[The Oregon legislature moves inexorably forward without regard to Portland's political problems.]

On January 6th mayor Sam Adams and commissioner Amanda Fritz invited Portlanders to participate in a, "discussion" at city hall involving citizen recommendations for action by the city lobbyists. A novel and good idea - it would seem. More than 200 citizens packed the council chambers eager to have their say. Unfortunately, as I predicted and warned, Adams, Fritz et. al. could not restrain themselves from the spotlight and spent an hour and twenty minutes talking before a single citizen got to express their individual ideas - which is why we came. So only about 30 or so of far more than 200 got their very brief chance in the sun. There was certainly NO "discussion" as advertised. 

For no obvious reason the Office of Neighborhood Involvement was supposed to lead this "discussion." First ONI staffers wasted everyone's time with their display of technological ineptitude. Then, instead of abandoning the confusing, complex and poorly designed private electronic voting opinion survey they proceeded to ask everyone to publicly express their answers by a show of hands raising the level of this unprofessional exercise in group think to the truly useless.

It is now January 26 almost three weeks after the meeting and two weeks into the legislative session. There is NO EVIDENCE, confirmed by the Office of Government Relations, that a single suggestion made by any citizen at the January 6th meeting became a part of the city's official instructions to its lobbyists.

So what was the point?

Well, mayor Adams, like his predecessor mayor Potter and his visioning project, got to say how he wants love and applause for promoting citizen participation in city government affairs. Unfortunately, like his predecessor mayor Potter and his visioning project, Sam and Amanda's citizen lobbying project was also a flop.

Our 1.6 million taxpayer dollars candidate did mention that she, like Richard Ellmyer, had also asked mayor Adams how individual citizen ideas presented at the January 6th public meeting would actually be converted into official instructions from the Portland city council to the city's lobbyists. Apparently just asking the question was good enough for our tax funded commissioner. Making sure that the citizens' requests were actually included in the city's agenda was obviously not quite as important to our publicly funded commissioner. This is what we paid for? Same old. Same old. 

Sam and Amanda reinforce these truisms: Citizens should be seen but not heard. City officials want your opinion as long as it agrees with what they have already decided to do.

Thank you Sam and Amanda for leading the more than 200 of us who took the time on a cold and rainy night to attend your meeting into thinking that anything any of us had to say would be added to the city's lobbying agenda. Please make sure that when you arrange the followup meeting you promised with all the legislators from districts within our city that you time it so that they come after the deadline for submitting bills so that should there be any citizens asking why their voices weren't heard the first time our legislators can all respond in unison, "I'm sorry, but we can't help you. The deadline for submitting bills has past."

Here are seven specific requests for legislative action regarding public housing and health care that were ignored by Adams, Fritz et. al. If you think any of these have some merit you might consider mentioning your support to the city council and your legislators before the session gets beyond the point of accepting new ideas which will come very, very soon.

1. Instruct the city's Salem lobbyist to identify bills involving any type of government financial contribution or tax subsidy for public housing ( PUBLIC Housing = Means Test + Government Subsidy + Rental Agreement ) and support an amendment to each bill which REQUIRES the recipient entity to affirm that no portion of the funding for that bill will be used for new public housing in any neighborhood which already has more than 15% public housing clients as a percentage of the total population of that neighborhood.

2. Instruct the city's Salem lobbyist to support a bill that requires the Housing Authority of Portland to produce the following public housing statistical data on a monthly basis:

Report #1. HAP Public Housing Program

A tab delimited text file with the following fields: 1. Age 2. Gender 3. Income 4. Neighborhood 5. Last Modification Date, for ALL clients in this database.

Report #2. HAP Section 8 Housing Voucher Program

A tab delimited text file with the following fields: 1. Age 2. Gender 3. Income 4. Neighborhood 5. Last Modification Date, for ALL clients in this database.

Report #3. New Columbia in North Portland's Portsmouth Neighborhood Program

A tab delimited text file with the following fields: 1. Age 2. Gender 3. Income 4. Neighborhood 5. Last Modification Date, for ALL HAP public housing clients (means test + government subsidy + rental agreement) living in New Columbia as of January 1, 2009. 

Report #4. HAP Affordable Housing Program

A tab delimited text file, including the total number of public housing (means test + government subsidy + rental agreement) HAP clients living in all of HAP's 32 properties in Multnomah county as of January 1, 2009, with the following fields: 1. Age 2. Gender 3. Income 4. Neighborhood 5. Last Modification Date.

Without this constantly updated information it is impossible to make credible, reasoned and defensible decisions in support of a public policy of Equitable Distribution of Public Housing and to hold HAP ACCOUNTABLE for their annual spending of more than $80,000,000 of taxpayers money.

3. Instruct the city's Salem lobbyist to support a bill which transfers complete authority over the Housing Authority of Portland from the city of Portland to Multnomah County. HAP's mission and authority is countywide. All voters in Multnomah county MUST have the ability to vote for or against the person most responsible for nominating, appointing and dismissing (ORS 456.110) HAP commissioners.

4. Instruct the city's Salem lobbyist to support a bill which funds the preliminary steps necessary to establish the Metro regional government as the future recipient of all government funds and tax subsidies related to public housing in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. Metro's charge will be to establish Equitable Distribution of Public Housing throughout its area of authority.

5. Support the introduction of the Oregon Community Health Care Bill, which can decrease the health care costs of public entities by 20%, as a competing model for the future of health care reform in Oregon.

6. Oppose SB329 as too complicated, costly, developed without due process and debate involving the competitive idea of a single payer type model and relies on the failed, for-profit, private health insurance industry model.

7. Support the Single Payer Universal Health Care Plan embodied in HR 676 (http://www.hr676.org).

As it turns out the city's three lobbyists had an agenda which was already overloaded and unprioritized before the call to citizens to add more items. So it was unrealistic from the beginning, a sham, to imagine that adding yet more weight to the lobbyists packet of instructions, especially without full council approval, had any chance of success.

After sixteen years of experience in city hall Sam Adams should have known better. He did and does know better. But his ego's need to constantly keep trying to do more than he and his staff can, should and are capable of successfully completing clouded his vision.

After 1.6 million dollars of taxpayers money spent on campaign funding for a candidate that should have been substantially and beneficially different than those financing their campaigns the old fashioned way, we now know better.


Richard Ellmyer