Things To Know About Curiously-Strong Mayor

The One True bIX

We're in the home stretch of the May 15 special election to determine Portland's form of government -- Measure 26-91. Presumably, this is when the misnomered "Citizens to Reform City Hall" will be ramping up the rhetoric they've honed at least since the day City Council voted to refer the measure to the ballot in the first place.

With the ballots in hand, the mailers in your mailboxes, and the last chance for what I call Team Potter to make its case, it's a good time to take a look at what you probably should know about the proposal and those supporting it.

Business loves the idea of having all executive and administrative authority in the hands of a single official

While David Kelleher whined in The Oregonian than opponents of changing Portland's form of government were being bankrolled by "special interests", he neglected to mention that what he meant by that was "labor unions". He also neglected to mention the "special interests" funding Team Potter:

QWest Services Corporation
PacifiCorp
Kalberer Company
Bay City, LLC (read: Greg Goodman)
Melvin Mark, Jr.
Wells Fargo Bank
Mark Group Partnership #5 (read: Melvin Mark, Jr.)
Wayne Kingsley (on the board of the Portland Business Alliance)
Norris Beggs & Simpson
The ODS Companies
ESCO Corporation
Guardian Management LLC
Aspen Hotel Management Group LLC
Comcast
Paul Allen's Aegean Corporation
Northwest Natural Gas Company
Criterion Investment Company
The Greenbrier Companies
Portland General Electric
Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt PC
US Bank
Mark Edlen

Each has shelled out $1,000 to $5,000 contributions (and a whopping $10,000 contribution from local developer Edlen) towards the passage of Curiously-Strong Mayor.

Generally speaking, if forced to choose between competing special interests, I bet a majority of Portlanders would choose to align themselves with labor over the sort of company Team Potter is keeping in this campaign.

Opponents of the measure also now use the term "special interests", but they at least define what they mean by it: Developers. Supporters, on the other hand, leave it hanging at just the term itself. It's part of their attempt to brand themselves merely as "citizens" working to "reform City Hall".

It's nothing but a deception, and it's the same tactic used by the same sorts of contributors (or, in some cases, actually the same contributors) when trying to defeat a public utility district, pretending to be a grassroots committee of "citizens against the government takeover".

Team Potter is trying to manipulate you (and is behaving hypocritically in the process)

Proponents of Curiously-Strong Mayor suffer from an odd affliction. They appear congenitally incapable of refraining from mentioning the cost overruns of the aerial tram.

The problem? Dramatic cost overruns on construction and development projects are not unique to the commission form of government.

One of the largest such debacles in the nation's history -- The Big Dig -- happened under the watchful eye of THREE "strong executive" governments: the Federal government, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the City of Boston. In addition, San Diego is involved in a controversy regarding cost overruns on local transportation projects. Until the start of 2006, San Diego had a "city manager" government. Since then, they've had a "strong mayor" government.

Worse yet, perhaps, is the fact that Mayor Potter himself announced that he was holding off on calling for an investigation into the tram's cost overruns until after the May 15 election so that the issue didn't get dragged into the campaign on form of government. This after it was Potter himself who was dragging the tram into that campaign. Two weeks after he made that announcement, he was already once again hard at work dragging the tram into the form of government campaign.

The premise is simple: Proponents of Measure 26-91 believe that if they just repeat "commission government equals aerial tram cost overruns" frequently enough, your brain will shut down. They're counting on turning public frustration with the cost of the tram into votes for their form of government proposal.

They're counting on you being too stupid to notice that you're being manipulated. It's the most cynical form of conducting politics by means of pushing emotionally-charged buttons.

Team Potter consistently lies to you about the proposal

Because some opponents of Measure 26-91 made the mistake of trying to make it sound as if the proposal would allow a mayor to sell off the City's parks willy-nilly, Team Potter has been able to point out that this isn't the case, and do so in such a way as to make it seem like there's no issue here at all.

That's entirely dishonest.

Currently, two steps are required for the City to sell off its property. First, the Council must vote by at least a majority of 3-2 to declare property "no longer needed for public use". Second, the Council must vote by at least a super-majority of 4-1 to actually sell such "no longer needed for public use" property.

The idea is simple: The bar to declare property surplus can be set reasonably low (a 3-2 vote). But the bar to actually sell it should be set reasonably high (a 4-1 vote).

Under the proposal championed by Team Potter, the first part would remain the same.

But to sell such property? That would rest entirely in the hands of the mayor and no one else. No vote by Council. No public session required. Under the proposed Charter changes, the mayor, once a piece of property has been declared "no longer needed for public use", could sell it by whatever methods he or she deems proper, at whatever terms he or she decided to set.

While its disingenuous for opponents to claim that under the proposal the Mayor could sell off park land without Council oversight (Council would still be involved at the level of declaring the land "no longer needed to public use" and therefore no longer parkland), Team Potter works very hard to cloud the matter, and obscure from you the fact that there is a very drastic lowering of the bar when it comes to the disposal of publicly-owned property.

In addition, Team Potter claims that allegations that the proposal would permit the Mayor to fire the staff of the independent City Auditor are completely false, and that the City Attorney has said as much.

The problem is that the City Attorney didn't say as much. Rather, what was said was that the Charter Review Commission didn't intend for this to be the case. But so poorly is the language drafted, Mayor Potter himself already has agreed that should the proposal pass, he will need to refer a second measure to the voters to clarify this issue.

That's just the sort of thing that could have been caught by a real public discussion prior referral to the voters, had Potter not pre-empted such a real public discussion by being stubbornly Hell-bent on fast-tracking the proposal to the May 15 ballot.

Team Potter stalls as long as possible before reporting campaign contributions

This year, campaign contributions are reported via an enormously-useful system run by the state. It allows for immediate reporting of both contributions and expenditures. While the law permits a delay of 30 days out from a transaction early in an election, and 7 days late in an election, opponents of Curiously-Strong Mayor have consistently reported their contributions almost immediately.

Team Potter, on the other hand, routinely and as a matter of course waits until the last possible moment before reporting anything. This from a group of people who claim that amongst the values which would be strengthened by their proposal are accountability and transparency.

If they truly believe that these are important public values, they should be running their campaign not based on the strict letter of the law on reporting contributions, but based upon its spirit.

They either believe in accountability and transparency or they do not. Judge them not by what they pronounce but by their own behavior.

Mayor Potter wants to stump for the proposal without taking any responsibility for what it says

During a recent debate between Potter and Commissioner Randy Leonard, when Leonard was raising the issue of the sale of surplus City property, Potter opined that he didn't write the thing.

That, of course, is completely irrelevant. Potter is the champion of Curiously-Strong Mayor, touting it whenever given the opportunity. It's simply an untenable proposition to claim that he's just following through on his promise to support whatever the Charter Review Commission came up with.

He tells people the proposal would be good for the City. He tells people to vote for it. That means he's taking upon himself some of the responsibility for what it says and what it will do.

It was much the same case when Council referred the measure in the first place. Potter and others claimed that they simply were doing what they'd said they would do: Respect the work of the Commission by referring their proposal to the ballot.

But if a given piece of work is not worth respect, it isn't responsible to pass it along to anyone else. And just because one didn't write the proposal doesn't mean one has no responsibility for it when one urges its passage.

Take it to an extreme. If the Commission had come before Council with a proposal to do away with City Council altogether, replacing our current government with a proposal for (to coin a phrase) Solitary Mayor, would it have been responsible to refer it to the voters just to "respect" the work of the Commission? Would it be reasonable for the Mayor actively to stump for Solitary Mayor but claim he had no responsibility for it because he didn't write it?

No.

Team Potter asserts that Curiously-Strong Mayor will increase oversight of City government. And yet Potter and his allies in referring the proposal to the voters (Adams and Saltzman) exhibited no adherence to the principle and value of oversight when they referred to the voters a poorly-drafted proposal.

And now Potter wants to argue he shouldn't be held responsible for what it says simply because he didn't actually write it?

Please.

Team Potter claimed they wanted a public discussion, but gave us a base political campaign

Like their professed belief in accountability and transparency, Team Potter claimed that the best way to have a public discussion of their proposal was via a political campaign (they received political cover on this point from Commission Saltzman, who voted for referral despite remaining neutral on the proposal itself).

What they've done since then you can see from all of the points above: They've relied on distortions, distractions, manipulation, and deceit. They've toured their standard bearer -- Major Tom himself -- around town to one-sided appearances before captive audiences not exposed to any "discussion" at all.

As I said above, judge them not by what they pronounce or process, but by what they actually do. These campaign tactics are they way proponents of Curiously-Strong Mayor operate.

From the start, supporters of Curiously-Strong Mayor argued that a political campaign was the way to discuss the proposal. In addition to the way they've conducted that campaign, the very fact of such fast-tracking guaranteed that none of the proposals flaws -- many the result of the extraordinarily sloppy "cut and paste" method used to pull Council powers into the Mayor's office -- could be caught and corrected in time.

Those pushing Curiously-Strong Mayor have exhibited a belief that in order to win on an issue, one can jettison accountability and transparency, fast-track proposals to avoid a full public discussion of them, manipulate voters' emotional dislike of unrelated matters, distort the substance of a proposal, and refuse to take responsibility for what they support.

Isn't it reasonable to conclude that the way in which they've conducted the campaign for Curiously-Strong Mayor reflects the manner in which they'd conduct City government itself should the proposal pass?

By The One True bIX May 06, 2007