Were Voters Repeatedly Told?
Former candidate for the position from District 3, Jon Walker (tagline: “He’s Boring”), has been insisting for days on Bluesky that “voters were repeatedly told” that the Mayor would have the tie-breaking vote, period—including in the matter of the Council electing its own President. Yesterday, I addressed what the Charter provides on this count.
While repeatedly making this claim, Walker went so far as to suggest (it’s an accusation, really) that Councilor Candace Avalos, who was Co-Chair of the commission’s Form of Government Subcommittee, “helped make sure Portland’s new city charter was poorly drafted” and then was “abusing the poor drafting for personal gain” by seeking the Council presidency.
Not a great sign that the person who helped make sure Portland's new city charter was poorly drafted is now abusing the poor drafting for personal gain in violation of what voters were repeatedly told during the campaign for the charter.
So, then: were voters repeatedly told that the Mayor would have these blanket tie-breaking powers?
Somewhat to my regret, my autistic hyperfocus had engaged by this point, and so today I set myself to the task of methodically scanning through all the documents on the Charter Commission’s webpage, to see how the commission described and explained the mayoral tie-breaker over the course of its work.
I’m not going to belabor this, so let’s get right to the rub. The commission’s position on when and if the mayor could vote shifted between its progress report in May 2022 and its progress report in June 2022. Here’s how.
May 2022:
The Charter Commission considered whether a mayor should vote to break ties on city council. However, the Commission believes that the distinct lines we are trying to draw between the executive and legislative authorities would be broken if a mayor votes with council. With a 12-member city council and a non-voting mayor, seven councilors would be required to pass legislation. Legislation fails in the case of a tie.
June 2022:
The Commission also took a careful look at the types of procedural votes and the majority thresholds needed to advance council work. Quorum for council, defined as the number of councilors needed to be present in order to legislate city business, is set at seven – a simple majority of the 12-member council. For legislation, a mayor will hold a tie-breaking vote, so that non emergency ordinance policies can be passed with six councilors plus the mayor, while a handful of uncommon, but high consequence actions will require a supermajority of nine councilors to move forward.
By this June 2022 progress report, the Charter commission was clear that the Mayor only gets to cast a tie-breaking vote in the case of a deadlock on non-emergency ordinances.
Further, in its progress report in April 2022, the commission explained its thinking about City Council organization:
The Charter Commission does not wish to be overly prescriptive about how the city council organizes itself in the City Charter -- as the newly formed council will develop its own procedures and leadership organization. The Charter Commission does, however, envision a 12-member council being able to organize itself into committee work, with subgroups of council members specializing in different policy areas (e.g., transportation, community safety, housing, environmental protection, etc.) and a City Council President chosen by council peers acting as the presiding officer for city council. This intent in our reforms will continue to be spelled out throughout the Spring.
Note the phrasing here, in that the President is “chosen by council peers”. This position is consistent with the overall intent at that stage (per above, this didn’t change until between the May and June reports) that the Mayor be entirely non-voting.
In the same May 2022 progress report above (when the Mayor had no vote whatsoever), the commission said this about City Council organization:
The Charter Commission does not wish to be overly prescriptive about how the city council organizes itself in the City Charter – and the proposed amendments state that council will establish its own rules of procedure. The Charter Commission envisions a 12-member council organizing itself into committee work, with subgroups of council members specializing in different policy areas (e.g., transportation, community safety, housing, environmental protection, etc.). Council will also elect a Council President and Vice President. The Council President will preside at all council meetings.
That specific phrase from April about “chosen by council peers” is gone, but remember: this is still when the commission was recommending no vote for the Mayor at all, on anything. So this is consistent with the idea that only Council member can vote for their President.
In the same June 2022 progress report above (in fact, immediately preceding the earlier quote), the commission apes the language I just included from the May 2022 report:
The Charter Commission does not wish to be overly prescriptive about how the city council organizes itself in the charter – and the proposed amendments state that council will establish its own rules of procedure. The Charter Commission envisions a 12-member council organizing itself into committee work, with subgroups of council members specializing in different policy areas (e.g., transportation, community safety, housing, environmental protection, etc.). Council will also elect a Council President and Vice President. The Council President will preside at all council meetings.
By this stage, as stated, the commission had decided that the Mayor should get “a tie-breaking vote” but only “for legislation”. This entire history establishes a pretty clear decision by the commission: only Council members get to vote for Council President, and the Mayor only gets a tie-breaking vote on non-emergency ordinances.
As I noted in my first post on this subject, the Council’s election of its President does not come in the form of an ordinance. It’s therefore an action inherently exempt from a mayoral tie-breaker.
So, the commission record is clear. It certainly wasn’t they being implicated in Walker’s “voters were repeatedly told”. Perhaps it came from later public communications informing voters about the upcoming ballot measure to change Portland’s form of government?
Well, the “fact sheet” vetted by the Oregon Secretary of State doesn’t mention mayoral voting at all, and the FAQ vetted by the Oregon Secretary of State and dated (in the filename anyway) September 2022, has two mentions, one right after the other.
How would the separation of powers be balanced between the mayor and the city council in the proposed ballot measure?
If passed, City Council would continue to exercise legislative power to make laws and approve the city’s budget. The Mayor would not be a member of the City Council but could introduce laws and break tie votes on non-emergency ordinances.The proposed measure includes an even number of city councilors. What would happen in the event of a tie?
The Mayor, who would be elected by the city at large, would have a tie-breaking vote.
Now, one could make the argument that the second answer there is confusing given the first, or one could make the argument that the first simply is more specific than the second. By the very “lex specialis” analysis my other social media commenter wanted to use, we’d resolve this apparent conflict by going with the more specific statement.
So, out of these two pieces of voter educational material, only one even mentioned the mayoral tie-breaker, and it specified that it applies only to “non-emergency ordinances”. Which is precisely what the Charter commission was detailing in its progress reports in the months leading up to these materials.
At this point, I’m left with only one suspect left to implicate in Walker’s “voters were repeatedly told”.
The package would create four multi-member districts with three council members elected per district. The size of the city council would increase to 12 people. The mayor and city auditor would still be elected citywide. The mayor would no longer be part of the city council and would only cast a tie-breaking vote in the event of a 6-6 deadlock.
The Oregonian (June 15, 2022):
Elected citywide, the mayor would still lead the city’s budget process but no longer be a voting member of the council except when needed to break a tie, according to the proposal. The mayor would have no veto power and would be allowed to appoint only the city attorney and police chief, subject to council confirmation.
The mayor would not be able to veto council decisions and would not have a council vote except as a tiebreaker. It would also be up to the city administrator, not the mayor, to hire and fire bureau executives.
Under the proposal to change Portland’s governing charter, the mayor would no longer be a member of the council and would be responsible for implementing laws and regulations. The city commissioners, meanwhile, would serve solely as legislators. (The mayor would still get a tie-breaking vote, but no veto power).
Willamette Week (July 6, 2022):
Strip the mayor of a council vote, except as a tiebreaker. All administrative duties and bureau oversight would be handed to a newly created position of city administrator, who would be hired by the mayor and confirmed by a majority of council members.
Portland Mercury (September 7, 2022):
Mapps is joined by Commissioner Dan Ryan and Mayor Ted Wheeler in openly casting doubt on the charter commission’s ballot measure. All three men have noted their interest in giving the mayor more power over council. Under the charter commission’s proposal, the mayor is only allowed a vote on city council when the 12-person council needs to break up a tie. Wheeler believes that the mayor should be granted veto power on all council votes.
The charter reform package, if passed, would split those functions up. The council would set city policy and the mayor, who would no longer have a vote on the council except as a tiebreaker, would be tasked with hiring and overseeing a city manager, who would in turn hire staff to run each bureau.
The Oregonian (July 12, 2023):
The mayor will only vote on issues before the City Council if needed to break a tie and will not hold veto power.
Portland Mercury (July 12, 2023):
The Oregonian states that their proposal would reduce the planned 12-person City Council to eight members, two from each of the four geographic districts, and change the ranked-choice voting system to match the one Multnomah County will implement next year. The ranked-choice election system in the initial charter reform ballot measure requires each candidate to earn only 25 percent of the vote to win. Importantly, Gonzalez and Ryan’s proposal would also give the mayor veto power instead of simply serving as a tie-breaking vote, as laid out in the current charter reform measure.
Both the mayor and auditor will be elected citywide under these changes. The mayor will no longer serve as a member of the city council, and will only intervene in council work to cast tie-breaking votes when needed. The city will also hire a city administrator to manage city bureaus, which are currently run by city commissioners.
It’s likely that this list isn’t exhaustive, but surely it’s long enough to make the point.
If former candidate Walker wants to blame someone for the fact that “voters were repeatedly told” the Mayor would have a tie-breaking vote no matter what, he needs to blame Portland’s local reporters who didn’t bother to understand the topic on which they were reporting, rather than accuse Councilor Avalos of self-dealing.
Addenda
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I’m not sure why Walker has a thing for chasing Avalos but he does it in his campaign website’s post-election thoughts, too.
Candace Avalos won less than 9% in her 2020 run for City Council (17,966 votes) but was part of the charter reform commission. There she pushed for a voting system that would let someone win without majority support. She then ran under this system, securing her seat this time with just 10,478 votes.
All this really does, though, is show why we needed reform to how we elected City Council. When she ran in 2020, commissioners were elected citywide. In that election there were 200,000 votes cast for that position, of which, yes, she got just 18,000. This past election, she ran in a district where around 40,000 votes were cast and, yes, won 10,000 of them.
The entire point of the reform was to encourage smaller districts to elect their own representatives from an obviously mathematically smaller voter population, rather than a candidate needing to capture enormous vote totals out of 200,000 or so votes.
I’m not sure, then, why Walker bothers with this apples and oranges anecdote.
Yes: candidates like Avalos could not break through under the citywide commissioner elections of the past. That’s why we changed the system. It seems as if we’re supposed to be aghast that since Avalos was just one single person among many, many people involved in crafting the new charter, somehow she rammed through an election format designed to let her, specifically, win?
Maybe she “pushed for a voting system that would let someone win without majority support” but she hardly would have been able to push through that proposal all on her own. And, yes: the system is meant to increase representation by requiring candidates to win only enough votes to be sufficiently supported by a sizable portion of their district, rather than a substantial majority.
It was a power redistribution for sure, and one Portland badly needed. Is this the problem?
Finally, and just for the record since the numbers apparently matter somehow, in Walker’s district race where something over 80,000 votes were cast, he never cleared 1,600.
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Also worth noting that over on Bluesky, Walker posted as a smoking gun one of those FAQ answers I included above—via a screenshot in which he had selectively cropped out the immediately preceding answer which contradicts his positions. Walker ran on being boring, and for sure: bad faith arguments, selective edits, and scurrilous accusations are, if nothing else, boring.
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One more thing. Walker’s also big on this idea that the average Portland voter wouldn’t know what’s an ordinance and what isn’t. That might be true, but that still just implicates the press.
But as a matter of common sense, if you polled voters, “In a system with a separation of powers, should the leader of the executive branch get a say in who is the leader of the legislative branch?” they’d probably say no, for the same reason most people wouldn’t think the White House should get a vote for Speaker of the House of Representatives.