Charter Reform: What's on the table
A smorgasbord of amendments is coming to a ballot near you.
Several major changes to Portland’s city government and elections could be on the ballot this year.
Here’s the scoop on the reform package that voters will likely be asked to approve in November of 2022.
Last week, Portland’s Charter Commission — the independent body tasked with reviewing the city charter and recommending changes — published its first progress report. That report is our best clue as to what amendments the commission will be serving up to voters this November.
Read Charter Commission co-chair Anthony Castaneda’s tweets on the report here.
So, what will the new and reformed Portland look like if the Charter Commission gets everything on its wish list?
The commission’s vision mostly boils down to a mainstreaming of Portland’s quirky political system, but it wouldn’t be Portland without a twist. Charter commissioners want a tried-and-true government structure, but they are willing to mix it up a little when it comes to city council elections.
The commission-based government gets the boot.
Charter commissioners have no love for Portland’s current form of government. They unanimously agree that Portland should dispense with its current practice of allowing city commissioners to run city bureaus, and they are calling for a clearer separation between executive and legislative powers.
Most commissioners want to replace the status quo with a council-manager system, which would delegate executive authority to a professional city manager serving at the pleasure of the city council. Other members champion a mayor-council system, where the mayor enjoys the executive power while the city council retains legislative and budget authorities.
Both systems are widely used nationwide. Among cities of Portland’s size, the council-manager system is the most popular. Roughly sixty percent of cities with over a hundred thousand in population use the council-manager system today, according to the National Civic League.
City Council grows larger.
In the future, it may take more than three votes for a proposal to pass at City Hall. The Charter Commission believes the size of the city council should increase to give Portlanders more representation. Portland’s current city council, consisting of four city commissioners plus the mayor, is a lean operation compared to councils in comparably sized cities.
What, then, is the magic number? Commissioners are considering a range of 9 to 15. There is no national standard for council size, but the National Civic League’s Model City Charter recommends a smaller range of 5-9 councilmembers.
Portland gets divided into districts.
While the size of the council may grow, actual constituencies may shrink. Instead of all city council members serving at large, as they do now, the Charter Commission wants to elect representatives by district. Their hope is that geographic representation will bring voters and representatives closer, combat historic disenfranchisement of certain neighborhoods and reduce the costs of election campaigns.
What will the districts look like? Well, for starters the Charter Commission is considering two different options. The first is the most common form of electoral districts: single member districts, where only one elected official represents each district. The second is a lesser-used form: multi-member districts, where each district can elect two or more representatives. Commissioners seem to favor multi-member districts for their promise of more diverse representation.
Who will draw the districts? Not the Charter Commission. Commissioners want to outline the criteria for a community-led districting process but not propose the actual map.
Proportional voting replaces winner-takes-all elections.
The Charter Commission wants Portland to join the roughly 30 American cities that use Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for city council elections.
RCV allows voters to rank candidates by preference on the ballot. Proponents of the system say this method more accurately captures voters’ preferences, discourages negative campaigning and provides more equity for minority interests.
Since RCV allows for results to be decided in just one election, commissioners hope that holding city elections in November will maximize voter turnout and avoid election outcomes being effectively decided in lower turnout May primaries.
Portlanders will need time to digest these changes. So will city staff who might be sprouting a few premature gray hairs as they hustle to calculate the legal and fiscal impacts of each reform, as required by law, before the ballot referral deadline.
I’ll be sure to update you along the way. If you have specific questions about charter reform, feel free to leave them in the comments. I’ll answer them as best I can.
Until then,
Maja Viklands Harris
Maja Viklands Harris is a Portland resident, a recovering journalist, a policy activist and a serial citizen advisory board member. Her writing focuses on government reform, public process, decision-making psychology and policy best practice.
Thanks for this work! Great project. A big question I have is what happens to the advisory bodies like the Planning and Sustainability Commission, Historic Landmarks Commission & Citizen Review Committee. In the current form, I think it’s pretty useful to have a layer of oversight by non-staff experts with some political accountability and moderate technical expertise. Who plays that role in the after times, and who selects them?