Skip to main content
Mayor Ted Wheeler today announced bureau assignments for 2021, notably narrowing the assignments he has given himself for the next four years.
In Portland's unusual commission form of government, assigning bureaus is one of the greatest powers reserved for the mayor. In the past, mayors have sometimes used that power to punish some fellow commissioners and reward others. In this case, Wheeler spread the bureaus fairly evenly but kept the traditional mayoral job of police commissioner for himself.
In perhaps the most closely watched decision, Wheeler did not, as Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty had requested, give her the Portland Police Bureau. But he also did not take away her highest-profile assignment, Portland Fire & Rescue, and added the significant assignment of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, which outgoing Commissioner Chloe Eudaly held previously. (Hardesty had endorsed Wheeler's opponent, Sarah Iannarone, in the general election, and such a weighty assignment will be hard to read as a rebuke.)
Hardesty wanted to keep the fire bureau for a variety of reasons but, most of all, because it includes Portland Street Response, the much-discussed alternative to sending police officers on mental health or other calls in which no crime has been alleged to have occurred.
As for the three other commissioners, Wheeler gave Commissioner Dan Ryan the Bureaus of Housing and Development Services, both of which Wheeler previously held, and kept him as the city's liaison to the Joint Office of Homeless Services. For the past four years, after running on a housing agenda, Wheeler held the Housing Bureau, even as three other commissioners in the building showed interest at times in the assignment, and two years ago he took on the Bureau of Development Services.
The assignment shows trust in Ryan that Wheeler has not placed in other commissioners to date. (The two have been on a similar side of the fight to address chronic homelessness downtown, using homeless sweeps, among other approaches.)
Incoming Commissioner Carmen Rubio will get Parks & Recreation, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (which Wheeler had held), and the Office for Community Technology. Parks is a favorite assignment among commissioners that until last year had been held by Commissioner Nick Fish.
Rubio's fellow rookie, Commissioner-elect Mingus Mapps, will get the Water Bureau, the Bureau of Environmental Services, and the Bureau of Emergency Communications. It's a technical assignment, with two key bureaus that are independent of general fund resources, and keeps Mingus out of the fray of some of the more contentious political fights, including budget cuts, likely to be at issue at City Hall in coming years.
Notably, Hardesty gave up BOEC in the reshuffle and gets the Office of Community & Civic Life, which had a rocky four years under Commissioner Eudaly, instead. Eudaly's efforts to transform that bureau were a key part of her political demise. In giving the bureau to Hardesty, Wheeler has not opted to completely reverse course on those reforms, at least publicly. Mapps was elected, in part on the strength of his support from neighborhood associations, which had fiercely opposed Eudaly's reforms.
