...A working person’s guide to the Portland mayor’s race
(From Page 2)
• When budget shortfalls make staff
cuts necessary, the cuts should focus as
much as possible on management and
overhead, not on the front-line workers
who provide the City’s services. A state
law Smith helped pass in 2011 sets a
goal of 11 workers for every manager
at large state agencies. The ratio in
Portland is estimated to be 6 to 1, and
all three candidates thought that was
too high.
• The City should discourage bu-
reaus from over-using temporary, sea-
sonal, contracted out or prison labor.
• The City should buy goods and
services locally when possible.
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• All three said they would support a
requirement that employers provide
paid sick leave. [Seattle adopted such a
measure in 2011.]
• None are in favor of Walmart-style
big box development.
SOME DIFFERENCES:
T HE E CONOMY
Brady has made private sector job
development the center of her campaign
for mayor. She says she would spur jobs
by making city permitting easier, get-
ting city to buy local goods and serv-
ices, and persuading employers from
elsewhere to locate in Portland.
“I’m a recruiter by nature,” Brady
said. “I'm a business person. I know
how to read a balance sheet and profit
and loss statement. So I will be on the
phones every week recruiting start-ups
and other organizations, both for-profit
and non-profit, to move to Portland.”
Brady said she would also work to
reform the city’s “job-delaying permit-
ting process.” She says she wants to
consolidate permitting into a single bu-
reau, create a “no-surprise” permitting
system, and make it more affordable.
Hales, on the other hand, says the
best thing the City can do for the local
economy is return its attention to what
it’s supposed to be doing: providing
good public services at a good price.
“The city of Portland is a great big
blue-collar service operation,” Hales
said. “We pave streets and mow grass
and teach kids how to swim and put out
fires and respond to 911 calls. We’re not
Congress. We’re not the Legislature.
We’re not an issues debating society.…
If we occasionally want to have a de-
bate about recycling, the public will put
up with that, but what we’re really sup-
posed to be doing is paving their streets
and putting out the fires.”
Hales said he’d like to adopt a pa-
perless permitting and inspection sys-
tem along the lines of what Salt Lake
City has: Permits can be filed online,
and inspectors come out with iPads,
making reports in real time that are ac-
cessible online.
Smith’s favored approach to eco-
nomic development is “economic gar-
dening,” — helping existing small and
medium-sized businesses to grow —
rather than “hunting” big companies to
get them to relocate. He also wants to
establish 311, a one-stop phone number
that citizens can call when they have
non-emergency questions or issues with
local government. And more than the
other candidates, Smith says he wants
to focus on the problems of Portland’s
less affluent outer east side, including
greater light rail safety, more parks, put-
ting in sidewalks, and paving streets.
C OLUMBIA R IVER C ROSSING
“It’s the biggest public works proj-
ect that we’ll have here for the next
decade,” Brady said, “and if we don’t
proceed with it, it may be another 10
years before we can even have the pos-
sibility of leveraging the federal dollars
to get it done.” Brady, who calls herself
a booster of the project, says that though
the project may get “skinnied down,”
the dollars are there at the federal gov-
ernment, and so is the commitment by
Oregon’s and Washington’s congres-
sional delegation.
Brady’s support for CRC was a big
part of why she got Operating Engi-
neers Local 701’s endorsement, said
Local 701 political coordinator Cherry
Harris. [Harris also credited Brady’s
willingness to learn about unions, and
her support for enforcing apprenticeship
utilization requirements on public-pri-
vate projects.]
Hales, meanwhile, says the existing
proposal can’t be built because of recent
objections by the U.S. Coast Guard.
“What’s really needed is not some-
body who’s a cheerleader for this proj-
ect, but somebody capable of negotiat-
ing success,” Hales said. “We have to
come up with a version of the project
that is buildable and that we can afford
and that we can start on soon.” Hales
said he would favor a simplified main
span and light rail, but not a Hayden Is-
land interchange.
Smith is the most critical of the
CRC, saying it can’t be built because
it’s too expensive — that funding is un-
certain in Congress, that Oregon and
Washington are unlikely to come up
with the required hundreds of millions
of dollars of contributions, and Clark
County residents may not support
tolling that would be needed to pay for
the bridge. Instead, Smith says he
would push for neighborhood-scale
public works projects, that will spend
public money on construction workers,
not just engineers and consultants.
C AMPAIGN F INANCE
Smith said he worked hard to defend
Portland’s Voter-Owned Elections sys-
tem of public campaign finance, and
still feels bad about its defeat at the polls
in 2010, by less than 700 votes. Smith
thinks some modified version of the
proposal should go before voters again.
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B ANKING
Hales is pushing a plan called Com-
munity Credit Portland, which he says
is modeled on the Bank of North
Dakota. The idea is to deposit the
City’s bank balances in local banks and
credit unions, and use it to make loan
guarantees to local businesses.
Brady’s not so sure. “I think the suc-
cess of that particular model has been
oversold,” Brady told the Labor Press.
Unemployment is low in North Dakota
because of the natural gas boom, Brady
said, not because of community lend-
ing.
We support Mary Nolan because
she gets results for labor!
• AFSCME Local 189 • AFSCME
Local 328 • AFSCME Council 75 •
IBEW Local 48 • ILWU Local 8
• ILWU State Council
• Portland Association of Teachers
• Portland Fire Fighters Local 43
• Portland Police Association
• Teamsters Joint Council #37
Carpenters Local 156 • Carpenters
Local 196 • SEIU Local 49
• Columbia Pacific Building &
Construction Trades Council
Paid for by Mary Nolan for City Council
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Hales disagreed. “It was a noble idea
that voters have now turned down,”
Hales said. “I certainly prefer to be in
an environment where money wasn’t
such a big factor in elections, but how
we get to that utopia with the voters
having turned it down, I’m not sure.”
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