It's not completely unwarranted to view the potential revision of the City Charter to replace its current commission government with a strong mayor form as a kind of re-founding of the City of Portland. That makes Charter review one of the single most important decisions the City's residents can face. With the work of the Charter Review Commission complete, this is the real deal. Whatever your views, the time to speak up is now.
What Changed Kris Hudson's Mind?
Posted to Form Of Government on 27 Jan 2007 by The One True b!X
Back in November 2005, when Mayor Tom Potter named the members of his Charter Review Commission, the announcement described Kris Hudson primarily as "a member and past director of League of Women Voters". According to the list of positions of LWV Portland, they "[find] that the present commission form of city government is accountable, flexible and responsive to citizens" and "support the commission form of city government as it exists in Portland" and "do not support a council-manager or a weak mayor-council form of government".
So why, in November 2006, did Hudson vote for "moving forward with a proposal to change the form of government to a Mayor/Council form of government"?
It's difficult to trace that evolution, since comments from Hudson in the Commission's minutes are few and far between, with scant reference of weighing in on the form of government issue. What follows is what I've been able to find.
06 June 2006
David Wang wanted to better understand the differences between a City Manager, and the CAO, and Kris Hudson asked if the group had considered the potential increased costs of the model suggested.
12 October 2006
Kris Hudson said that she has long supported the commission form of government, but that she really did like the notion of oversight committees and hearings that would come with a change to the FOG.
And that seems to be it, at least as reflected by the Commission minutes, until the 02 November 2006 vote which had thirteen Commission members voting to pursue changing the form of Portland's government -- including Hudson.
None of the minutes of the Form of Government Subcommittee show any remarks by Hudson. It's not even particularly clear if she attended any of those meetings, since the Subcommittee's minutes fail to provide a list of who attended them.
Hudon was, however, on the Executive Committee, along with (according to the Mayor's office) David Wang, Bruce Harder, Jim Meyer, Bob Ball, and Joe Hertzberg. It was the Executive Committee, you might recall, which produced the list of so-called "Conceptual Modifications", which appears to have transformed the wide-ranging set of brainstormed suggestions about a "modified commission" approach into something which seems (to me anyway) more cosmetic than deeply structural.
In the end, it would be helpful if someone, somewhere, could help fill in the blanks created by Hudson's near-absence in the Commission's minutes.
What, exactly, led Kris Hudson's long support for the commission form of government -- support consistent with the longtime position of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, of which she is a member and past director -- to transform itself into a vote in favor of abandoning that system?
Posted by Mark on 30 Jan 2007
While I obviously cannot explain the thought processes of individual commission members, I would suggest that the mayor/council/cao idea(dubbed the "imperial mayor" system by Sam Adams at the 6/22/2006 CRC/city council work session, since by this system the mayor has both executive and legislative authority -- a formulation that troubled him, by the way)was being pushed fairly hard at an early point in the discussions.
If you take a look at the 6/6/2006 meeting minutes (one of the videos that is missing from the city website, as you noted previously), you will see that Raphe Sonenshein, by speaker phone, "encouraged the group at its next meeting . . . [to g]et to agreement on the major concept of changing the form of government to the mayor/CAO/council form," and to "get to agreement" on whether the mayor would serve on the council, or solely as executive.
[Sonenshein was/is the consultant hired by the review commission as a FoG expert; he is a poli sci professor at USC, and former member (chair?) of the Los Angeles Charter Review Commission -- he appears at some of the meetings, either in person or by conference call]
From this point until the final vote in December, I think you will find that there is very little debate over whether or not to change the FoG, but plenty of discussion of how to sell it to the voters. For example, the commission seems to want district representation, and to believe that the "imperial mayor" plan is inconsistent with at-large elections. But as Bob Ball says at the 6/15/2006 meeting, combining districts with the change to imperial mayor on a single ballot will result in certain failure; and he ought to know.
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