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A national consulting firm that offered its services free of charge to the Portland City Council to help the body run more smoothly and congenially has dropped out of the city’s procurement process.
That’s according to several sources at City Hall, who say HR&A Advisors, which sought this summer to help the new council work more efficiently and productively, decided not to continue as one of two finalists in the city’s procurement process.
And now the entire effort appears dead in the water, according to Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane, speaking at a Sept. 8 meeting of the council’s Governance Committee. Koyama Lane had spearheaded the effort to find a consultant.
Koyama Lane called the outcome “deeply disappointing.” She declined to provide WW with any information about what occurred, but she did say the council “is not in alignment about how and if to work with a consultant.”
Koyama Lane told her colleagues Monday that the procurement process “resulted in a single recommended organization to support council with this work.” (That’s the other finalist after HR&A dropped out. According to the city’s procurement database, the other finalist was Territory North America, Inc.). But because the council had identified no funding for the estimated $100,000 project, she said she would drop her efforts and no contract would be awarded at this time.
HR&A’s offer of free help this spring came as the 12-member council grappled with a vacuum of rules, policies and procedures in the new form of government that the city adopted at the beginning of the year following voter approval of a 2022 charter reform measure, and as tensions between councilors flared.
The city opened a formal bidding process for the work this summer. As The Oregonian reported in June, HR&A had initially offered its services free of charge to the city. But a handful of councilors balked at the lack of a formal process, and the council decided to move forward with a formal bidding process instead.
The city narrowed the search in recent weeks to two finalists.
But HR&A ended up dropping out last month. That left just Territory North America available for the work, a firm that had estimated its cost of work at $100,000, Koyama Lane told the Governance Committee on Sept. 8 .
HR&A did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
To be sure, HR&A’s free offer of help this spring wasn’t well received by all councilors. In particular, Councilors Loretta Smith and Sameer Kanal took issue in May with accepting an offer without conducting a more formal procurement process.
“I have a problem with us just talking to someone that we have not [agreed on],” Smith said during a May 12 council work session. “Just because they’re free does not mean these are the folks we should be hiring.”
Kanal said he’s seen “issues in other contexts with the idea of just choosing a vendor ahead of time. I don’t think that the act of synthesis is neutral....who we pick to do that work is vital, and the level of trust we have that the outcomes of that process will be reflective of what we want.”
Some councilors also questioned the scope of the work, intimating in May that HR&A’s work should not include helping the council set policy priorities. Still others, like Councilor Eric Zimmerman, expressed wariness about a national firm coming in to fix the council’s interpersonal issues.
“My armor is up a little bit about being handled by outside groups right now, or having something not be what it seems on the surface,” Zimmerman said. “So I’m slightly cautious here.”
