Charter reform: what’s the real problem

Title: Charter reform
Author: David Yaden

Reforming Portland’s city charter should be a model of civic discourse and deliberation. It’s not shaping up that way.

Willamette Week yesterday published an important and telling story by Sophie Peel: “Charter reform has become a flashpoint for Portland’s deep disagreements about whom the city should represent and what its core values are.”

Everything I hear and read tells me people, are eager to get on with the fight. Few if any seem ready to acknowledge that the real problem is our inability to productively do the most basic work of governance — debating and settling on how we should govern ourselves. Sophie calls this “the latest and most galling exhibit of this city’s dysfunction.”

Civic dysfunction is our fundamental problem, and the way the campaign is unfolding could make it worse. OK, that’s civics 101 and who has time for that when the battle is already joined. (There is a modest suggestion below.)

For some time I have stewing about how charter reform was likely to shape up as a food fight, even a cage fight between progressives and the old guard. Sophie has laid bare the extent to which that already has happened, before most people have gotten past the most basic questions about what this complex set of reforms is all about.

Comments from the charter review commissioners and its supporters are full of exasperation that the work of the commission is not being respected and that any hint of doubt is just the old guard seeking to hold onto power. They seem surprised at all the questions and doubts about their good work.

True, they don’t have to look far in the reader comments of the Willamette Week story to find plenty of temper tantrums about “what did you expect from the woke crowd.”

And opposition to the reform package so far visible does look a lot like the old guard.

But this comment from one of the charter review commissioners is a disturbing portent of what is to come: “It’s incredibly disappointing, albeit hardly surprising, about the bad faith opposition that emerged…and I think Portlanders can smell what they’re selling.”

So, here comes the finger-pointing, the political consultants and fund-raising for TV and social media campaigns. For or against, no in-between or uncertainty. No more time for questions, just whose side are you on.

I do think there are plenty of good questions and uncertainties about the reform package. There is also a lot of hard work behind the review commission proposal that should be taken seriously for what it is, not who is behind it.

However I worry that what should be subjects of discourse will just become talking points and weapons in the war of words as the campaigns heat up. Aready there are signs the pro-reform-measure camp will treat questions as disrespecting the work of the review commission and as illegitimate based on where they come from. On the other side, consultants will want to use questions and uncertainties to sow doubt about the measure.

We will have an election result, with winners and losers. Whether the result resolves anything without exacerbating our civic dysfunction is questionable.

Here’s my idealism: democracy needs for questions to be legitimate, part of the essential public conversation. We have strayed when it becomes a matter of who raises a question rather than the substance of it. This is doubly true when we are talking about constitutional questions, how we organize to govern ourselves.

This campaign threatens to become one more deep tear in Portland’s civic fabric, its capacity for “coming to public judgment” on important questions.

‘Public judgment’ refers to the public’s viewpoint once people have had an opportunity to confront an issue for an extended period of time and to arrive at a settled conviction. It represents people’s second thoughts after they have pondered an issue deeply enough to resolve all conflicts and tradeoffs and to accept responsibility for the consequences of their beliefs.

Daniel Yankelovich and Sidney Harman, “Starting with the People“

I have lived by that ideal for a long time so here is my radically idealistic suggestion:

Both sides agree to limit the amount spent on campaign advertising and instead make the focal point of the election an extensive series of well-moderated debates and forums that will allow people to ponder the issue deeply and arrive at “settled convictions.”