History lesson

Mark Oliver* at Portland’s Future Charter provides a fascinating history lesson on Portland in 1913, when the current Charter was adopted. For instance, did you know that the population of Portland was 258,288 in 1913? That’s a lot of people. The commission form of government has served millions of citizens well, from the date of the Charter’s adoption through today.

b!X makes other especially good points:

“Imagine if we changed the U.S. Constitution to provide for 100 votes in the Senate, but only for the election of 80 Senators, with the remaining 20 votes being cast by the President. That’s what the Charter proposal bound for the May ballot would institute in Portland.”

The proposed Charter doesn’t institute a “Strong Mayor” – as Bud Clark points out, we already have a system with a strong mayor. No, the proposal is for a ridiculously-strong Mayor who not only controls all the bureaus and citizen committees, but also one fifth of the legislative vote. That’s too much power for one person.

And, again from b!X:

“The proposal the Mayor is pushing in essence moves the city from five people “that aren’t experts” running the bureaus to a single person that isn’t an expert — the chief administrative officer, who can’t possibly be an expert in every single bureau.”

“So? The CAO will hire professional managers to run the bureaus”, is the cry of Charter change proponents. But we ALREADY hire professional managers to run the bureaus. They’re called Bureau Directors, and their salaries are higher than those of Council members.

How much would the proposed Charter changes cost? The proponents have refused to say, and aren’t putting an estimate on the ballot for voters’ consideration in May. Let’s get real: one Chief Administrator is not going to be able to keep track of 23 bureaus and a $2 billion budget alone. Several Deputy Chief Administrative Officers would need to be hired – all at corporate rates, since of course we would want to attract and retain people capable of managing a huge business. Say, four of them. Hey wait, that’s how many Commissioners-in-charge we currently use for administrative oversight of bureaus, at salaries of around $80k/year!

How is hiring an additional layer of five adminstrators, at a cost of over $1 million per year, more efficient and cost-effective than our current structure? How is taking accountability away from elected officials likely to improve our city? How will giving so much power to one person, reducing the capacity of the Council and of citizens to affect policy and implementation in Portland, benefit the long term public good, which our current Charter has served so well?

*14:40 Author amended as corrected in the comments