Skip to main content
Responding to a damning city audit of a sewer office building that tripled in cost, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales is proposing a public report to track cost increases on any contract or construction project that goes before City Council.
The chart would be color-coded, like the terrorism alert system once used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. But the city's color palette would warn how much the the price tag of a project had risen from the original estimate.
"It would be really hard for any City Council to say, 'Gosh, we didn't know about this,'" says spokesman Dana Haynes.
The proposal is Hales' latest response to a Bureau of Environmental Services office building that rose in cost from $3.2 million to $11.5 million. But he is backing off his idea this spring that such reforms be cemented in city code.
A city audit released last week showed bureau officials ignored instructions not to increase the contract for the architect of the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant support facility. City Commissioner Nick Fish placed BES director Dean Marriott on paid leave while the city hires outside investigators.
In April, WW reported that on five occasions between 2010 and 2012, the council agreed to keep spending more money on the building, and did so without debate.
Hales ordered in May that all contract increases over $1 million be immediately taken off the City Council's consent agenda, where items considered routine are passed without debate. He also said he wanted a full policy discussion on changing city code to make these reforms permanent.
WW asked the mayor's office Oct. 22 whether Hales was still seeking those code changes. Hales' office responded today by releasing the color-coded chart. (You can download it here.)
The tracking system flags cost increases with colors—yellow for a 5 percent hike, orange for 15 percent, and red for 25 percent.
Haynes now says that city finance chief Fred Miller convinced Hales that code changes were overkill. Miller showed all city commissioners the proposed tracking system Oct. 24.
"The mayor's initial thought was we needed a code change," Haynes says. "That now seems duplicative. And this seems like it really get to the heart of the issue."
In an audit of released Oct. 22, City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade scorched city officials for not keeping tabs on the building's budget.
"Council oversight of these project contracts was hindered by limited information that BES provided to council," the audit said. "Nine formal communication opportunities included budget requests, descriptions of the design and construction contracts and proposed contract amendments. Generally, they did not convey the extent of increasing project scope or contract costs compared to the original contract."
Haynes says the new chart responds to the auditor's warnings about transparency. He says the tracking system will also be available to the public on a city website.
"This will make it harder," he says, "to have that argument that we just didn't know that was happening."
WWeek 2015