Vadim Mozyrsky: "Charter reform process was preordained."

Rose City Reform caught up with the former charter commissioner to learn why he resigned from the Portland Charter Commission.

Last week, Vadim Mozyrsky stepped down from the Charter Commission.

As one of the commission’s most vocal dissenters, Mr. Mozyrsky argued that bundling the reforms didn't give Portlanders enough choice at the ballot.

His resignation followed the news that a public opinion poll conducted in the spring, unseen by Mozyrsky and many of his colleagues, showed that 72% of polled voters wanted to break the reforms into separate measures.

Former charter commissioner and City Council candidate Vadim Mozyrsky.

Since last week, Vadim Mozyrsky no longer serves on the Charter Commission.

The former commissioner is an outspoken critic of the charter reform ballot measure, particularly the recommendation to adopt city council districts with three seats instead of one.

Mr. Mozyrsky left after learning that a Lake Research public opinion poll, conducted earlier this year to gauge voter support for the reform package, said 72% of voters preferred to vote on charter reform as separate ballot questions.

The poll was privately commissioned by North Star Civic Foundation and funders included the Portland Business Association and other business organizations. The Charter Commission was never officially briefed on the results, which indicated support for reform, but not for a bundled ballot question.

Mr. Mozyrsky believes the Lake Research poll might have swayed some commissioners to vote against sending the reforms to the ballot as one question.

Now he’s focusing his energies on defeating the Charter Commission’s ballot measure through his PAC, Partnership for Common Sense Government.

The PAC recently coined the hashtag #pollgate on social media.

For the full scoop on the Lake Research poll, read this Willamette Article.

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Why did you resign from the Charter Commission?

Because it seemed to me from early on that the outcome of the process was preordained. The Charter Commission accepted information from certain special interest organizations wholesale and made no substantive changes to the proportional ranked choice voting recommendations despite substantial negative public testimony.

Our stated goals were to make Portland more democratic and to elevate the voice of historically underrepresented communities. And here was a poll that was weighted toward underrepresented communities showing that 72% of polled individuals wanted the measure to be broken up.

[The poll had 500 respondents with an intentional oversample of 100 voters of color.]

But instead the only narrative we heard from those who knew about the poll was that we needed to package the reforms into one bundle because that's what Portlanders wanted. It was incumbent upon them to let us know both the facts that fit with their narrative, as well as the facts that might have contradicted that narrative.

The Portland Business Alliance has been vocal about its opposition to bundling the reforms. Did they share the Lake Research poll with the commission at any point?

No. They weren’t present throughout the process like other organizations were. But I don't know what the agreement was between all these organizations as to who would, you know, lead the dance. 

The Lake Research poll was privately commissioned. The Charter Commission could have commissioned its own independent poll, which would have ensured access to all the answers. Was that ever discussed? 

I was told by a person at City Hall that the City extended an offer to the Charter Commission’s administrative staff to pay for an independent poll, but the offer was refused and never presented to the Charter Commission. Why that is, I don’t know.

It could be because other polls had already been conducted and they felt it wasn't necessary. I think we need independent polling and that’s something City Commissioner Mingus Mapps is looking into right now.

The Charter Commission has repeatedly said that the reforms must be passed together to have the desired effect. Do you think it would have made a difference to the commission to learn that there was support for separate ballot measures?

I definitely think it would have made a difference. The process was very much poll-driven, especially on the election side.

All the choices that were made were based on the polls that were supplied. And all those polls were from organizations that from the very beginning made it known that it was their desire to have the outcome that we ended up having.

The Lake Research poll was the closest thing we had to an independent poll and it ran contrary to this narrative. It should have been discussed in-depth. Yet this polling data wasn’t shared with the Charter Commission, and a version of the Lake Research poll sent to City Council redacted important data on public sentiment.

[City Council received a summarized presentation available here.]

If I had been able to say that 72% of polled voters wanted separate measures, that would have been a strong argument.

But I didn't get that opportunity.

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Charter Commissioner Robin Ye responds:

Rose City Reform invited Charter Commissioner Robin Ye to write a response to Mr. Mozyrsky’s comments. Read his perspective below.

Charter Commissioner Robin Ye.

In the nearly eighteen months the Charter Commission has been hard at work, I believe the overwhelming majority of our volunteer commissioners have been open-minded, thoughtful, and willing to be convinced by the strongest argument presented, wherever it came from.

There was a solid amount of support for articulating our interdependent reforms as one ballot proposal, because that’s how the pieces came together and what our research showed would be most effective. As one commissioner analogized, the proposal was a three-legged stool and it wouldn’t work effectively as a stool if you separated a leg. 

I would have loved to hear an affirmative argument for how other folks wanted the measure to be presented back in April, May and June, and the pros and cons of doing so, but I have yet to hear an articulated analysis about the policy impact of splitting the measure.

I didn’t hear it over the five months that Vadim Mozyrsky had to make a persuasive argument, because he hardly made one at the time, let alone a compelling one. I also didn’t hear it while he campaigned for City Council. The final 17-3 vote demonstrated the strength of the research, public outreach, and debate for the charter amendment proposal.

I too would have appreciated even more polling data to help inform our decision-making, because the Lake Research poll I’ve now seen also corroborated overwhelming support (on the scale of more than two-thirds and three-fourths support for some issues) from the public around the reforms of ranked choice voting, multi-winner districts, and changing our form of government to a legislative city council and executive mayor-city manager format - in that order of popularity.

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In other charter reform news:

• August 11 is the court date for Portland Business Alliance President Andrew Hoan’s lawsuit seeking to throw out the Charter Commission’s ballot measure.

• City Commissioner Mingus Mapps last week floated the idea of City Council resurrecting charter reform if the court strikes down the Charter Commission’s measure.

• Mapps’s PAC, Ulysses, is in the process of drafting an alternative charter reform proposal. If the Charter Commission’s measure fails, Mapps says his plan could be put to voters as a referendum as early as the spring of 2023.

• The city commissioner said the proposal will retain some elements from the Charter Commission’s package, such as a city manager and district representation, but will reject others, like multi-seat city council districts and elections via single transferable vote.

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