PORTLAND, Ore. — In less than a month, the city of Portland will begin experimenting with a historic change — the complete restructuring of its 7,000-employee government system. Though the official changeover takes place January 1 of next year, the unofficial transition begins this July 1.
For employees of the city, that mammoth undertaking could be a cause for anxiety. But it also offers the potential for things to eventually work more smoothly in "The City That Works."
Michael Jordan is the interim city administrator, the man with his hand on the wheel responsible for turning this ship of state from a course its held for about a century. In a recent interview, The Story's Pat Dooris asked Jordan what city employees can expect when they come into work July 1 — for instance, in the Portland Water Bureau.
"If I'm somebody who works for the Water Bureau, do suddenly I have two or three bosses?" Dooris asked. "How confusing is that going to be to everybody?"
"If you work in the Water Bureau, unless you're the director or maybe the deputy director, you likely will not notice much change at all," Jordan said. "We will still have commissioners in charge that we have had for over 100 years, and bureaus still technically report to those commissioners in charge."
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The biggest changes are happening at the top. Over the last few months, Jordan explained, the commissioners have appointed deputy city administrators — the roles that will oversee Portland's six new service areas and report directly to the city administrator, currently Jordan himself. But since the commissioners still ostensibly oversee their bureaus, it's not going to be clean-cut for the next few months.
"It's a little confusing, but basically the way I'm looking at it is the commissioners in charge have really delegated the day-to-day operational authority to these deputies," Jordan explained. "They're still accountable to the commissioner in charge, and the commissioners in charge obviously still have budget authority ... so it can be a little confusing, but I think day-to-day, operationally, I think pretty much these deputy CAs will be the ones that will be in charge."
Under the current system, Portland commissioners each head a small portfolio of bureaus. Mayor Ted Wheeler previously reshuffled those bureaus so that they were at least loosely related, but under the new system the bureaus will nearly all fall into one of the six new service areas — e.g. Public Works or Economic and Community Development — which perhaps don't directly align with the existing portfolios.
Too many cooks?
It isn't just the commissioners made somewhat redundant by the introduction of deputy city administrators. Just about every bureau has a director or some equivalent, many of them years-long city employees, who will report to the deputies as of July 1. That's a considerable change from when they reported only to their elected commissioners.
"Change in management is always hard," Jordan acknowledged. "The role of the director now that we have the deputy city administrators ... what does that change for the role of director and what does that look like? So we need to the the whole change management process, it seems like.
"And to be honest, you know, we have historically reported up to five elected officials. And as a good manager, the first thing you want to do when you're assigned to an elected official is you want to build a relationship with that elected official. And that's great. But then when it comes to reconciling differences between bureaus and between operational units that report to different elected officials, that can become really challenging.
"So getting everybody used to the fact that there's somebody in town that can call the ball and hold everybody accountable for it in a holistic way across the enterprise is going to be new for all of us, and we all have to get used to that new way of doing business."
The city commissioners will vanish from this structure first thing in 2025, but the directors will continue to report to the new deputies. Some of the directors currently make upwards of $200,000 per year. So, Dooris asked Jordan, will the city need those directors in the future?
"I think those are legitimate questions," Jordan said, "and I think as we work through these structural changes and who's doing what and how are different services within the city structured and who's accountable for them, I think there will be discussions about, 'Do we need as many directors' and, 'Do we need as many offices,' and could some of these things be consolidated into others?"
Jordan cited as an example the Vibrant Communities service area, one of the six new city departments. The core of it will be the existing Parks Bureau, joined by much smaller programs like the Children's Levy and the City Arts Program, as well as the Portland'5 arts venues.
"All of those are relatively very small organizations, so maybe altogether 20 employees," Jordan said. "They can be now supported completely by Parks. They don't need new HR people or new IT support ... They can all be supported, because they can get consolidated into that structure to support them. And so there are efficiencies already that you can see by taking things that aren't real big and they get coupled with bigger organizations and so they can get their services internally easier and more efficiently."
Overall, the city will be looking for ways to consolidate services and gradually eliminate the things that end up being redundant — something the current structure of siloed bureaus enabled to grow as each became more and more independent.
"And to be honest," Jordan added, "the more important thing is that we're more effective and we can move faster and apply human resource where it needs to be applied in a more fluid way — we struggle with that now."
Finding where the buck stops
Jordan said he thinks this new structure will usher in a new level of transparency and accountability. No longer will elected officials be circling the wagons with their little slice of the city bureaucracy — they'll be on the outside judging the city's performance, much like the public has been, but wielding the power to make changes.
"I guarantee you, with a mayor and a city council who both can remove the city administrator on their own — the mayor unilaterally, the council with a nine-vote majority can remove the administrator — they're going to be holding what the elected officials want to get done in the city right in their rearview mirror all the time while they're trying to change and operate," Jordan said. "So they will be held accountable, therefore they will hold everybody else accountable for getting the work done in a much more effective way than maybe we've been able to in the past."
While some members of the Portland City Council have been critical of the charter reform model that voters ultimately approved — or at least aspects of it — Jordan clearly isn't taking on this role just because he's obligated to do it. He wants it to succeed.
"I'm a firm believer in what the charter commission and what voters (wanted out of) this, and that's professional management in the city," Jordan said. "And I think even our electeds today, that was the one part of it ... they may have disagreed about other parts, but I heard them loudly and clearly that they all believe that professional management was important for the city as it moves into, you know, being a big city and big city problems. And and I think they believe that that's the right way to go. I do too.
"It'll be clunky at first. It's brand new. We haven't done this in over 100 years, changed the form of government. So there'll be big, there'll be growing pains and change pains. But the trajectory of the city getting it on this inflection and a different trajectory moving forward, I only see us getting better over the next 5-10 years.
"There will be a lot of change in those 5 or 10 years. The culture will have to shift; the accountability and transparency issues, those will all work their way through the system. 7,000 people don't change their behavior overnight. But I think the incentives will all be in the right place."
The people hired to lead the city will be key — both the people literally hired to do the work, like whoever succeeds Jordan as city administrator, but also the people that the voters elect to lead.
"That mayor-city administrator duo will be just absolutely critical," Jordan said. "And so, if I was giving advice to your viewers, I would say, 'Hey, pay a great amount of attention to all the electeds, but particularly the mayor's race.' That person, and who they hire as city administrator, they're going to be really important to the success of this in the first few years."