PORTLAND, Ore. — For some local campaigns, May marked the high water mark of political advertising and debate, as nonpartisan races like the one for Multnomah County District Attorney were decided during the primary. But Portlanders will soon be inundated with a new barrage of campaigning, as candidates for a much-expanded city council make their bids ahead of November.
As of late last week, there were 68 people running for the new 12-seat Portland City Council, which will be elected using ranked choice voting. It's the beginning of a new experiment for the city, the result of a charter reform measure approved by voters in 2022. But the council won't be starting from scratch — the new city charter sets out some guidelines for how to proceed.
The Story's Pat Dooris spoke with Michael Jordan, Portland's interim city administrator, about how the new system will work. He described it as being more akin to the state or federal government than Portland's current commission-style system.
"We'll have twelve elected councilors — they will be the legislative branch of the government," Jordan explained. "They will pass laws, they will pass policy, and they have the ultimate authority over budget. So that's their role to play. The mayor will be the executive... he or she will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of city government. They're required to hire a professional (city administrator). Everybody reports to that professional, except for the chief of police and the city attorney."
For the time being, Jordan will be that professional. He's taking on the role during the transition, but eventually the new government will hire on a more permanent city administrator to replace him.
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A new role for city council
The current members of Portland City Council were each elected at-large, meaning they were voted in citywide. Between that and their hands-on roles heading city bureaus, they're not particularly public-facing despite being public officials. That's likely to change with the incoming council, in spite of their numbers and relatively diminished individual power.
"As for being an elected official and having a loud voice, they will have that platform," Jordan said of the new council members. "I would expect that, because we will have districts — we will have a caucus from each district on city council — I would expect on district issues they will have a loud voice. On citywide issues, one might think the mayor might have a louder voice than most individual councilors. But individual legislators, they're elected by the people, they have a right to talk about whatever they think is important and we want them to do that. We want it to be an active conversation with the public about what they think."
Because council members will no longer have direct control over the operations of the city bureaucracy, the idea is that they'll spend more time interfacing with constituents in their districts; learning about what issues people are concerned about and what they'd like to see changed.
"The only way for the public to measure their performance is if they know what they're doing and what they care about and what they value. So they've got to have a loud voice with the public — and that's a big part of running this kind of a government, is that folks do interact and it's a robust conversation," Jordan continued. "And I would bet that the 12-member council will probably have some discussions with themselves about what it takes to be a governing body. They'll have individual responsibilities, but they also have a responsibility as a collective, and they have to some degree, a responsibility to each other to be effective for the city."
Jordan suggested that the city council may also choose to limit how actively members can engage in criticism of their peers, particularly outside of the sessions that happen at city hall.
"You know, city councils all over the place have conversations about, 'Gee, we voted on something last week and Councilor So-and-So was out criticizing it in the newspaper the next week. What do we do about that?'" Jordan mused. "Well, those are important questions for a group of people to be effective have to at least to some degree of trust in each other. And so those are hard questions every council has to deal with them, not just Portland. So, I look for a lot of that kind of dialogue and I look for people to talk to the media a lot about what they're thinking."
A process of self-determination
For the candidates elected in November, work begins January 2, and they'll need to hit the ground running.
"We need to prepare them for that, and then I have every expectation that they will continue to do work sessions, at least through the first year, just getting organized," Jordan said. "And do we want committees? What subject matter do we want them for? Who's going to be on them? How will they get staffed, you know? And we're working on those things now."
Importantly, Jordan explained, there are blanks that people in the current administration can't fill in — those will be up to the new city council.
"They have to believe in that structure and the way they're doing business. So it'll be a little bit of chaos, but we will be able to do business, no question, on January 2," he continued. "And about this time a year from now they're going to have to adopt another budget... and so, come like, I would say February, March-ish, we start talking, 'OK, let's prepare for the budget, here's the issues, here's what the history is, here's where we think we're going. How can we work with you so the mayor's budget, when it shows up, is ready for you to deliberate on?' And so that'll be a big deal in the first six months for them."
Jordan said that one of the first things the council will do is elect their own council president — which is separate from the mayor, who will elected by citywide voters. It's enshrined in the new city charter that council members make this choice each year.
The council president will be in charge of organizing the council as a whole, helping to set the agenda and interfacing with the mayor's office and ensuring they're getting information from the executive.
"It's likely they'll have committees, and it'll be up to the council president to make sure that things are getting assigned to the committees in an appropriate way, and then they're coming back — they don't just die out there somewhere — and probably helping the council give direction to those committees, I could imagine," Jordan said.
Those committees might look a bit like those in the Oregon Legislature or Congress, Jordan said, and the transition team has looked at what other cities do. But many of those details aren't nailed down yet, they're purposefully being left up to the new council to decide.
Localized constituencies
Even as they work to figure out how this legislative body will function, the new council members will probably be jockeying to each put their stamp on Portland's government, passing policies that favor their districts and that align with their platforms. Jordan thinks this means the city bureaucracy will be forced to move much more quickly than ever before.
"It will be fascinating to watch how districts play ... because, you know, a district doesn't have enough votes to pass anything," Jordan said. "So then it becomes 'OK, how are we going to do this?' And the other thing that we're thinking about is, how do you be responsive to what we know will be districts having issues that they will say are unique to their district?"
For example, Jordan said, a council member representing Portland's District 2, which covers the east side of the city, could very well be hearing from constituents living on gravel streets that were promised pavement two decades ago.
"We're trying to develop a structure where the city will be responsive to those things. In other words, we will actually, in real time, be able to take the question, whatever it is, and give it a response in something like that (situation)," Jordan said, referring to city departments like the Portland Bureau of Transportation, which will still be responsible for doing that kind of work. "Responsiveness is not always saying yes, but it is being responsive and saying why it can't be right now, or whenever we want to do that ... So we need to be responsive as an organization and be able to talk to city council about why we responded the way we did to their districts."
If the bureaucracy can't give a good answer to the concerns brought by Portland citizens, those citizens will now have dedicated advocates in the form of their elected city council members — and they'll theoretically have both the power and the motivation to escalate those concerns.