Two years of deep thinking...and we get this?

The Charter Commission coughs up a proposed charter--and oodles of questions.

It took twenty hand-picked ethnic/racial/sexual-preference representatives of various “community” pressure-groups two years of cogitation to cough up a new proposed charter. And what did we get?

It’s a doozy—if you can read between the lines. Which is not something Portland’s goofy voters are adept at doing.

As usual, our local media didn’t give the voters much help, beyond rewriting the Commission’s PR yap-yap. The Oregonian, amazingly, didn’t even feature it on their crazy-quilt Oregon/Live web site.

So what’s the real story?

Just to give us the ground-level view, here’s what the Commission says it has served up:

1. Shift the constituency of City Council from all at-large seats and increase the size of City Council

2. Shift from the commission form of government to a form of government in which City Councilors do not directly manage bureaus

3. Shift to a form of voting that allows a decision in one election, eliminates the primary, and adopts a voting method that captures people′s preferences

Each one of these bullet-points is, in its own way, a masterpiece of misdirection.

Who wins in “shifting” the constituency

We’ve been told by the usual media scolds—and the Commission—that Portland is the only city in the entire USA which still has the “commissioner” form of government. Portland loves being an outlier—but here, not so much.

The present charter, which voters have never voted to change in over a century, has produced some dogs: Mayor Whatshisname and a few predecessors, such as Charlie Hales (who took the brakes off homelessness) and Sam Adams (who couldn’t keep his hands to himself)—but also “Dauntless Dottie” McCullough Lee, Tom Potter, Bud Clark, Vera Katz. It’s not the charter that puts the mopes like Wheeler, Jo Ann Hardesty, Chloe Eudaly, and many others into office.

It’s us.

The Commission’s solution is to divide up the city into four big districts—without telling anyone where those district lines will be drawn (details-details-details).

But here’s the subtext, in the Commission’s own words:

Increasing opportunities for communities of color to elect their candidates of choice has also been a driving goal for the Commission. Portland does not have a geographic distribution of BIPOC residents that could allow for a drawing of a majority BIPOC district, nor does it have the level of income or age segregation and stratification that characterizes other large cities. The Commission favored reforms that would more likely give smaller and historically under-represented communities (e.g., renters, young residents, communities of color, minor political parties) a greater ability to form coalitions to elect candidates of their choice.

This is keeping with the Commission’s “partnership” with the Coalition of Communities of Color…and in the disproportion iof all that “listening.” Peruse one of their charts, if you have any doubts:

Case closed.

Let’s play games with districts…

Here’s where the Commission’s surreal thinking enters the picture. Each new district will have three elected representatives.

This would seem to fly in the face of the Commish’s complaint that, under our charter,

There′s a lack of accountability and no one is in charge.

Imagine the round-robin of finger-pointing between three supposed representatives in these four huge districts. Who ya gonna call when the potholes don’t get filled?

Get real.

But there’s a racist game going on here, as a backdoor to one of the Commish’s sacred “desired outcomes:”

“A reflective government with Councilors who look like the community they represent.”

Dare we wonder what these public servants should “look like?” (To ask is to answer.)

It’s all in the fine print in the Commish’s latest Progress Report, where they duck actually telling us who goes where—but makes sure that…

Other factors could also include natural geographic and transportation network boundaries and preserving communities of common interest.

Awww, c’mon out and just say it. Jo Ann. Hardesty needs that guanteed $125K annual salary to pay off her credit card debt.

…and with voting

Everyone who bothers to vote knows that the traditional system of “first past the post” voting produces…well, clear winners (Trump and Biden included). Majority rules, but the founders built in institutions to slow down the passions of the 50.1%, such as the Supreme Court. Seems to have worked for over two centuries.

To guarantee the lookability of the winners, the Commish wants to move to a weird, math-heavy form of ballot called ranked choice voting. It supposes that the city’s voters—never noted for their deep-thinking (which leads to the above mentioned mopes)—will now be presented with a laundry-list of candidates and will rank them according to…well, probably, for some, their lookability. Others will, in the best Portland tradition, go for “weirdness.” Others will just throw darts.

Some will refuse to rank-choice; in other jurisdictions, voters who don’t play the game get their ballot tossed. (Details-details…the Commish is silent on this little twist.)

Once the ranked choices have been made by voters, the folks running the election will start playing around with numbers, transferring votes from the candidates on the bottom to those higher up to arrive at a winner and, probably, a surprise. New York City tried this lash-up in their last election and one of the words frequently mentioned in headlines was, “mess.” The candidate who finally won in NYC, Eric Adams, said that shenanigans by two candidates who were trying to game the ranked choices were—wait for it—racist!!!

Here’s what one observer, Harvey Mansfield, a professor at uber-liberal Harvard, had to say:

A question for progressives: If equity consists in making human beings equal to one another, why is it just or reasonable to rank them?

The idea of ranked choice voting is to prevent “fringe” candidates from mucking-up the results…but if the top three vote-getters are automatically selected, then fringe types (Hello, Sarah Iannarone!) are even more likely to get a seat behind the bully pulpit.

In any event, the Commish is—need we say it? Silent on this little detail.

Nor are they forthcoming about how the transition to this form of voting, and the multi-member districts will be transitioned.

Bottom line: think elections are a mess today—get set for a brighter tomorrow!

And what about the mayor?

Here’s where the Commish gets a little iffy. Short answer: they’ll get back to us on that:

The Charter Commission continues to discuss the unanswered questions related to Form of Government reform, particularly around the extent to which a Mayor should have a role on City Council. Outstanding questions the Commission is evaluating include whether a Mayor is a formal member of council, and if so what are their powers to propose policy, veto ordinances, and preside over a meeting; how and when would a Mayor vote, and whether the firing of a city manager/ administrator should involve the input of City Council. A majority of Commissioners believe a Mayor should not have veto authority.

Who do you suppose will run for mayor if they don’t sit on the City Council, don’t have a vote, don’t have a veto and need a majority of the multi-member council to hire a city manager…which he/she/they can’t manage, since the Commish envisions a…

…hybrid system where Mayor and council should together create performance expectations of the bureaus but not directly manage or hire/fire bureau directors.

Where’s Charlie Hales when we need him?

And remember…

Not one of the Charter Commissioners voted against this mess.