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Over the next two years, the city of Portland will radically transform its form of government.
Bureaus will no longer be overseen by individual city commissioners. There will be 12 Portland City Council members instead of five. The city will be split up into four geographic voting districts, with three city commissioners elected per district. A city administrator will oversee bureau functions, while commissioners craft policy.
But Mayor Ted Wheeler’s attempt to soft-launch the allocation of power to the chief administrator during the two-year transition met strong resistance from some city commissioners last week.
A draft resolution sent to council offices last week by the mayor’s office, a copy of which WW obtained, delegates ample control over bureaus and their staff to the interim chief administrative officer for the city, longtime bureaucrat Michael Jordan, during the charter transition.
Commissioner Rene Gonzalez swiftly pushed back on the proposal.
Gonzalez said the “resolutions are so broadly drafted they could be interpreted to effectively preclude commissioners from doing their jobs....Frankly, I am concerned this pulls focus away from Portland’s livability crises to reforms only tangentially related to charter reform.”
Commissioner Dan Ryan pushed back, too: “When first presented with the mayor’s draft of the 90-day plan, all offices had concerns with the language, and we are working together to get it to a place of consensus,” Ryan tells WW.
The draft resolution appears to put Jordan in a position of authority over bureaus during the charter transition. It resolves that he can shift resources and bureau staff around as he pleases to implement the charter changes.
“Be it further resolved that the Directors and employees of city bureaus will report to and follow direction of the [chief administrative officer] on matters related to implementation of [the measure],” the draft resolution reads.
The resolution is currently undergoing edits by City Council offices, and sources familiar with the situation tell WW the edits are intended to keep more of the power over bureau resources and staff under city commissioners.
Commissioner Carmen Rubio supports the resolution: “From our perspective, the goal is to make it clear to the public the Chief Administrative Officer’s role in implementing charter changes.”
The resolution, which is slated for an upcoming City Council hearing, is coupled with a “90-Day Deliverables Matrix” that lays out tasks for each city commissioner to execute within three months.
Gonzalez, who leads the Bureau of Emergency Communications, is expected to expand 311, a nonemergency line, to be available 24-7.
Wheeler and his bureaus are expected to secure leases for six sites on which to place massive sanctioned encampments, secure providers for the sites, construct three of them, and come to a settlement with the plaintiffs that sued the city in September over tents blocking disability access. Those are missions that until last week were overseen by top aide Sam Adams, whose sudden departure has rocked City Hall.
Ryan and Rubio are tasked with overseeing the transfer of the liquor and noise enforcement programs from the Office of Community & Civic Life, where they’re currently housed, to the Bureau of Development Services, now under Rubio’s watch. (Rubio said she was “in full support of the new service areas, immediate opportunities for consolidation, and key policy lifts.”)
Commissioner Mingus Mapps, unlike some of his colleagues, took issue not with the power delegated to Jordan, but with the goals themselves. “I do not support the parts of this resolution that direct commissioners’ offices to develop 90-day plans to restructure an eclectic mix of government programs,” Mapps said.
Mapps is tasked with carrying an ordinance through City Council that would consolidate the city’s management of open-space properties under Portland Parks & Recreation. (It’s currently overseen by more than one bureau.)
Those tasks, and what the final deliverables will be, are still being discussed by council offices.
Mayoral spokesman Cody Bowman says the resolution “will help share how that [charter] transition work is occurring” and will “transition how city bureaus are administratively managed to prepare for city administrator oversight.”