PORTLAND, Ore. — As Portland rapidly approaches a soft launch of its new form of government, abandoning the commission-style system it's had for over a century, there are startling analogues to the fall of the Soviet Union's "Iron Curtain." Not only do city officials want to set the stage for a new era of government, but in the spirit of glasnost, they're curious about what's been going on within the walls of each siloed Portland bureau.
The sequestering of city bureaus has increasingly gotten the blame for dysfunction in Portland government over the years. Because each bureau is the somewhat independent fiefdom of one commissioner, they've become less and less accustomed to working well together or taking direction from the mayor and city council as a whole.
Over the years, the bureaus have created their own communications teams, asset management teams, human resource teams, technology teams and more.
Officially, Portland will transition to a more united city government January 1 of 2025, when the newly expanded city council takes office. But long before that, this July 1, the city will start a mock-up of the new system.
Under this structure, nearly all of the existing city bureaus will be grouped into six new areas, each overseen by a deputy city administrator. Above them will be the city administrator, filled on an interim basis by Portland's current Chief Administrative Officer Michael Jordan.
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By the numbers
The July 1 soft launch coincides with Portland's new budget taking effect. The Story's Pat Dooris spoke to Jordan recently, but before the budget was entirely pinned down.
"Not only are there a whole bunch of numbers, but there probably will be about 20 budget notes," Jordan explained. "And those are instructions from the governing body when they adopt the budget to us, the management, to look at a whole bunch of things — and we've got a bunch. This is more budget notes than we usually have, and I think it is a result of where we are in time."
When KGW checked the budget, there were a total of 15 notes. The first of those notes concerns the Impact Reduction Program, which is responsible for cleaning up homeless camp sites. The budget note shows that costs for the program have increased by 300% over the past three years, and it directs the program's leaders to work with the new deputy city administrators in order to get costs under control and find new ways to pay for the program.
Another note directs the city bureaus to work together on sharing data — for instance, improving the collection, use analysis and sharing of data within and across city service areas to implement charter reform.
Overall, the idea is to make the city more efficient and more responsive to the public. Jordan, the administrator tasked with turning this massive ship of bureaucracy, said that the budget is a powerful tool for making those changes.
"The intersection of the transition and all of the change we're talking about — and a challenging budget year — those things, the intersection of those things, has brought up a whole bunch of ideas about things we ought to look at," Jordan said. "And if you look at them, they're mostly good ideas. Can we do them all at once? It makes me a little scared for the next year, but we'll do the best we can to get after those questions because they're good questions to ask."
Having a mandate through the city budget to prioritize these changes can be helpful in cutting through some of the layers of bureaucracy that might otherwise slow things down, Jordan acknowledged.
Breaking down the bureaus
Much of the process for untangling Portland's government will be taking out parts of each bureau that might better work in its own department and combining those. The city has already taken steps to do that with the byzantine permitting process, which has long been divided up between multiple bureaus.
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One of the new Portland departments will be asset management, essentially the upkeep of city properties and infrastructure. Right now, that's completely ruled by the various bureaus.
"We don't have an asset management office right now, and yet, we have multiple bureaus that manage multiple asset classes," Jordan said. "And quite frankly, we've got some bureaus that do well — we've got one bureau that does really well; the Water Bureau is very good at asset management. We have a few bureaus that are pretty good at it. And then we have a few bureaus that ... I like to say they're wandering for food and shelter out in the wilderness. You know, they're kind of Maslow's hierarchy.
"And so, what we need to do with that office is talk about, to ourselves, basically, 'What do we need from an asset management office?' Is it people who just set the standard of practice, advocate for maturing the places where it's not so mature?"
Those assets include buildings, HVAC systems, sewer and water pipes or treatment plants, roads and sidewalks, parks and pools and community centers.
"They're all assets," Jordan continued. "And we've got lots of classes of assets, and historically, they've been managed bureau by bureau."
The new structure will impact how city policy, set by the new Portland City Council, will play out. Councilors will get information from this new asset management department when they go to send a capital maintenance bond out to voters.
"Trying to figure out the priorities when it's done bureau by bureau by bureau is challenging," Jordan said. "So, one of the ideas with this asset management group is they're currently put in the city operations ... but if you were thinking about part of their duties to be capital maintenance planning, then they might be better over in the budget shop and doing the capital version of asset planning. So, a lot of questions, and we're going to go through those and try to make the place run better: You know, that's the job."
The budget note for assets shows that Portland has $80 billion in assets. But there's been no centralized way to track what has been happening with them — and under the new system that Jordan's working on, there will be.
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Challenges and opportunities
Part of the reason Portland had a challenging budget year is that the new city government is simply more expensive on paper. Not only will there by 12 city councilor salaries to pay instead of just four, but the city administrator and all six deputies are being added into the mix. But, Jordan argues, there are potential advantages that may help make the change balance out financially.
"As your viewers may say, it's kind of expensive, and it's a new layer of management and bureaucracy," Jordan told Dooris. "Well, OK, how do we take advantage of that and start to pull those things up and examine them and make them more efficient and more effective? And what role do those offices play in that? And I think it could be a huge role. I think it might be kind of the golden key — of being able to change the way we've always done it into the way we should do it in the future."
But it may take some time before those benefits are realized. Right now, the city commissioners still nominally have charge of their bureaus, and they've appointed the deputy city administrators who, like Jordan, will be involved in this soft launch through the end of 2024.
"The commissioners have said, 'I want you to start now, and I want you to begin having those meetings with all the directors and going to staff meetings and getting familiar with them,' so some of them have started," Jordan said. "The mayor has said, 'You start on July 1,' and so officially now we're getting together. We've been meeting. We're trying to figure out, 'OK, who are we, and what are we going to do? What's the work plan?' And then we will shop that work plan, draft work plan with the (bureau) directors on May 23. I want to get them on board because we'll need them to be effective."
Jordan said that he's been working with the bureau directors for almost two years in preparation for this transition, so it won't be brand new to them.
"They know it's coming," he said. "They were the ones who helped formulate the structure, so we've been prepping for a couple of years for July 1 and getting ready to start practicing in earnest."
On Wednesday, Portland City Council gave its final approval for the creation of a single roof over the city's permitting and development, taking those pieces away from each of the bureaus where they'd been housed. That also takes effect July 1.