Portland Asks Voters To Reconsider Commission Form Of City Government

PORTLAND, OR — Portland voters will consider doing away with the commission form of city government, the Portland Charter Commission voted Tuesday night. The nearly unanimous vote sends a proposal to the November ballot that would have Portland scrap its city commission system of government and replace it with a system where the mayor and the newly created position of city administrator run the city's day to day operations. .

The proposal would also greatly expand the city council.

Portland is the only of the 30 largest cities in the United States to operate with the commission form of government, the charter commission said.

Since the commission form of government was adopted by Portland in 1913, voters have voted down proposed changes. The charter commission said that they hope that the eight time is the charm.

Among the changes that voters will examine is expanding the size of the city council to 12 from 5, and changing representation so that there would be four new geographic districts that would have three city council members each. Those members would be elected by ranked-choice voting in each system.

The commission said that under the current system, each of the five members of the commission represent approximately 130,000 people. Without actual geographic districts, the commission members tend to be wealthy white men who live on the city's west side, the commission found.

Under the changes, only the mayor and city auditor would be elected city wide.

If there is a vote in the future city council that is tied, the mayor would break the tie.

The new rules would mean lessened roles for city commission members. Instead of the current system of each commissioner managing a series of city bureaus, the role of running the day-to-day operations of the city would fall to the mayor and the newly created city administrator.

While the charter commission passed the changes 17-3, there is expected to be opposition in the fall and given that there have been no changes in 109 years, there is no guarantee that the changes will pass.