'We Don' Need No Stinkin' Charter!'

The pols gaze upon their works.

It’s always a beautiful moment for a dissenter to watch as our local political mediocrities realize they can’t stuff a genii they have allowed to escape back into the bottle.

You may have missed the tippy-toe stories in a few of our local legacy media, but—golly! The Gang of 17 charter commissioners has finally delivered a rather alarming document.

“Radical” hardly tells the tale. (As we have been reporting for the last six months.)

Here’s how Oregon Public Broadcasting, which managed to say very few words about the Charter Commission’s cogitations as they were going on, reported the latest wrinkle…

A sweeping November ballot item aimed at fundamentally changing Portland’s form of government and elections received a lukewarm reception Wednesday from the Portland City Council.

Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Mingus Mapps — the two council members who had been the most vocal in favor of changing the city’s charter — voiced the deepest reservations during a Wednesday presentation on the potential amendments, which would mean a dramatic rewriting of their job descriptions.

Mapps said he felt the volunteer group that proposed the amendments was trying to cram too many changes into one ballot measure. Wheeler said he was concerned any future mayor would be “an employee of the legislative body.”

Let’s pause a moment and recall that the charter commissioners were appointed by the City Council. Memories are kinda short down at the Hall.

If you have been reading our reports on the charter, you will know that, broad-brush, the group of 17 “yes” voters decided to…

• Chop the city into four huge districts (while refusing to say where the lines will be drawn—thus posing the horrific possibility that Laurelhurst and Cully, or Sellwood and Felony Flats will be joined in shotgun marriages).

• Each district will have three councilors…why just three? Don’t ask.

• All three will miraculously cooperate and collaborate and have a really nice time working together. Guaranteed.

• Councilors will be selected by a strange, mathematical-nightmare voting system called ranked choice voting in which some lucky voters will have their votes counted two or three times. The top three vote-getters will win election and automatically will be besties. Think of the last election, which would have put the city’s reigning racist, Jo Ann Hardesty, together with Vadim Mozyrsky and Rene Gonzalez into office. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch?

• One mayor (why just one? Don’t ask.) who will, essentially, have no power—except to “run” the city with a “professional” sidekick. No vote, no veto, but loads of bitching from the 12-member council who will happily offload their policy failures onto the poor sap’s shoulders. Note: this is a job not even Mayor Whatshisname would want to grab.

As we explained, most recently here, the entire exercise is based on race. That’s not my view, but the Commission’s (through its mouthpiece, the Coalition of Communities of Color), which has said in each of its six “Progress Reports” that…

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.

Short version: Portland’s too integrated, so we’ve got to get minorities elected with another method.. Thus weird voting and three-member mega-districts.

This is no surprise, for a couple of reasons:

Most of the members of the Commission (and all of the yes votes) came from people carefully picked to represent race-specific or sexual-politics pressure groups. Of course, there were token reps for the public employee unions and downtown business interests, but they could be easily outvoted. IE: the fix was in from the get-go.

Most of the commissioners are youngsters, short on “lived experience,” and long on gauzy ideals. They’re fresh out of the various factory-schools and rarin’ to go as budding members of the monolithic progressive machine. Let’s start an office pool on how many will be on the ballot if the Charter flukes through—which we’ll get to in a minute.

Is it any coincidence that the leading voice of caution on the commission—and a no vote—was David Knowles, who served as the city's planning director in the 1990s. He was quoted, briefly, saying…

This has never been done in the U.S. before. It's an experiment and I am very concerned that at this point in our city's history we shouldn't replace the form of government unique in the country with a form of government that hasn't been proven.

Memo to Mr. Knowles: progressives and proof do not go hand-in-hand.

The true oddity is that City Commission Mingus Mapps was openly skeptical of the Charter Commission’s scheme. Wasn’t he the guy who started a PAC to promote a new charter after running a campaign based on two things…

• Dump the odious Chloe Eudaly and,

• Get a new city charter.

His campaign pitch for the charter used all of the usual buzz-words and progspeak which promised…

….a government that works better for us, that’s more representative of Portland, and that honors the amazing work being done today by our community groups and nonprofits in a more meaningful way.

…and…

…this [present] government creates dysfunction, silos and makes Portland a city that doesn’t work.

And now…skepticism. Another Portland ‘stack, Rose City Reform, interviewed Mapps in April, before the Charter Commission dropped its load, and allowed him to speak at more than newsbite-length. It’s interesting reading.

On the 12-member council, and triumvirate representatives, Mapps had this to say…

I can't think of a legislative body which is set up in a similar fashion. It is inevitably going to cause problems. I would be shocked if we pass this and then don't find ourselves revisiting that decision at some future date. Creating the option for councilors to be at a stalemate is just not wise.

…and…

I'm not a huge fan, frankly, of multi-member districts…

…and…

I think ranked choice voting is just introducing an awful lot of confusion. I'm not sure how it would impact our system, which is one of the reasons I'm skeptical. If you look at a reform and you can't really tell what benefits it's going to bring, or how it's going to change your politics, then why are you doing it?

That was in April; the charter was still an uncooked egg.

How is Mr. Mapps going to square the circle now that the egg has been cooked and dropped into his lap? At the City Council hearing on the proposed charter, he said…

My deepest disappointment with the process and the products that we’re seeing today is that voters will not have a chance at considering each one of these questions separately…

Mr. Mapps thus telegraphed a wink-wink to Oregon’s terrifying Secretary of State, Shemia Fagan, the ultimate arbiter of what gets on the ballot (just ask would-be-governor Nicholas Kristof). The state constitution says that ballot measures must be a “single issue.” Unless she buys the idea that the charter is just one big undivided lump, then it’s a goner. Another commission no voter, the ever-present Vadim Mozyrsky, has promised to campaign against the document. There’s talk about lawsuits.

Looks like a mess in the making.

What must keep pols like Mr. Mapps awake at night (after he thanks god for having such a beatable opponent last election), is the Portland electorate. Naive would be a charitable term: after all, they put the state’s vote on legalizing hard drugs over the top and fell for the loony “rip-off the successful” Metro income tax to fix homelessness and—yes—once voted for Chloe Eudaly, as they voted before her for the tiny terror, Steve Novick.

Then, too, we’ll guess that Mr. Mapps looked at the mayor’s job description and wondered: why would I want to climb the greasy pole of politics to get such a woefully thankless no-power job? With some “professional” looking over my shoulder who I couldn’t fire without the Council overruling me?

One senses that the real issue isn’t that a 12-member council could split evenly and jam the wheels of government. Nor is it that ranked choice voting is a tough sell to the bozos.

The tip-off is that the muttering comes from incumbents, pols who are now in the actual business of retail politics. The idea of cutting 11 others in on the game probably fills them with dread. Truth be told, they like the power to make bureaucrats jump within their silos. They’ve seen how Jo Ann Hardesty, put out to pasture at the Fire Bureau by Mayor Whatshisname, parlayed that post into the formation of her very own quasi-police unit. Hard to see Ms. Hardesty getting 11 other reasonably sane people on her side for such a caper.

The incumbents might not really want to give more power to the non-profits and self-ordained “community” groups, which are made up of eager-beavers who could easily put together slates of candidates who will be able to grab third place and win with fewer votes, thus magnifying the power of…well, for a starter: the Coalition of Communities of Color! (Which has been running the Commission’s PR apparatus and conducting “listening sessions”—predominantly with POCs.)

Nor would any incumbent want to actually “represent” a given geographical area— such as Cully, with its myriad problems and few political donors—although four mega-districts would, probably, keep the constituents at arm’s length.

As a rule, do not believe any of the eyewash from pols about “the pee-pul.” As Mr. Mapps remarked, viz the primaries that will go bye-bye with ranked-choice voting…

I learned so much more and I got to engage more deeply with Portland voters.

But—really—pols quickly come to realize that the mopes on the sidelines will drive you nuts with petty, ill-informed, usually mendacious demands, most of which cannot be solved, nor should they be. (That’s the same reason professional pols have a particular kind of handshake that can be easily disengaged when a voter tries to crush their fingers, which is guaranteed to happen in every campaign.)

You can hear the moving vans start to roll after some future commission draws the district borders, as pols shop for the best districts to represent—usually the ones with voters who will also contribute and who will be instantly whipped into paranoia that some other district will get a bigger slice of the pie.

The Charter Commission’s view of districts verges on utopia (not unusual for progressives)…

Because multiple leaders would represent one area of the city, this would also increase opportunities for collaboration and coalition building for geographic-based issues between those leaders.

…and…

Multi-member districts are designed to address the fact that it's incredibly difficult for any one single elected individual to represent the diversity of viewpoints and experiences in a geographic district.

Which begs the question: why just one mayor? If the payoff is collaboration, diversity, experiences, etc., why not have…well, pick your number. If the job’s too big for a district of the city, why even have a mayor?

What about the real dons of political power—the public employee and teachers unions? Their representatives on the Commission voted for the measure, but they’re quiet players who like to work the back rooms. Surely, Mr. Mapps must have heard something from the deep-pocketed folks. Wonder what it was?

From the perspective of, let’s say, AFSCME, it’s easier to buy (or intimidate) five City Council members than shell out to dozens of wanna-be’s who might fluke into office. The voting system might even allow some actual raw-meat conservatives to get a megaphone on council. Perish the thought!

The attack on the antique charter, by Mr. Mapps and his allies, has long hinged on the need—the desperate save-us-from-perdition-need!—to hire “professionals” to, somehow, manage the city. This is a revisit of the old “we need a businessperson in government” argument, disproved in as many cases as it has been carried out. (See: Maker, deal; Donald J. Trump.)

Then there’s the argument that elected representatives are “amateurs” when it comes to running a bureaucracy, although the Charter gang had no problem with giving these “amateurs” the job of setting policy, which is a far tougher and no less technical job. Why the difference?

Oh yah; the mayor will have “help.” A “professional.” Who will arrive from some university faculty or corporation with stock-slippage or (god help us) from McKinsey…a savior!

Let us note that some professionals sitting behind a city manager’s desk turn into mini-tyrants who hang on to the power and paycheck by currying back-office alliances with certain pols on the council—just a favor here, a move to the front of the line there. Bingo! A majority!

If that doesn’t work, there’s the ageless tactic of snowing the elected mopes down with paper. The nasty facts will be there, but buried under a flood of acronyms, footnotes, details-details-details. (See: “Progress Reports #1-6 by the Charter Commission.)

The savior will, by necessity, be unelected—which is the curse of our city’s bloated bureaucracies. Try giving PBOT’s honcho, Chris Warner, a jingle some day to complain about potholes. His number is 503-823-1055. Good luck.

The basic problem of the proposed charter is that it has been crafted to address today’s problems and political ambitions without a sense that it might be around for a century, as has the current, much despised document.

Which, it should be noted, did not stop Portland from becoming the nation’s 25th biggest city. And that did not prove ungovernable to the sainted Vera Katz and Bud Clark. And did not prevent the city’s remarkable development of the Pearl, or the creation of one of the nation’s greatest urban parks (which, true to the spirit of the displacement of food carts by a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, should now be covered in condominiums).

It is a document that simply cannot admit that there are times when goofy people, incompetents, egomaniacs, thieves will get elected (or wind up climbing the bureaucracy) and that a proper document (such as the US Constitution) ought to create a system that won’t be trashed when that happens. That fences in democracy with guardrails. That keeps a momentary majority from doing stupid things. That assigns responsibility.

The Charterites weren’t interested in the long game. They are looking through their own “lenses.” That’s not my view; it’s theirs, in black-and-white, brought to you by the Coalition of Communities of Color…

Increasing opportunities for communities of color to elect their candidates of choice has also been a driving goal for the Commission.

Let’s put a thumb on the scales.

It’s really all about self-interest.

Tribes.

Mingus Mapps is right. It’s a loser.