City Hall

Portland is one step closer to transitioning to a new form of government after City Council appointed the city’s geographic district-drawing commission Wednesday, the first of three groups that will play a key role in overseeing the transition. Despite some concerns with the timeline, the city’s transition team says they are on track to implement […]

Records show that staff members in Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office were warned of former staffer Sam Adams’ “theme” of poor interactions with female employees since at least October 2021—more than a year prior to Adams’ reported resignation from the Mayor’s office. At least six women who worked with Adams brought their complaints to the city’s […]

As promised, Mayor Ted Wheeler has kicked off 2023 with a reshuffling of city bureau assignments among city commissioners. This time around, Wheeler chose to cluster like-minded bureaus together with each commissioner, as an attempt to make the looming 2024 transition to a new form of government slightly smoother. “This shift will help improve how […]

City Commissioner Carmen Rubio entered City Hall during an exceptionally unusual time. When she was sworn into office on December 28, 2020, the city was still seeing frequent evening racial justice protests, the state was shuttered due to the new COVID-19 omicron variant, and the country was weeks away from a violent uprising at the […]

Portland Street Response (PSR) has experienced a surge in demand following the first response team’s citywide expansion in April 2022. In the six-month window following the expansion, PSR workers responded to 717 percent more calls than they did during the same time period in 2021, according to a Portland State University study released Thursday. While […]

Portland homeless shelter providers were taken by surprise in October when Mayor Ted Wheeler and City Commissioner Dan Ryan unveiled a plan to open several large-scale outdoor homeless encampments across town. Many longtime organizations, several of which already ran outdoor shelters similar to the proposed camps, had expected the city to seek their input in […]

In June 2022, Ashley Henry stepped down as the head of Business for a Better Portland—a Portland business advocacy organization Henry had founded five years prior—and handed the role over to former state Representative Karin Power. At the time, it was characterized as a standard decision to transition leadership, rooted in Henry’s need to take […]

Portland City Council voted 3-0 Wednesday morning to approve a controversial budget package that lays the groundwork for a plan to criminalize street camping and build mass encampments to hold unhoused Portlanders by 2024. Both city commissioners Carmen Rubio and Jo Ann Hardesty were absent for the morning’s vote. (According to council staff, Hardesty is […]

Just over a week after Portlanders voted to significantly alter the city’s form of government through amendments to the city charter, residents will have another opportunity to shape Portland’s founding document. On Thursday, the volunteer commission appointed to review the charter will hold its first public hearing on additional proposed amendments to the charter, which […]