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Should the City of Portland be run by one person, with power over all bureaus and city functions? Or should it stay like it is, with the city divided up among elected commissioners? Portlanders will have a chance to decide this coming May, but if history is any indication, voters have already given a very […]
The one inescapable insight gleaned from last Wednesday’s city council hearing/public squabble over sending charter reform to the ballot: Democracy is a tedious bitch. It is, at least, when lawmakers fail to hammer out their details and differences before bringing them to the public. In this case, Commissioners Erik Sten and Randy Leonard weren’t about […]
After years of abuse by street corner entrepreneurs and out-of-state “mercenaries,” Oregon’s initiative petition process may see a series of reforms from the state legislature. At many points during the 2006 election cycle, the signature gathering process looked more like a series of drug deals than a model of direct democracy. Convicted forgers and identity […]
Unless City Commissioner Sam Adams gets an ominous visit from the Ghost of Election Day Future and changes his mind, Portland City Council is expected to vote this Wednesday (by the time you read this) to send charter review out to the voters this May. And that begs the question: Why even hold a public […]
[Eds. Note: This week, Scott files his report from his craphole hometown of Fresno.] By every conceivable measure, Fresno, CA is a royal craphole. It’s a sprawling mess of a place—for decades, urban planning has been not just ignored, but actively and viciously opposed. The results: Rows of identical tract homes stretch on for miles […]
When über-pastor Ted Haggard was outed last fall by a male escort, it should have spelled the death of the ex-gay movement for good—after all, if someone so devout and so committed to conservative Christianity couldn’t pray his way out of being gay, what hope was there for all the regular poor souls who’d been […]
With local governments scrambling to make sense of Measure 37, the state legislature last week formed a special joint committee to pick apart the law and the effect it’s already had on the statewide landscape. In 2004, Oregon voters passed M37, which allows landowners to file claims for compensation or a waiver of land use […]
On Tuesday, January 23, City Commissioner Sam Adams announced he will be voting to refer the Charter Review Commission’s recommendations to the ballot this May, setting the stage for a springtime battle over Portland’s longstanding—and unique—form of government. Portland is the last city of its size to still have a “commissioner” form of government, in […]
On Friday, January 19, Mayor Tom Potter delivered his second State of the City speech, once again shunning the public at large to address a paying crowd of Portland elites at the City Club. The grand ballroom in the posh downtown Governor Hotel was filled with City Club members and city employees—the event was priced […]
For weeks, City Commissioner Randy Leonard had the town talking over his grand idea to ban smoking entirely from all city parks—he even casually mentioned he’d be open to extending the ban to sidewalks. Ultimately, though, by the time the discussion got to city council on Thursday, January 11, he’d backed off the strict rule—but […]
If Mayor Tom Potter gets his way, a sweeping change to the city’s form of government will make its way to the ballot this May—but given how unsuccessful similar efforts have been in the past, Potter could be facing a massive failure on one of the few issues he’s championed. For more than a year, […]
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