the Council’s actions.

In most cities, the city departments report to the mayor. Not so in Portland currently, where different departments are assigned to the mayor or one of the commissioners. Under the proposal, all the departments would report to a city manager (a new position, who would presumably also need a staff). The proposal says accountability would be achieved by the Council’s authority to fire the manager at any time.

The proposal raises many difficult questions. Who would want this figurehead mayor’s job? Why is primary accountability placed in a person who is appointed and not elected? If that person can be fired at will by a majority of the Council, who wants that job?

However, certain consequences are clear. City government goes up by the cost of a city manager, 8 new commissioners, and their 9 staffs. And the new city council will be slower to act. That is a natural consequence of converting the council to a “legislative body”. Twelve commissioners will take longer to come to any agreement than 4 commissioners plus the mayor.

Does the concept of converting the council to a “legislative body” make sense? We know our national Congress (100 Senators and 435 Congresspersons) is slow to act, but they do set laws for the entire country. Our state legislature (30 Senators and 60 House members) is even slower to act, as it is a part-time legislature (sessions are a maximum of 160 days in odd-numbered years and 35 days in even-numbered years). Also, the GOP minority has regularly departed the state in order to prevent a quorum. But again, it does have the responsibility for setting laws for the state (subservient to federal law).

City councils do set rules within their city, but this rule-making is more in the nature of administrative functions – for example, building codes or health regulations for restaurants and food carts. Much of this rule-making comes from recommendations from city bureaus. Any laws in the city are subservient to federal and state law. As such, the city is not free to just adopt any building code or health regulation. State and federal government standards significantly limit the city’s range of options. For these reasons, the city council is better viewed as a maker of administrative rules. A model based on a “legislative body” does not properly reflect the council’s function or authority.

The Commission also focused on the issue of representation of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color): https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/2022/charter-commission-areas-of-agreement-short.pdf . This is a worthy goal if we have a problem. However, we currently have a white mayor (Ted Wheeler), one white (openly gay) commissioner (Dan Ryan), two Black commissioners (Jo Ann Hardesty and Mingus Mapps) and one Latina commissioner (Carmen Rubio). If anything, the new and complex structure is likely to reduce minority representation on the City Council by diluting the current majority of non-white commissioners.

The Commission apparently focused on the increased representation of BIPOC voters rather than the actual representatives. But the Commission’s work notes that currently BIPOC people are sufficiently spread out in Portland that no scheme would create a district that was majority BIPOC. In other words, Portland is much better integrated than most major cities, even though Portland is majority white. The Commission is trying to solve a problem that by their own demonstration Portland does not have.

Also, the as-yet-undefined districts are a new political subdivision which has no role except the election of 12 commissioners. There is no analysis of why these new districts are a good idea. But let’s assume that they are a good idea. Why not just reform the current structure to have the current 4 commissioners each represent one district? Why have 3 people elected in each district? The Commission’s apparent justification is to provide more diverse representation, but as shown above, the new approach is more likely to reduce current diversity on the city council.

Government reform should of course receive the input of the people currently doing the job. But as the article above notes, the original advocates of reform on the city council have “deep concerns” about the commission’s proposal. The Commission could have sought input from the mayor and commissioners along the way, or referred their proposal to the city council for action. Choosing to bypass the input of others to go directly to the ballot is a huge red flag, because almost everything that does appear on any public election ballot goes through multi-level review and discussion before involving the voters.

No doubt citizens have concerns about the current City Council’s inability to address the homeless problem, the vandalism of public and private buildings throughout the city, and increasing gun violence. The Commission’s proposal offers no insight into how changing the form of government would help address these problems. To my knowledge, all previous public discussion in Portland has advocated strengthening the mayor’s authority, to be more in line with other US cities.

In summary, the proposed change in the Portland City Charter suggests a new form of government which will be more expensive, less efficient and more quarrelsome, and which is based on an inapplicable legislative body. There was apparently no consideration of how this change would improve governance results on the issues the city currently faces. And there is every reason to believe the new form of government will be less able to come to agreement than the current structure.

For these reasons, Portland citizens should reject this controversial and poorly thought-out proposal. Perhaps interested citizens will become involved in a new Charter Commission which more directly addresses our current concerns, and can produce a work product supported by Portland’s various constituencies before it goes on the ballot.