Meet Portland's Brave New Government
Poor Portland voters; they voted for a new charter and got...even more high-paid bureaucrats!
Kudos are in order for WillyWeek’s Pulitzer-hunting reporter Sophie Peel for noticing that Portland politics might be twisted by the new city charter: The Political Machines That for Decades Dominated Portland Elections Must Start From Scratch.
Too bad the article was about a year too late.
The Peel story was merely entertainment for the mouth breathing masses and missed the point that the progressive machine was busy—quietly, with almost no media scrutiny as usual— designing our Brave New Government. The process is being headed by the city’s current chief administrative officer, Michael Jordan, whose current job will cease to exist when the new charter kicks in.
A cynic might look at Mr. Jordan’s handiwork and conclude that he is proposing a really cushy deal for, well…himself, if the political winds blow the right way.
Which brings us to his boss, Mayor Wheeler, lame duck, who sounded a lot like the late Lyndon Johnson in saying…
Addressing our city’s critical challenges while, at the same, time, fundamentally reshaping city government requires all of my attention over the next 15 months…
...as he announced he won’t be running for a third term.
Like the president, Wheeler was essentially driven from office—in the mayor’s case by the ruthless arithmetic of the new charter’s ranked-choice voting scheme. He obviously ran the numbers, found that getting over 50-percent on the first count was impossible (for him and, probably, anyone else). Since he is a polarizing figure, it’s improbable that anyone who didn’t rank the mayor Numero Uno would give him the nod for second or even third place—which is where the final winner will emerge.
Then again, the ranked-choice voting scheme’s infamous “donkey” voting effect (in which some dumb voters simply rank candidates in the order they are listed on the ballot) might deliver votes to someone wildly improbable, even by Portland standards. Bottom line: the election will be unpredictable, erratic, and expensive.
Just another item the ranked-choice cult didn’t bother mentioning.
Wheeler’s retreat back to the land of inherited wealth—we’ll bet he’ll head some sort of think-tank nonprofit—was noted, rather casually, in local media. Kudos are also in order for the Oregonian’s hitman, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, who gets the award for best snotty lede…
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Wednesday he will not seek reelection next year, ending ongoing speculation that he might run for a third term despite his chronic inability to dent rampant homelessness and significantly curb crime and livability concerns.
Bye-bye, Ted.
Only Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Pravda of the political class, noted the release of Mr. Jordan’s Brave New government plan. Typically, OPB couldn’t say enough positive, warm, and welcoming about the plan under the headline, Portland’s new government will include more administrators, better accountability…
“It’s an exciting opportunity,” said Michael Jordan, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer whose office is responsible for managing the transition.
…with Mr. Jordan the only source quoted (except for one lukewarm graf quoting the business manager for Laborers Local 483, a union representing more than 600 city workers).
In 2022, Mayor Wheeler fired longtime Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart (listed as making an astonishing $504K), and plucked Jordan out of his job as chief of the office of management and finance (where, according to the Oregonian, has was paid $226K). How much is Jordan pulling down now? Your Google search might be better than ours—but it’s probably a lot.
No one has any idea what pay will be for the new administrative officer—or any of the other newly-minted bureaucrats. Or exactly what they’ll do. And who they’ll be (except that they won’t be elected). As we’ll learn by turning to this graphic representation of the Brave New Government…
…which has been dumped into the laps of the current members of the city council, who will have to figure this out by early October. Take it as a given that the five will be mired in self-interest and conflicts of interest and semi-declared candidacies for elected office and the prospect of those $133K (for councilors) and $175K (for mayor) paydays.
No one dared mention the irony of five pols who were, in effect, repudiated by a 58-percent majority in the last election now messing around with the structure of the next government which is supposed to clean up the mess they’ll leave in their wake.
But then it’s a “draft,” folks, so who knows how it will turn out.
Let’s skim through the graphic, with this question in mind: who ya gonna call when you want some help from the city?
You Want “Professionals”? We Got ‘Em!
Note that the new administrator will have five new “deputy city administrators” to help him out; each presiding over five big blobs of rearranged bureaucracy. Each will be managing a whole bunch of formerly “siloed” city bureaus that have never been very good at communicating laterally. Assume the usual number of petty rivalries and blame-shifting and ass-covering and get ready for at least a couple of years of inter-departmental chaos.
Even Mr. Jordan, deep in the bowels of the OPB story, said as much…
“It’s really about changing culture and changing behaviors, and changing the way that people think about how they work with each other and how they deliver for the community.”
But not to worry: they’ll be “professionals.”
Note that, in addition to his deputies, the city admin will have an assistant (duties unspecified) and a couple of new sub-bureaucracies…
…with more hires, including ill-defined feel-good jobs such as “communications,” and “engagement.”
Why the administrator (who sounds more and more like a character in a Kafka novel) would have anything to do with the operations and process of the city council is an interesting civics question. Sorta like President Biden (in moments of lucidity) telling Speaker Pelosi how to operate, say, the Capitol Police force.
A massive no-no.
Whoever becomes the defacto leader of the council (a bloody and entertaining fight in itself) might have a problem with giving up ample patronage positions. Or maybe they’ll just ignore the hapless bureaucrats in Council Operations. Or maybe the elected city auditor will make noises, since the charter gives that office power to create the council agenda.
And then there’s “Adapt to Impact” added to the administrator’s bulging portfolio…
…a collective of citywide programs that works across the city's 26 bureaus to strategically transform the city's engagement with impacted communities, especially those that have been underserved and under-engaged in policy, budget, development, planning, and programming decisions.
Ahhh, yes! The underserved. Who will now be over-served in the name of…
Equity!
…and here’s yet another new position on the chart, “Equity Officer.” The line for that position will be around the block as true believers seek to become the commissar of party purity. What powers will this person be given; how soon will they hunt down the first apostates? Unknown, but assume the worst.
Meanwhile…
The Mayor Gets a Poisoned Chalice
…a whole new bureaucracy blob, nicely positioned beyond the reach (and responsibility) of the city admin, even though it deals with some of the city’s most pressing problems that scream for “professional” attention. Problems that, to quote Mr. Kavanaugh, hounded Mayor Wheeler into throwing in the towel.
And what the heck are those rather shorthand references to “neighborhoods” and “districts”? Wasn’t the new four-district scheme supposed to take care of that?
…And Then It’s Snatched Away
The city administrator gets direct control over Community Relations, discussed above. Why the split? And isn’t a mayor’s highest duty (not to mention opportunity for vote-harvesting) to massage those “relations?”
That caught OPB’s attention, but Mr. Jordan pooh-pooed it…
“It’s about efficiency,” Jordan said. “Having every bureau respond to every district all the time is chaos. It isn’t that they don’t respond to local issues, but their real job is to keep the whole city running.”
Prediction: this will be a classic “nibbled to death by ducks,” position, since the new council is engineered not to think much about “city-wide problems,” but will be competing between the four districts for the biggest grab-bag of goodies for the folks back home. And the capon-mayor won’t have any point of leverage against predictably parochial councilors.
Add to that, a mayor running the Community blob will have to interface with the bureaucracies in the four Big Blobs to get any results—and we know from experience how that’s going to work out. If there’s any way that a mayor and city administrator will get crosswise, this is probably it.
Mr. Jordan promises more “transparency.” We detect more layers of deniability.
Meanwhile…
Being Police Chief Won’t be Worth a Pitcher of Spit
…to paraphrase a former vice president. The police chief will report directly to the mayor, sorta: the Police Bureau (or whatever it’ll be called) is also grouped in one of the five mega-blobs, where the chief may (or may not) be gazing up the greasy pole at both a deputy and the city admin. Or not.
Confusion will be doubled because the cops will also answer to a freaky 33-member Police Oversight Board made up of defunders, ex-crooks, neo-Marxists, and social justice types. They’ll have big money ($5-million is tossed around) and judicial powers.
They will make a mess.
Would you take a nightmare job like chief of police in this nutty system? Will the current police chief, Chuck Lovell, stick around, given the recent national turnover in black chiefs?
One-Stop Permitting? Who You Kidding?
Yah, Mingus Mapps lost the great battle of the building permits with Rene Gonzalez (both hunger for the mayor’s job); but a glance at the big, fat Community and Economic blob leaves one wondering how the famously non-cooperative bureaus will be goaded into actually serving customers.
It’s an open secret that Portland’s “housing crisis” has much to do with city attempts to mess with the rental market with back-door rent control, beating up developers with nutty system-development fees, passing dumb laws that created the infamous 19-unit distortion in apartment construction, siding with tenants by enacting anti-eviction laws, and, in general, a “we hate builders” attitude. (I say that having had direct involvement with the bullpen down on Fourth Ave.)
And there’s “Prosper Portland” out in limbo, as usual. Who’s going to bell that cat?
Keep in mind that no one really knows how the new, all-powerful, veto-proof council will be organized.
Proposed changes to city code 3.02 mandate positions of council president and vice president (the veep to come from a separate district than the prez, just to keep the west side from running the show). The president will be elected by a seven-vote majority, with duties, such as…
Assign seats in Council Chambers.
Name who speaks first when two or more Councilors speak at the same time.
Ensures Councilors confine themselves to the question under debate and refrain from personal criticism.
The proposed code amendments named the council president as “primary point of contact” between the mayor and city administrator—but that the phrase has been edited out.
Short version: anything goes.
As for the business of organizing the council, aside from the president deciding whether to send a proposed measure to a committee or the full council, 3.02 is silent: No mention of how many committees will be formed, what legislative areas they’ll cover, what powers they’ll have, and who will be on them.
Fact is, the council has virtually unlimited power to do what it damn well pleases, the mayor can’t veto anything, and the candidates mentioned in Ms. Peel’s better-late-than-never story do not inspire confidence. At this point, it looks like council meetings will be just another progressive conclave made up of the people who either wrote the new charter; serve on racial-preference nonprofits, which had the most clout in devising the charter’s minority-favoring structure; plus various young dreamers from the legislative aides sub-profession, toadies of the labor unions...in other words, the people who helped make Portland what it is today.
But then, if you’ve been following this ‘stack, you know that was the game all along.
RE: My above post
I realize the neighborhood associations are viewed in some circles as “part of the ‘problem’” - and perhaps are due for review. But that seems small potatoes compared to the the Rube Goldberg machine that’s been made out of “charter change”.
Neighborhood Coalitions Raise Alarm Over Proposed City Reorganization
https://share.newsbreak.com/50hij7gd
I think this was originally in the WW.
Could a Hail Mary pass from the neighborhood associations mitigate or at least slow down for reconsideration this convoluted so-called “ reorganization”?