PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland is now less than a year away from abandoning the commission-style form of government that the city has used for more than a century. It's a dramatic change, and the plan that Portlanders approved in late 2022 gave the city only two years to prepare. With half of that time already gone, city leaders are racing against the clock to meet that deadline.
The mayor and commissioners function as the city council and also directly oversee city bureaus under the current system, but the overhaul will split up those roles. The council will expand to 12 members — three from each of four new geographic districts — and it will only set policy. The mayor will no longer be on the council and will instead oversee a professional city administrator in charge of all day-to-day operations.
"For the first time, there will only be one person that kind of calls the ball, if you will, for the city, rather than five elected officials that the bureaus report up to," explained Portland Chief Administrative Officer Michael Jordan.
Jordan previously directed Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services, and before that, he was a Clackamas County Commissioner and worked for 11 years at Pacific Power and Light. Jordan was a guest on this week's episode of "Straight Talk" to help make sense of the new city government structure and provide an update on the progress of the transition process.
How did we get here?
The government transition plan is brand new, but it began with a process that Portland has undertaken many times. Under the city's current charter, the city council required to appoint a charter review commission every 10 years to examine the city's government structure and recommend improvements, which are then put to voters for approval.
Portlanders have historically rejected every proposed government system change and opted to stick with the commission model, but the 2020 charter commission was convened at a time of significant public frustration with the city's government, and the group responded by proposing a radical overhaul. And when Portland voters got a chance to weigh in on the commission's proposal in November 2022, they decided it was finally time to take the plunge on a new system.
Portland is currently the biggest city in the U.S. that still uses the commission form of government — all the others have switched to various systems like "strong mayor" or "mayor-council," Jordan explained. Portland's new system will still have some unique quirks, but the key thing it will have in common with those other models is that it will make just one person accountable for the entire executive branch.
"What I tell people is we're actually moving from being the outlier to being in the norm of how city governments operate in the United States," Jordan said.
Jordan's role
As the city's Chief Administrative Officer under the current government structure, Jordan reports to Mayor Ted Wheeler and is in charge of human resources, technology services and the city vehicle fleet and facilities. But he's taken on a major new role for the past year.
Shortly after Portland voters approved the charter reform proposal, the city council appointed Jordan to lead the team handling all the aspects of implementing the transition, such as setting up a commission to determine city's four new geographic districts, another commission to set new salaries for elected officials and a committee to gather public input.
One of the biggest tasks has been to fully map out the structure of the new form of government, including the service department structure that will replace the bureau system and where every city employee will fit into the hierarchy that reports up to the city administrator.
The past year has been the "architectural phase," he explained, coming up with an overall new design to present to the council for evaluation. Now that the council has given final approval, the transition project is now in the "construction phase," trying to get everything set up to "hand the keys over" to a new mayor and council in January 2025.
New organizational chart
Jordan's office published a proposed organizational chart last year, dividing the city's services into six primary areas: Budget and Finance, City Operations, Community & Economic Development, Public Safety, Public Works and "Vibrant Communities," which includes arts, parks and recreation and the Portland Children's Levy. The council formally adopted the organizational structure in November.
Each of those departments will be run by a separate deputy administrator, and they'll all report to the main city administrator. There are a few other positions that will report to the city administrator but be outside of those six departments, such as a city equity officer and an assistance city administrator in charge of things like communications. Jordan said the administrator and six deputies will likely form "the core of the executive team for the city."
The city attorney, chief of police and chief of staff will report directly to the mayor instead of the city administrator, and the Portland Auditor will be in charge of a separate division outside of the rest of the government structure. Keeping the police chief outside of the department structure might appear odd at first glance, Jordan said, but some other cities do it that way, too.
"It's not unusual to have the elected body or the elected executives retain the authority, particularly for police chiefs; it's such an important role in local government," he said.
Rapid transition
In order to allow the new government structure to function immediately out of the gate, the current city council will appoint an interim city administrator and other interim leadership staff later this year, Jordan explained, and the city will officially transition to the new structure on July 1, even though the new mayor and council won't be elected until November and won't take office until January 2025.
Jordon's current job won't exist after July 1, but Wheeler has hinted during past council discussions that he may want to see Jordan move into the interim city manager position at that point, and Jordan appeared to acknowledge that possibility this week — although he said whether he remains in the job after the November election will depend on whether the mayor-elect wants him to stay.
"We'll see what happens, but if I'm in that acting city administrator role, the day after the election, I'll be calling the mayor-elect and saying, 'Probably your most important decision this first term will be to hire the city's first city administrator,'" he said.
The new mayor will need to start the search right away, he said, but the overall hiring process could take four to six months. When asked if he'd be interested in the permanent position, Jordan said he will "probably not be an applicant," adding that he feels he's "a little old" for the job.
What will it mean for city employees?
Portland employs more than 7,000 people, and Jordan said the vast majority of them will see very little change in their day-to-day work because the city will still need to provide all of the same essential services. The transition is also not intended as a headcount reduction measure, he added — if anything, many of current bureaus often seem overwhelmed by work.
"Having said that... the city's facing a pretty tough budget year," he said. "The Bureau of Development Services has already laid off 56 folks, and I would imagine the Bureau of Transportation is facing potential layoffs this year also. So that doesn't mean there won't be layoffs, but they're not associated with the transition, at least not initially."
The big changes will be on a broader level. The city's current structure is "good at being vertical," Jordan said, meaning that the chain of command is very clear within each bureau, all the way up to the mayor or commissioner in charge. The problem is that the city isn't so good at being horizontal, meaning taking actions that cross multiple bureaus.
"Most of the big problems we face are multi-disciplinary," he said, "and it is almost impossible for one bureau or one office to resolve those really big problems."
Cost of the new government
The cost of running the new government has become a particular point of controversy in the past year. The estimate in the 2022 voter initiative was $900,000 to $8.7 million per year, compared to about $10 million per year to run the current government. But the estimate has since ballooned to $23.9 million per year for the new government, on top of about $4-5 million in one-time transition costs. Portland's total annual budget is about $7 billion.
The original estimate only accounted for the larger city council, Jordan said — the new support staff, such as the deputy city administrators, weren't part of the reform package, so they weren't factored into the estimate. Making things more complicated, the city budgets on a fiscal year that runs from July 1 to June 30, so the actual transition will happen halfway through a budget cycle — that's part of why the department reorganization is set to happen in July.
The final budget is still being developed as part of the city's regular budgeting process for the next fiscal year, so Jordan said the next step will be a budget proposal presented to Wheeler, who will then incorporate budget proposals from all the other departments into an overall proposed budget in April, and the council will then deliberate and get the final say.
The transition team is currently making public presentations all over the city about the budget process and other aspects of the process. Portlanders who want to learn more or have input on the process can look up a meeting here.