FeedsPortland City Council #1 Candidates: Clear support for the Commission-style of government
With Sam Adams running for mayor, that leaves an open seat on the Portland City Council. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of great candidates running for it. Since we have no idea who to support, we figured we would start out by simply asking the candidates questions that concern us. Rather than send out a large questionnaire, we're going to give the candidates time to reflect on the issues and provide us, and you, with a well thought out response. We have posted their responses below, unedited and in alphabetical order.
If you have a question that you think would be good for the candidates, drop us a line.
| Jeff Bissonnette | Portlanders have spoken loud and clear about their views on Portland's form of government, most recently in 2006 by soundly rejecting a proposed charter change that focused specifically on the form of government. That followed a similar resounding defeat in 2002 for a proposed change to the form of government. Therefore, it is a waste of time, energy and money to continue to push this topic. Portlanders are clear that they want their elected officials to work together in order to have the commission form of government operate smoothly, efficiently and effectively with responsiveness to resident and neighborhood concerns and a commitment to accountability. And that is what I intend to promote as a city commissioner.
To that end, here are some of the ways I will work to meet Portlanders' desire for a well-run, accountable city government.
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| John Branam | I do not support a move away from the commission style of government and towards a system where we elect our officials by district. Commissioners, by virtue of their specified role in Portland, are elected to represent citizens from across our city and not just those from a select group of neighborhoods. Obviously the commission-style design has at least one obvious defect: it has made it far more difficult for racial minorities to be elected City Commissioners because, among many other reasons, we're an overwhelmingly white community and, as in often the case in hiring, our tendency is to elect people that more often than not, look, and sound, like us.
As the only racial minority in the race for Sam's seat this challenge is not lost on me. That said, I am most interested in being elected by garnering support from across the city, rather than from singular segments or a singular district. Portland's challenges, and opportunities - including our needs to significantly improve education across the city, increase public and affordable housing, reinforce the vibrancy of our neighborhoods, reinvest in our infrastructure and support the growth of healthy businesses - are again not germane to a singular district. These challenges, and opportunities, are instead felt throughout Portland. Instead of changing our form of government I would advocate for ensuring our city provides genuine opportunities for all Portlanders, and especially those who have traditionally been excluded from positions of power and influence, to become involved in making important decisions. As is discussed in the city's Community Connect work, we should strongly encourage more involvement by all, be more open-mined to the format, style and location of meetings, and offer leadership training for communities traditionally disenfranchised. By following this plan I am convinced that we will broaden and deepen Portland's leadership pool. If Portlanders pursue this way forward the day will soon come that when our City's most significant leadership seats avail themselves our form of government will no longer be a racial barrier because the candidates will be known, well-respected, experienced, and diverse, just as Portlanders deserve. |
| Amanda Fritz | Not at this time. Portlanders have recently voted on the latest proposal to change our City's form of government, and decided to keep the Commission. It's time to make the structure we have work better for all. I believe the most important innovation allowing representation of advocates for underserved areas and underrepresented groups on the Council in Portland is Public Campaign Financing. We should give that system a chance to prove its worth before going back to discuss possible changes in the form of government. I collected donations to qualify for Public Campaign Financing for the 2006 Primary from 90 of the city's 95 neighborhoods, and have helped with volunteer projects in 85 of the 95. People all over the city know that I understand and care about issues that often are common to many neighborhoods, in outer NE the same as in deep SW. Take the election-buying influence of affluent people in a few areas of the city out of Portland politics, then let's see whether district representation is still desired or not. There are many advantages and disadvantages to both the current form and district representation. What we need right now is to elect a new Commissioner who will focus on prioritization of resources, both in the money budget and in productive and respectful use of citizens' time. When Portland has 95 safe, pleasant neighborhoods each receiving their fair share of necessary city services, then I might be willing to engage in a detailed, community-wide discussion of changing the form of government. |
| Charles Lewis | While I appreciate arguments for and against the commission style of government, I personally prefer Portland's current form of government over the idea of a "Strong Mayor" form of government. Because each Commissioner is directly responsible to the people of Portland, I believe that they are more responsive to community concerns.
For example, I started up and run a nonprofit for underserved youth called Ethos Music Center. Our headquarters is on the extremely busy intersection of Killingsworth and Williams in North Portland. About a year ago, one of our staff members was hit by a car while crossing the street in a crosswalk with the walk sign in her favor. Realizing that the street was dangerous, we called the City's Department of Transportation and asked them to fix the traffic lights. Having voiced our concerns, we waited several months as they "studied" the problem. About three months later, I watched in horror as another one of our staff members was hit by a truck in the same cross walk while crossing with the walk sign in her favor. I was furious. We tried working with the system, and it let us down. I followed the ambulance to the hospital where she was admitted. Once she was stabilized, I called every Commissioner that would take my call. I absolutely was not going to let the next victim be one of the hundreds of students that attend classes at Ethos every week. The Mayor's office and several Commissioners immediately jumped into action and the traffic lights were fixed the next day. It shouldn't take a call from the emergency room to get a response from the city, but I'm glad that the Mayor and the Commissioners reacted quickly when they were directly confronted with such a community concern. While many argue that a "Strong Mayor" system would be more efficient, I believe that our commission style of government makes City Hall more responsive to community concerns. Please check out our web site at www.CharlesLewis.com for more information about our campaign. We will be rolling out policy positions weekly over the next several months. |
| Chris Smith | I am a strong supporter of the Commission Form of Government in Portland. With former Mayor Bud Clark I chaired the recent campaign against Measure 26-91 which would have replaced our form of government with a Mayor/Manager form. Measure 26-91 did NOT provide for district representation. I was also a volunteer in the 2002 campaign that opposed another measure that WOULD have provided district representation.
Both measures failed by 3-1 margins and I believe the voters of Portland have a strong belief in the current form of government. The Commission form has two strong benefits that fit Portland very well. First, the combination of executive and legislative duties allow Commissioners to both develop policy (with the approval of their fellow Commissioners) and then carry it through to implementation. I believe this unique role attracts action-oriented people to the office of Commissioner and results in a faster rate of innovation in Government policy and programs here in Portland than in other cities. This is a distinctive competitive advantage for Portland. The second component is the first-among-equals role of the Mayor in Portland. While the Mayor enjoys a number of privileges (including the bully pulpit), the necessity of gaining two other votes for major decisions ensures a model of collective leadership that is very well suited to our political culture in Portland. District representation is not compatible with electing Commissioners with executive responsibilities. For example, we would not want the Parks Commissioner to only be responsible to a geographic subsection of the City. This would lead to obvious problems. As a neighborhood activist, I have also found it helpful that all five members of Council need to seek votes in each neighborhood. In a district representation system, some members of Council would have no accountability to many neighborhoods in the City. But there are also benefits to district representation. It's fair to say that East Portland has always felt under-represented in City Hall. I am open to discussing variations on our current system that retain the benefits of the Commission form while adding other features. For example, we might look at a hybrid form that added several non-executive Councilors, elected by district, to the current set of Commissioners on the Council. This could provide an element of geographic representation without disabling the innovative strengths of our current system, and still leave a majority of the Council elected at-large by all the citizens of the City. It might also add more objective oversight of budget issues from a set of Councilors who have no bureau budgets of their own to shepherd through the budget process. |
Wow. Clear support for the Commission style. It also seems like we have a pretty strong group of contenders for the seat.
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Comments from site editors have a darker background than comments from everybody else.I'm unfamiliar with all these names but the best response in my opinion is Bissonnette's - his simple goal setting is refreshing. Branam's and Lewis' sounded like a bid for high school president, Fritz's felt empty, and Smith's was good but too intelligent-sounding.
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While I was equally impressed with all of the candidates, I thought Branam made some good points about equality within the city (or rather, the lack thereof). Portland definitely does have some problems, and I think that part of it is due to our style of government.
I used to support the Commission style of government, but lately it has lost a lots of its appeal for me. This largely came about after the work I did for my thesis on turnout in Portland elections. One item to note is that in other cities, each city council member is "responsible" for a much smaller number of people than the council members in Portland. After all, no district in any city is as large as the 600-some-thousand Portland-at-large district.
That being said, the Commission style certainly does have some merit, as well as a very interesting history
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Too intelligent sounding? Seriously? That's a bad thing?
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No wonder our Portland public schools are in such trouble. We have the director of development for Portland public schools who makes a big public statement with multiple spelling errors. Awsum John!
Portlandurs fur John Branam!
I do not support a move away from the commission style of government and towards a system where we elect our officials by district. Commissioners, by virtue of their specified role in Portland, are elected to represent citizens from ACCROSS our city and not just those from a select group of neighborhoods. Obviously the commission-style design has at least one obvious defect: it has made it far more difficult for racial minorities to be elected City Commissioners because, among many other reasons, we're an overwhelmingly white community and, as in often the case in hiring, our tendency is to elect people that more often than not, look, and sound, like us. As the only racial minority in the race for Sam's seat this challenge is not lost on me. That said, I am most interested in being elected by garnering support from ACCROSS the city, rather than from singular segments or a singular district. Portland's challenges, and opportunities - including our needs to significantly improve education ACCROSS the city, increase public and affordable housing, reinforce the vibrancy of our neighborhoods, reinvest in our infrastructure and support the growth of healthy businesses - are again not germane to a singular district. These challenges, and opportunities, are instead felt throughout Portland. Instead of changing our form of government I would advocate for ensuring our city provides genuine opportunities for all Portlanders, and especially those who have traditionally been excluded from positions of power and influence, to become involved in making important decisions. As is discussed in the city's Community Connect work, we should strongly encourage more INVOVLEMENT by all, be more open-mined to the format, style and location of meetings, and offer leadership training for communities traditionally disenfranchised. By following this plan I am convinced that we will broaden and deepen Portland's leadership pool. If Portlanders pursue this way forward the day will soon come that when our City's most significant leadership seats avail themselves our form of government will no longer be a racial barrier because the candidates will be known, well-respected, experienced, and diverse, just as Portlanders deserve.
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That would be true... except that those "spelling errors" (known to the vast majority of the world as "typos") are my fault.
To Portland's credit, I didn't go to school here.
I've updated the post to remove the typos.
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I find the comments disappointing.
It is naive to continue to believe that our complex city of 600,000--slated to grow to 1,000,000 in 20 years--has "one" set of interests and needs. The reality of a non-districted system is that the high income, high turnout, close-in areas of the City continue to dominate city politics, supplying most of the candidates, most of the campaign resources, and get most of the benefits. Eastern (esp. far eastern) portland and north portland will never have any influence in the City until we have districts, and the traditional power brokers in PDX won't let that happen.
Charles Lewis says that the current system makes commissioners "directly responsible" to the voters. I just don't understand what this means. Is a member of the state legislature or a member of congress not "directly responsible"? And since Commissioner bureau assignments bear a) no relation to the election and b) change regularly, how does this possibly improve responsibility?
I've heard Chris's claim about innovation, but this has a distinct negative side. it means that an individual commissioner can develop policy outside of the scrutiny and collective wisdom of a larger legislative body. He presumes that these innovations are always good--but what if they are bad?
Is it really efficient to have five mini-mayors? My intuition and the experience we see around the country says no. That being said, this won't change. The powers that be are too invested in the current system.
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Let me give an example of the innovation that the Commission form can foster.
In response to the recent tragic deaths of two cyclists, Commissioner Adams pulled together PDOT leaders, private sector stakeholders and advocacy groups to create an IMMEDIATE plan to improve safety at over a dozen of the most dangerous intersections.
He will seek to have this endorsed by his Council colleagues, but much of it will be implemented using his executive authority.
If he were "just" a legislator, he would need to draft a resolution, get it adopted by the Council, then lobby the Mayor or City Manager to get swift action.
I like our model!
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Um, sorry Jeff but this is wrong. It was 2007:
Portlanders have spoken loud and clear about their views on Portland's form of government, most recently in 2006
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Posted by: Chris Smith on Wednesday, October 31 at 10:06 AM
Dude, Chris, did he Mentor you too? I mean really, the maintenance backlog has been around since he took office.
BTW - improving safety at dangerous intersection has been in the budget for the last three years. Why didn't Sam get it done instead of waiting till folks died? I'd love to hear the answer.
In response to the recent tragic deaths of two cyclists, Commissioner Adams pulled together PDOT leaders, private sector stakeholders and advocacy groups to create an IMMEDIATE plan to improve safety at over a dozen of the most dangerous intersections.
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