Portland charter reform: Proposed changes to city government, elections begin to take shape

Portland’s odd — and arguably dysfunctional — form of government will face the chopping block this fall, when voters get to decide whether to abandon the city’s century-old political system once and for all.

A detailed vision for its proposed replacement is only weeks away.

For the last 14 months, the city’s Charter Review Commission has explored sweeping changes to how Portland’s vast bureaucracy is run, the number of representatives who will serve on the City Council and how they’re selected.

Portlanders can weigh in on the possible recommendations Thursday night before members of the citizen-led body, convened at least once a decade to review the city’s founding document.

The commission will vote to adopt final proposals at the end of the month, with the hope of later referring those recommendations as charter amendments to November’s ballot.

If 15 or more of the commission’s 20 members agree on the proposed amendments, they do not have to go before the City Council for approval. If the amendments fall short of that threshold, the council must weigh in.

Proponents say the opportunity to radically reimagine City Hall is a crucial step in addressing many of the crises Portland has faced in recent years while boosting diversity and civic engagement within city government.

“Ultimately, we have a big opportunity at creating a participatory democracy and more accountable government,” said Anthony Castaneda, one of the co-chairs of the commission.

But just how far — and in what direction — the commission will go with some of its proposed reforms remains a significant hurdle.

They are weighing alternatives to Portland’s current form of government that places elected council members, many of whom have little or no executive experience, in charge of bureaus with massive operating budgets and workforces.

Perhaps more consequential — and uncertain — is where the charter review commission may land on the questions of how many councilors should represent the city and how Portlanders would elect them.

A leading measure under consideration would more than double the size of the City Council and move commissioners from at-large positions to smaller geographic districts.

But the commission may also move forward with proposals that would eliminate primary elections, allow voters to choose more than one candidate in a race and adopt a form of districting that would allow multiple council members to represent the same area.

“That’s a lot for public to metabolize,” said Jack Miller, a professor of political science at Portland State University. “For any movement, there is a balance between trying to make real substantive change while trying to be politically plausible.”

“Having said that,” Miller continued, “Portland’s also at a breaking point.”

Failed representation, action

Portland is the only big city in the country in which city council members each control a subset of the city’s bureaus and departments, rather than having a strong mayor or city manager to run the show.

The current charter invests nearly all powers in Portland’s four commissioners and the mayor, who is in charge of bureau assignments. Together, the five-member City Council has legislative, executive, administrative and quasi-judicial functions all at once, a remarkable melding of power.

“We’re electing people to manage bureaus and represent Portlanders,” said Amanda Manjarrez, a lawyer and public policy expert who helped conduct an in-depth study on Portland’s form of government several years ago. “It’s a big job and a big ask. Frankly, it’s too much to ask of anybody.”

The rules for electing city council members are equally dubious, observers say. The mayor and commissioners each run for office citywide, which has historically favored well-heeled or politically connected candidates from predominately affluent neighborhoods.

While the current council is the city’s most diverse to date — and includes three people of color, two of them women who live east of Cesar Chavez Boulevard — all four commissioners and the mayor were white men as recently as 2008.

A report published by the City Club of Portland in 2019, which Manjarrez co-authored, concluded that this form of electing representatives fails residents “by nearly every metric” and is “inherently inequitable.”

Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who entered office last year, shares a deep sense of frustration with the political status quo and has emerged as one of City Hall’s most vocal critics.

“I was well aware of the problems before I started serving on the council,” said Mapps, who launched a political action committee in October focused on promoting charter reform. “But every hour since has seemed to be a lesson in what is wrong with our commission form of government.”

Mapps pointed to the city’s sclerotic response last summer to remove a sprawling, unsanctioned homeless encampment in Southeast Portland’s Laurelhurst Park as a case study in government dysfunction.

Despite mounting concerns over public health and safety hazards for campers and nearby residents alike, it took months for the city’s siloed bureaus and programs — from parks to transportation to camp cleanup and removal services — and the commissioners who oversee them to agree on a plan.

“The fact you needed five elected leaders and dozens of staff members to overcome our form of government and take meaningful action is just a sign of how broken things are,” Mapps said.

That’s not always been the case. For years, Portland reveled in its reputation as one of America’s most livable, innovative and progressive municipalities. In 1995, it adopted “The City That Works” as its official slogan.

Portland voters have also previously shown little appetite for scrapping the city’s commission form of government since it was first created in 1913. Attempts to do so have failed eight times at the ballot box between 1917 and 2007, records show.

This time around could be different, said Miller, the Portland State professor, who pointed to the city’s seeming inability to respond to complex challenges amid a dramatic growth in population over the past 10 or 15 years.

“My sense as a citizen is that our so-called ‘City That Works’ has eroded significantly over the last decade,” Miller said.

Recent public opinion polling bears appears to bolster that sentiment.

More than 70% of likely Portland voters surveyed in December said they strongly supported electing commissioners by district rather than citywide, the firm DHM Research found in a poll produced for the Portland Business Alliance. Another 56% said they’d back switching to a form of government where a professional city manager oversees agencies and departments and reports to the City Council.

Meanwhile, 81% of likely voters said they viewed the City Council as either very or somewhat ineffective when it comes to providing public services, up from 55% a year ago.

Election questions

Such discontent informed the work conducted by the Charter Review Commission, which the mayor and city council appointed in late 2020.

The group’s members, most of whom have extensive public service records, span an array of professions, neighborhoods and racial and ethnic backgrounds. More than half identify as people of color or indigenous.

Since the fall, the commission and selected community partners have hosted more than two dozen listening sessions and surveyed about 4,000 people, according to a progress report published by the group last week.

Castaneda, the commission’s co-chair and a policy manager at Latino Network, an advocacy organization, said the body has built its work around the aim of proposing changes to Portland’s form of government that will make it more inclusive, responsive and accountable to the people it serves.

Commission members unanimously agree that City Council should no longer directly manage bureaus and that there should be a clear separation of executive and legislative functions in city government, the report shows.

But it’s not yet settled whether they’ll recommend Portland have instead a professional city manager that runs city agencies, a “strong” mayor who fills that role or a blend of both models.

“Any of those options would be an improvement from our current system,” Castaneda said.

Members of the charter review commission are also looking to propose eliminating citywide elections for all members of the City Council save for the mayor, moving instead to smaller districts based on geography.

That proposal would also include increasing the number of council members from the current five to anywhere between nine and 15, the commission says.

How council members from these proposed geographic districts are elected remains a somewhat thorny — and potentially consequential — matter.

According to the commission’s progress report, most members support proposing multi-member districts, where more than one candidate running in a race would be elected to represent a single district.

A majority of charter review commissioners also are in favor of eliminating contested primaries and moving to an election system in which voters rank candidates by preference.

Castaneda said such innovative election and voting models, which are used in a small but growing number of U.S. cities and states, would help increase the chances of diverse candidates winning office. But it may also prove challenging to persuade Portlanders to adopt them, he said.

“They’re not something easily explained in a 30-second sales pitch,” he said. “But with more voter education and engagement, people tend to come around to them.”

Mapps, a former political science professor, voiced his own concerns with such proposals, but added he’d remain agnostic until he had a chance to see the final versions.

“I have a Ph.D. in political science and I have trouble explaining some of these ideas. That’s a real challenge,” he said. “Charter changes need to be intuitive or else they risk turning off some voters.”

The charter reform commission has scheduled a virtual forum to solicit public comment on Thursday beginning at 6 p.m. The group is also seeking written testimony through an online portal.

Commissioners are scheduled to vote on the proposed charter reforms March 31 and will hold a series of additional public hearings in May. A final vote will be held in late June.