Adviser to Portland City Government Overhaul Quits

He wrote that the current City Council is using the committee as a “buffer” between Portlanders and elected officials during the transition.

Portland City Hall. (Blake Benard)
By Sophie Peel

As candidates announce plans to run for the expanded Portland City Council in 2024, signs are the changeover could be a rocky one.

Bill Farver, a member of the citizen committee charged with advising Portland’s transition to a new form of government by 2025, resigned Aug. 30. In a letter to his advisory committee colleagues, Farver wrote that the current City Council is “severely limiting the scope of our advisory work” and is using the committee as a “buffer” between Portlanders and elected officials during the transition.

Farver’s resignation follows a letter last month from the Government Transition Advisory Committee to the City Council arguing that city leaders were using the committee as a political tool and not actually consulting the body. In response, the City Council wrote that the GTAC was “never intended to operate as an oversight body over the entire transition process.”

Farver wrote in his Aug. 30 resignation that the council’s letter was a “carefully constructed, narrowly legalistic effort…to defuse a potentially embarrassing controversy with a citizen group.”

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