Our 1.6 million taxpayer dollars commissioner Amanda Fritz invited all present at a community meeting on March 3rd to contact her office for any help they needed with city government. When Richard Ellmyer spoke to her she said that she would NOT help get public housing statistical nor financial data from the Bureau of Housing, PDC or HAP. The "missing" 42 employees and $150,000,000 former PDC housing funds from the city's draft budget was of no concern to her. She refused to discuss any policy or budget issue involving her assigned bureau, Office of Neighborhood Involvement, until after the budget was passed and citizens could no longer have an influence. This is what we bought for 1.6 million tax dollars.

Amanda Fritz immediately bought into five fiefdom fiat government and has quickly, easily and comfortably adjusted to cityhallspeak. Amanda Fritz, just like her colleagues, will not talk to much less help any constituent with a problem that is not related to a bureau assigned to them. Amanda Fritz, just like her colleagues, will avoid publicly discussing contentious policy and budget matters related to a bureau assigned to her.

Amanda Fritz is the perfect poster woman for rejecting taxpayer financed candidates and changing the form of Portland city government.

Taxpayers expect that their dollars would buy them a city commissioner that is substantially and beneficially different from those that do not receive taxpayer financing for their campaigns. Amanda Fritz is neither substantially nor beneficially different than the rest of her colleagues on the Portland city council. Some might say that Amanda mislead or even lied to the voters to get elected. If it were possible taxpayers should ask for a refund, return the product to the private sector and get our money back.

Amanda Fritz supports five fiefdom fiat government. A political system with no checks and balances. The commissioner in charge of a bureau declares a position and is protected from both citizen and commissioner challenges thanks to the "you don't mess with my bureau I won't mess with yours" hands off operational policy.

Amanda Fritz supports the discredited and abhorrent policy of UNLIMITED neighborhood concentration of public housing which leads to economic segregation and low-income housing ghetto building.

Amanda Fritz opposes the request for accountability by the Portsmouth Residents Action Committee, the North Portland Business Association, the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee, the Lents Neighborhood Association, the Argay Neighborhood Association and the St. Johns American Legion Post #98 for the Housing Authority of Portland's public housing statistical data.

Amanda Fritz supports spending scarce tax dollars on neighborhood associations that:

A. Don't tell their members about neighborhood elections.

B. Don't adequately inform ALL potential voters of a neighborhood election.

C. Refuse to allow their own members and the Portland city council access to their neighborhood eligible voter lists.

D. Allow ONI staff to participate in neighborhood elections.

E. Allow neighborhood chairs to conduct elections without providing eligible voter lists at the election site. 

F. Allow neighborhood chairs to refuse to identify eligible voters just prior to an election at the election site when no eligible voter lists are available.

G. Cannot or will not provide verifiable proof of honest, fair, due process elections.

H. Allow neighborhood associations to list and permit participation as voting board members and officers persons who do not live nor own a business nor property within neighborhood boundaries.

I. Support the discredited and abhorrent policy of UNLIMITED neighborhood concentration of public housing which leads to economic segregation and low-income housing ghetto building.

Amanda Fritz supports an ONI policy which refused to allow the printing of a hundred neighborhood meeting notices involving the highly controversial John Ball School property because the ad hoc citizen group involved was not an officially recognized neighborhood association. The group was created because the officially recognized neighborhood association had repeatedly failed to seriously address the issue.

Citizen Amanda Fritz gave compelling public testimony AGAINST the give away of the John Ball School site which remains valid today. Unfortunately, go along to get along commissioner Fritz seems to have conveniently forgotten her previous public arguments, is now part of the back door deal making club and today will not discuss the matter.

Candidate Amanda Fritz publicly supported HR676, a single payer health care proposal at the federal level. However, at the state level, commissioner Amanda Fritz supports the Billion dollar SB329 which continues the model of the despised, failed, for-profit private health insurance industry. Like other hypocritical choices Amanda won't talk about this policy either. 

Despite the city's budget crisis, commissioner Amanda Fritz has no problem with paying an unsustainable maximum of $1,246 PER MONTH for health insurance to city employees such as herself.

Amanda Fritz was responsible for the ONI fiasco which lured citizens to a night meeting at city hall with the promise that their individual requests for city lobbying action would be considered. Not a single individual suggestion was incorporated into the city's legislative instructions to its lobbyists. A sham and a fraud to which commissioner Fritz is accountable.

For all the fuss and worry during the election about former Portland Planning Commission detail wonk Amanda Fritz bogging down the system by asking for too much information it turns out Portland city commissioner Amanda Fritz is far more interested in hiding and covering up data than she is in digging it up to share with citizens for reasoned, justifiable and defensible decision making.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz's refusal to talk about ONI issues until its budget was passed has not prevented the issues mentioned above from being placed on the public table for her and citizen consideration. A failure to act on these matters will not be missed by the voters and taxpayers that paid for her campaign.

Amanda Fritz needed to convincingly assure us, i.e. those that paid her campaign bills, that she is, in fact, sufficiently and beneficially DIFFERENT from the current insular political culture that darkly envelopes city hall. As of today we can only say, If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...


Richard Ellmyer