In my first commentary on Portland city charter reform, I said:
The charter recommendations give too little attention to community building, governmental effectiveness and accountability.…
We should be wary of the thrust of the recommendations that wants to diminish one of the few offices [mayor elected city-wide] where we can look for an overall program and to hold someone clearly accountable.
After listening to the meeting today (Friday) of charter reform commission members with the Mayor and City Commissioners, I am encouraged that this may yet be corrected, at least partially.
The Mayor and most Commissioners said, in one way or another, the role of the mayor in the proposed recommendations needs to be clarified to make sure she has the authority to be held truly accountable for “the buck stops here.”
It appears the charter review commission members are open to giving the office of mayor a tie-breaking vote and/or a veto. In addition, they will clarify that the mayor is invited (expected?) to submit legislative proposals to the council.
The tie-breaker vote solves the obvious problem that can arise from a 12-person council. The veto power makes the mayor—the only official elected city-wide—directly accountable to voters for comporting council enactments with the broadest possible public interest.
If the charter review commission does make these changes to its recommendations, as I wrote earlier,
we could elect a mayor using ranked choice voting who would truly reflect a strong and broad agreement on a direction for the city as well as the preferences of minority voters; more mayors from the east side.
In short we can have governance of Portland that is both more equitable and more effective and accountable.
The charter review commission members appear to be quite certain that their other recommendations regarding size of city council, multi-member districts and use of ranked choice voting for the council are both governmentally and politically solid.
As to whether they are governmentally the best, I am of the mind that no governmental arrangement has proven itself so far superior on all counts that we should adopt it. I can argue either way on most of these items but I am perfectly willing to say debate over them should not get in the way of making needed reform. (As long as we get the role of the mayor clarified as outlined above. We need a chief executive office that will attract outstanding candidates.)
To be clear, it is time to get rid of the commission form of government. With the tweaks suggested above to the charter reform recommendations, Portland governance will be better, even if there are outsized expectations that adoption of a new charter will yield big, quick fixes to Portland’s problems.
As to the judgment of the charter review commission that they have the package with best possible chances for adoption by voters, that’s a political judgment. That being the case, and it being too late to change much, I will only repeat what I wrote earlier: I think they are overly optimistic. I hope I am wrong.