Portland has spent the last few years attempting to atone for a litany of past decisions that were made to systematically keep minority communities from achieving success. From creating an affordable housing program that helps people return to neighborhoods their families were gentrified out of to signing a document acknowledging the city’s racist past, Portland City Council has taken considerable steps toward addressing the city’s discriminatory policies.
But that seemingly earnest dedication to improving equity in Portland is toothless without first dismantling the one structure that keeps Portland’s biased policymaking in place: The city’s archaic form of government.
At least, that’s what a group of researchers argue in a recent report for Portland City Club. I’m here for it.
The city adopted its current “commission” form of government in 1913, when African American Oregonians were still banned from owning property or voting and made up an estimated .5 percent of Portland’s 200,000 residents. Now, 6.3 percent of the city’s 639,000 residents are Black.
Under the city’s commission form of government, Portlanders are represented by five commissioners, including the mayor, each of whom comes up with city policies and manages one of the city’s bureaus. Unlike our state or federal government, these commissioners do not represent a specific district within the city where they’re required to live, know, and speak for at city council meetings. But instead of electing commissioners from specific districts, Portland holds at-large elections—where the victors are those who collected the most citywide votes.
Convincing an entire city to elect any one candidate requires money, time, and powerful friends—which is why the vast majority of those elected to Portland City Council are well-connected white men who live in the city’s richest communities. (In city council’s 105-year history, only three people of color and nine women have been elected.) That’s left many Portlanders feeling ignored by commissioners who can’t understand what it feels like to be evicted, or threatened with a racist slur, or denied an opportunity based on your gender identity, or forced to live in a neighborhood without paved roads, sidewalks, or reliable public transportation.
Meanwhile, Portland continues to work really well for the people who look the same as the folks on city council.
Most US cities scrapped the commission form of government in the 1960s, when federal courts ruled that at-large voting led to systemic underrepresentation of racial minorities. Portland apparently missed the memo; we remain the only city with a population above 100,000 that still relies on the commission system.
The City Club’s report suggests Portland finally move on to a “council-manager” form of government, where elected officials are solely responsible for policymaking while an appointed, nonpartisan city manager takes over the administrative work that comes with running city bureaus. This would fix the distracting “turf wars” that play out between commissioners who prioritize their bureaus’ needs before the city’s greater needs.
The report, which calls for district-based elections, also suggests the city expand its council to at least 8 commissioners in an attempt to better represent Portland’s ballooning population. The city will have a chance to take up these suggestions in 2021, when Portland will review its charter, the document that defines its form of government.
Mayor Ted Wheeler, who regularly laments the fact he’s both Portland’s police commissioner and mayor, supports doing away with the city’s commission model, as do many advocates for campaign finance reform and civil rights. Those who favor the current system, including commissioners Nick Fish and Amanda Fritz, have used the 2018 election of Jo Ann Hardesty—the first Black woman elected to Portland City Council—as proof that the structure is not inherently racist.
But that argument insults the hard work of Portland’s underrepresented communities. It’s unlikely that Hardesty would be sitting at the council dais if she hadn’t already been a state legislator, led the city’s NAACP chapter, and was a well-known leader in Portland’s activist community. As we’ve seen in both private and public sectors, women of color are forced to work infinitely harder than white men to achieve comparable success, and it’s no different in ostensibly progressive Portland.
Yes, it’s fantastic that our city elected a Black woman, and that it now has majority-female council—but that’s despite Portland’s form of government, not because of it. Upending Portland’s current government will be messy, challenging, and unpredictable. But merely maintaining the status quo will keep the city from living up to its full potential, allowing Portland to remain “the city that works” for a privileged few.
The City Manager system is worse. All it does is give an unelected manager the hard decisions and allows the 8 or 10 or 20 (or whatever) Council members to pretend that the decision was out of their hands.
The City Club has been trying to do away with the Commissioner system for a long time. Who would benefit from having one powerful beaurocrat in charge instead of the elected commissioners? Maybe the lawyers and developers at the City Club?
I am 60 years old Disabled person Using a wheelchair 24/7 Paralyzed from chest down. Portland is not working for me but I don’t think this bill will do anything to help me. I have lived here for 40 years having a dog walking business and Housecleaning service till I became disabled.
I managed to eke out a living to support and house myself and pay taxes. Now it seems with the unregulated development I am not going to age in place in Portland. Why because Residential Infill project et al is not interested in addressing the very real issue of affordable/ accessable housing. We elderly disabled low income need to move out of the way for the missing middle. Never mind we paid taxes here for a lifetime theres new folks who need to reap their own American Dream. I deeply resent being labeled a racist or anti environment for having the audacity to use a car to get around. You see accessible also means having a car to get from point A to point B. I don’t have the options abled’s have to use mass transit neither do my elderly low income neighbors. We just have our housing. RIP and this bill tokenize disabled and elderly low income in these plans. Those in our position are told to be grateful for existing at all and get ready for the nursing home because oh dear the Missing Middle! Please examine this issue with a more critical eye. You are just a few life events away from being in the same situation.
Educational article and reasonable argument for a different system. However it probably won’t solve the problem you’re trying to solve.
Imagine 100 city council representatives. In a perfectly representative system only 6.3 would be Black. Unwieldy of course. 50 and 3.15? 10 and .63?
It’s pieces like this one that highlight the Mercury as an opinion broadsheet vice journalism: “As we’ve seen in both private and public sectors, women of color are forced to work infinitely harder than white men to achieve comparable success,…”
Go ahead and prove that, especially the “infinitely” bit. I’ll wait, infinitely.
Changing how Portland’s bureaus are managed by hiring a city manager and expanding the city council from four commissioners to eight is, in my opinion, a guarantee that it will fail.
I’d suggest implementing a more limited district system of electing the current four city council positions first.
A candidate for the city council would be required to run from one of four newly created city council districts. The mayor, of course, would remain a city wide elected official.
In the change I’m proposing, candidates for the city council would be required to live in the district they run from.
The four districts would have populations only slightly larger than a current state senate district. A motivated candidate could actually reach each registered voter by going door to door in one of those four districts. That is not possible with the current at large elections of commissioners.
I believe the significant change of electing city council members by district instead of city wide would be approved by voters- narrowly.
However, adding four additional commissioners, for a total of eight city commissioners (those no room in the current city hall or current council chambers for them, so what is the budget for a major remodel of city hall?) with presumably double the cost of salaries plus added staff and other related expenses, will be met with skepticism (as it has in prior attempts) by voters.
Additionally and more problematic, replacing directly elected officials who oversee Portland’s bureaucracy with an unelected city manager (a position that is one of the most tenuous in local government) will, again, in my opinion, guarantee a defeat at the ballot box.
As firefighters are taught in the training academy, go slow and get there fast.
I hate auto-correct.