On Monday July 1st, Portland City Commissioner Mingus Mapps will no longer be in charge of the transportation bureau. Mayor Ted Wheeler will retake the bureaus and pass them onto administrators ahead of an historic reform to our city government, making Mapps the last ever commissioner-in-charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT).
It was perhaps a fitting end to the dysfunctional and outdated commissioner-in-charge system that Mapps, who hopes to be Portland’s next mayor, spent part of his final week in that position answering questions about a bike lane controversy he was solely responsible for. Mapps was asked about his role in the Southwest Broadway bike lane scandal in a podcast interview published by City Cast Portland yesterday.
Interviewer Claudia Meza pressed Mapps on a number of topics throughout the interview. When the conversation turned to the importance of clear communication from the city’s top politician, Meza told Mapps his stance on important issues was often misunderstood not just by Portlanders, but by his own bureau leadership.
When Meza used the Broadway bike lane “scandal” (her word) as an example — a story we covered closely back in September after Mapps told PBOT to rip out a protected bike lane because several downtown hotel owners didn’t like it, only to have his plans thwarted by swift pushback from the community — he didn’t take responsibility.
Instead, Mapps blamed my reporting.
“It doesn’t matter what’s right, what’s wrong, it’s the confusion,” Meza said. “People aren’t clear about where you stand, where you want things to go, including your bureau.”
To which Mapps replied:
“Well, Claudia, I think what you might be pointing to is the quality of reporting that happens in this space… Frankly, I did not recognize the reporting on this. It did not jive up with my experience… You know… I have no influence over what blogs publish.”
When Mapps first took over the PBOT commissioner job, he told me in an interview that he was, “the guy where the buck stops on transportation.” But when things got messy on Broadway, he has repeatedly run away from chances to take responsibility and clarify his role. It was the PBOT director — not Mingus “Where the Buck Stops” Mapps — that apologized for what happened. And Mapps continued to share an inaccurate version of events when asked about it in public.
I’ve given Mapps every opportunity to set the record straight, including an interview just one day after I broke the story and several emailed requests for comment that remain unanswered. We still don’t have a the full picture of who did what and why.
While many Portlanders remain confused about where Mapps stands, he shows no self-reflection or humility about what happened. The only thing he’s clear about is who to blame. That’s not the type of leader Portland needs.
So many urbanists voted for this guy because they were upset by Eudaly’s mild skepticism of developer/landlord deregulation as a major path towards addressing our chronic and continuing lower-income housing crisis.
Tbh as much as I’m taking bad about Mapps, I’d still vote for him over Eudaly, Hardesy, Vega Peterson, Rubio or DePass any day of the week, in any election. That’s how toxic and regressive I think those neoliberals are for Portland’s future.
And, of course, its neoliberal to fight for tenant rights and tenant-run cooperative housing according to “Jay Cee”.
Words have no meaning I guess?
Neoliberal? You use that word when talking about the only slightly left leaning people we’ve had in local government?
Jay Cee, you might want to look up what “neoliberal” means, I think you are using it incorrectly.
Neoliberalism, in recent times, is most closely associated with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and was a reaction against Reagan and Thatcher — in this country, an attempt by the Democrats to regain power by tacking right.
Neoliberalism is characterized by a belief in the ability of the free market to solve social problems — this certainly doesn’t describe Eudaly or Hardesty, nor Peterson or DePass.
I don’t know why you add Carmen Rubio to that list (except maybe that she is a woman with a Spanish name?) Look at her record on council, she quite deftly got Housing Regulatory Reform passed. Most Portland liberals saw that as pro-developer — not something Eudaly would have supported.
When you say “neoliberal” I think what you probably mean is “social justice” liberals. Or, pejoratively, the “wokes.” That is the opposite of “neoliberalism.”
I appreciated your pushback/distinction, Lisa, though I quibble with this last part: They are by no means opposite. Neoliberals in fact love to hide behind/weaponize “wokeness” so we’re busy focused on that and those issues rather than the economic wealth/power they’re busy trying to funnel upward as much as possible.
Insightful comment, Damien. Thank you!
i actually mean neoliberal, not woke, though neoliberals do tend to cloak their true rightist nature in progressive politics (see Bill, Hilary Clinton or Joe Lieberman for examples). I don’t consider any of the people I mentioned as left or far left – but rather reactionary especially when it comes to bike infrastructure.
For example they might claim bike lanes are racist or gentrifying, but what they really mean is they want to maintain the pro car status quo.
I think they are very status quo cloaked as woke, some with a hint of populism thrown in.
Thanks for your further comment. Re last paragraph, maybe a little oregano and garlic too! Have a good rest of weekend.
Because bike infrastructure for college-educated upper-class-coded people who are hopping mad that they did not get a protected bike lane on a transit- and ped-priority street so that they can ride their $12,000 E-cargo bike to the local brewpub is the epitome of left-wing class struggle.
I don’t think most people on the left would consider Rubio, Hardesty, or Vega-Peterson as even close to the center-left. Eudaly is on the edges of the center-left according to my opinion but even this position is controversial among left-wing circles. For example, the DSA (which is considered center-left by some) did not endorse Eudaly and has many prominent members who were openly hostile to Eudaly.
Thank you “Will the last,” I believe you. Eudaly’s politics are probably close to my own, I remember hearing her in an interview say she liked Elizabeth Warren (My two E. Warren t-shirts are worn to rags).
I also think that the traditional right/left spectrum doesn’t describe the political shift happening in Portland right now.
Eudaly and “mild” are contradictions. Even today i can’t figure out if she was simply naive, too simple, or a calculating radical far left version on Trump minus the MAGA-esque cult following.
Mapps is simply a casualty of politics, business as normal. Bike Portland should not be so offended, instead perhaps flattered to even have some claims lobbed (even if false and unwarranted) as to having such influence as to impact such high level decisions.
Why do you assume this offends me? I’m not offended at all. I’m just reporting it and sharing my opinion about what he said.
No doubt. Apologies for any misinterpretation, i meant the general audience of the BP articles.
In my line of work, i deal with diverse opinions daily. Part of being able to achieve needed work results, which positively impact our community, is not going off kilt for every unkind thought that floats by. Sometimes knowing my opposition, having them outspoken directly, is more empowering than having a bunch of yes-men and nodders that could equally be colluding behind my back.
Having a City Council member who’s running for mayor trying to salvage his reputation by publicly denigrating your professional work is on a whole different level than the typical “unkind thought that floats by”.
It’s also not just another typical “diverse opinion” about something.
Calling Mapps out was a totally appropriate, rational, legitimate response.
A casualty of politics? I guess you could use that to describe any politician that lies and deflects. The way you say it, it sounds a lot more passive, like politics just happened to him and not the fact that he utterly screwed up and showed himself to be an untrustworthy leader.
No. It’s be a use she was an awful commissioner with a lousy temperament for someone in a public position.
But this is just a blog, what’s the problem with making that observation? You are a strident amateur single issue propagandist, you are utterly predictable as to what your take on any issue will be, and you carefully curate and massage your comments to create the illusion of support and legitimacy where there is none. That screams “blogger”.
What is it you thought you were doing if not blogging?
Patrick,
I highly disagree with your comment. It is totally divorced from reality. I have no problem being called a blogger or anything else. Folks can call me whatever they want! But my work stands on its own and I’m proud of what I do. I also find it ironic that you falsely claim that I “carefully curate and massage your comments to create the illusion of support” in a comment that is in strong opposition to me yet has been published.
If anyone can find an error or factual problem in anything I’ve published, please let me know and I will look into it. I gave the same opportunity to Mapps and he never took me up on that.
It’s really really easy to point fingers and sling mud and never have a solid stance on anything and dither and take credit for stuff you didn’t do (listen to the interview, he tries to take credit for Portland’s clean water ffs!), but it’s a lot harder to actually get in the trenches, take a stand on tough issues over the course of many years and still be in a position where people take you seriously and respect your work.
Local Hero
“But this is just a blog”
It is about the quality of reporting, and bikeportland is consistently top notch. Jonathan, your work is highly valuable to the bike community and, I would say, to the Portland community in general. I am glad that Portland has such a great institution!
Agreed!
I agree.
So nothing about how you carefully pick and choose comments for your own ends? You allow a comment when it suits your purpose but that is your wholly subjective and self serving call to make, because this is an astroturf blog. True sign of a blogger; totalitarian control of feedback to avoid accountability and transparency.
Though I hear some guy in Lake O bankrolls your hobby so I guess it’s HIS blog.
Hi Patrick,
I’ve been taking it a little easier this past six weeks or so, but I probably do most of the moderating. (Jonathan would probably disagree with that!) We share the task, w/o much of a schedule or too much coordination, so you can’t really know who is approving you. I, personally, have gotten a little more lenient with approvals this spring, and my take is that JM has gotten more engaged. No big reason for any of that.
BikePortland is subscription-based, although a couple of years ago a long-time reader generously gave BP an infusion of cash. But subscriptions are the bread and butter. JM works his rear end off, and has been doing so for nearly a couple of decades.
My take on you is that you are an attention-seeking provocateur. Those types of comments clog up our threads and are a disservice to our readers. So, yeah, I might be discerning about which of your comments I push through.
It really is appreciated!
Super weird to call someone whose source of income has been running a journalism outlet for nearly 20 years an amateur. I mean blogger is factually accurate but he’s clearly gone pro.
Lol at the complaints about comments. Did you not like your alternate accounts being discovered or something?
I don’t think I’ve ever had a comment not approved except when especially off topic maybe. And I don’t think they agree with everything I say, and I certainly see comments that seem completely antithetical to what I’m guessing are Jonathan’s opinions all the time. Seems baffling to come in here with that complaint.
Mind blowing. The one and only reason there was a scandal is that someone in his bureau was saying to rip out the bike lane (with all signs pointing to Mapps). The “confusion” came from somebody noticing it and reporting it? He can’t deny that they were trying to remove the lane.
What a blatant dishonest statement. Just own your mistake! Just apologize and go on, people would respect that more than lying in such an obvious way.
Too bad about Mapps. I was always a supporter of him here in the BP comments. I liked his voice of reason during the crazy days of the pandemic and the hardesy years.
But, he hasn’t really been that visible this election or given us any reason why we should vote for him as mayor.
I think this quote from the reporter sums it perfectly: “people aren’t clear on where you stand”
I know where Gonzalez stands.
I know where Rubio stands (no thanks btw, I don’t want a replay of Portland’s early 2020’s failed policies).
But I don’t know where Mapps stands…
Gonzalez bike commutes to work. Rubio drives an SUV.
Gonzalez was also “accosted” on TriMet when another rider slightly brushed against his shoulder.
Indeed he was; now he’s a bike commuter.
If he had vision problems, he might be standing in the middle of the bike lane in front of one of the 3 Broadway hotels or the Schnitzer, because after all the chaos surrounding that project, PBOT installed the loading platforms without the ADA-required tactile warnings that allow arriving hotel or concert guests to identify that they’ve stepped into bike traffic.
But if a guest or bike rider gets injured because of that (I’ve tried exhaustively to get PBOT to add them), or if a hotel gets sued, or sues PBOT, it will probably also be BikePortland’s fault.
I won’t be voting for Gonzalez, Rubio, or Mapps because they all had a hand in creating the current mess. They were handed a mess and made it worse. Implementation of the new city government will surely be a difficult process and I’m sure there will be many controversies before we settle into the new paradigm – but the people who let things get so bad are NOT the people to help us recover.
Spoiler…the whole “remove the bike lanes” stance alone will probably get him elected mayor. The more page/screen time we give him on the way out is only helping his campaign. The whole thing reeks of political posturing – because infrastructure choices and budget portionings always cause community perturbances. There’s a large and vocal “bikes are in the way” contingency in town now. I really wouldn’t be surprised if he uses this to his advantage – and then wins by majority.
I doubt it… Mapps’ campaign seems to be going nowhere.
I disagree strongly with this.
Mapps has as much chance of being mayor as I do. And I’m not even running.
In this next election, only two people have any viable chance of getting elected president, and everyone nationwide knows that the current incumbent will win California, Oregon, & Washington – no doubt supporters of his opponent will claim election rigging and whatnot – but there’s really no dispute who will win in those states. That said, many Oregonians will in fact vote for the other guy, they always do, even many voters in Portland. So for those voters, who will they likely vote for in the coming city council and mayoral elections? Because they will vote for someone.
If you are a marginal candidate for office in Portland, do you try to cater to liberal voters who likely will vote for other liberal candidates? Or do you cater to these conservative deplorables (as Hillary Clinton once put it) who are anti-liberal? Given that a majority of commuters in Portland still get around by car, if you can project yourself as the main anti-bike a-hole in the community, might not that be a good strategy on getting more of these deplorable voters to vote for you, given that they’ll be voting anyway?
And so I agree, Mapps isn’t looking to get your or any votes from BP readers. He’s looking to blame you, however unjustly, so he can get more votes from those deplorable folks who irrationally blame you for all those expensive painted bike lanes that are increasing congestion, causing homelessness and abortions, and not allowing America to be great again. He needs all the votes he can get, and so I agree, there is a large “remove the bike lanes” constituency in Portland (and most other US cities), and you have done him a real yuuge service by taking the bait and publishing this story.
He’s using you, and you were just successfully used.
I don’t think that could be further from the truth.
It’s POSSIBLE Mapps wants to position himself as the anti-bike lane candidate, and maybe POSSIBLE he’d pick a fight with BikePortland to demonstrate that, despite the fact that hardly any anti-bike voters have ever heard of it.
And if Mapps HAD taken out the Broadway bike lanes, he could claim he stood up to the bike people and won.
But he didn’t. The lanes stayed, and there was even some positive PR about them later on from the hotels.
So it’s hard to claim Mapps “successfully used” BikePortland when–because of the efforts of BikePortland and others–he can’t even mention BikePortland or the Broadway bike lanes without highlighting his own inability to stop them, even though he was in a perfect position–head of PBOT–to do so.
He stood up to the bike people….and LOST–very publicly.
That’s hardly successfully using someone.
I don’t think it’s just right-wingers who are voting for “bike lanes bad” candidates either.
On The War on Cars podcast, they put it really well; what the coal miner/plumber/construction worker is to the Republicans, the suburban driver is to the Democrats. Plenty of liberal politicians in our state and beyond who portray the poor, oppressed motorist as the everyman just trying to get around, now stuck in traffic because of the whims of those few cyclists forcing through their Big Bike agenda.
I’m also feeling a bit doomer about who we elect and how they’ll shape our urban landscape. Transit and cycling were the big “green” thing to do in 2005, but now it’s all about electric cars. Seems like the thinking for many of our candidates for office – when they aren’t speaking at Bike Happy Hour – is that we just need electric cars and everything will magically be a-ok in the transportation sector.
Tbh your comments, your attitude towards those any so called “deplorables” not devoutly adhering to your values and purity of progressive leftist activism is actually why Trump and other right wing candidates continue gaining ground. Interestingly, if you were very to venture into Eastern Oregon, rural Idaho, or even Texas you’d likely find less opposition to abortions, bike lanes, and helping homeless folks into rehab/shelters as their disdain for smug liberal urban elitists that consistently hold contempt for their values and their perceived issues in non-urban communities.
My attitude towards these voters is that it will make me sad when the “leopard eating people’s face party” does what it said it would do.
The saying is often attributed to Yogi Berra, but “Even bad publicity is good publicity,” which seems to work well with the guy with orange hair – no matter how criminal he is and no matter how many lies he tells, his ratings just seem to go up and up, as his opponents keep mentioning his name again and again. It’s called “branding.” The more you hate Walmart or Coca-Cola – or the USA – the more people remember the name come voting day. Since most voters aren’t very thoughtful (certainly less than people who are on BP), the more likely they’ll vote for the most controversial person.
Love seeing Maus amp up the volume a bit with regards to speaking truth to power (in this case someone who is a well-documented liar and gaslighter) instead of attempting to sidle up to a corrupt, dysfunctional, and decaying system that has no future and cannot be reformed.
What a feather in the cap. Congratulations on doing such a good job of reporting that you’re living in that guys head rent free and you are so firmly in his mind that you’re the only thing he can think to scapegoat.
If true (and thats a big if), it just goes to show he had no idea what was happening with that project as your reporting of it was in-depth and factual. How embarrassing to admit to being so unaware of ones duties.
His interview on City Cast sealed the deal for me that I will never vote for Mapps for any elective office ever.
Eh, we have ranked choice in the city, now. Presuming there are six candidates or fewer I might, say, still vote for his dishonest incompetence over, say, a candidate who is being honest about their malicious intent. He’s certainly not getting near the top of any ballot I cast in 2024, though.
It’s worth stressing you don’t need to, though. As I understand it the latest iteration, you’ll be able to pick up to six (not all, which I’m a little sore about as that’s what was sold during the initial charter reform conversation, despite my own testimony to that commission warning them that was geometrically impossible on a ranked-choice ballot, which was just one more reason they should’ve gone with STAR instead) candidates, but don’t have to. You could even just pick one.
I for one will not be ranking Mapps at all. Or Gonzalez. Wilson’s got my first rank so far, but TBD on the others – I’ll be surprised if I rank six in the end.
I think quite a few voters will pick fewer than six candidates which will make for some fun drama as the media suddenly starts discussing wasted/exhausted votes.
I think informed voters will pick fewer than six. You should only vote for people who you would want to see in office. No need to pick six just to get the form completely filled.
A couple minutes before the dig at BikePortland, he tried to take credit for the Big Pipe Project (completed a decade before he took office).
And then quickly tried to change the subject when he was called on it.
Those of us who attended his “press conference” last summer — which was initiated as Mapps’s attempt to upstage the County’s release of a public health report on vehicular violence which was scheduled to be released the following day, but which the County then shared at the same podium that day — watched him blame every other entity/agency for the record number of people killed by motorists during his time overseeing PBOT. (Notably, Millicent Williams’ career was earlier derailed by her taking the fall for something a male politician in DC did. I sometimes think Mapps hired her with the intent of letting her take the blame for whatever he might do. But he’s got enough blame to spread onto lots of other folks, too.)
That said, Gonzalez is IMHO smarter than Mapps but perhaps even worse in his vision for the city, so it’s his campaign that has me more worried. Although who knows, ranked choice voting got New York its current terrible mayor. I do not oppose ranked choice voting per se, but I am aware it requires a lot more informed decision making by voters. And that does have me worried.
Small thing, but Mapps means “jibe” here. Not “jive.”
Bike Portland had a public policy fight with Maps and won. Good work. Now is the time to quit fighting and make friends. You advocate for bike transportation, and you never know when you will need Mapps on your side for another issue. It’s good to leave space for that to happen.
Thanks for the advice. But when someone like Mapps makes a public statement that calls my work into question in a desperate attempt to make himself look less bad, I will not sit back and let that stand on the record without a correction. That’s what this is. I’m not fighting with him. I’m correcting the record and injecting a bit of my opinion so the community understands how I feel.
You look better without the correction. Just my opinion. High road
Mapps is a perfect example of failed politicians who has no backbone. When bike bus leaders had a meeting with him back in August to present our letter of safety requests to PBOT bikebuspdx.org/letter he told us that he wished his children had a bike bus to go to school. One would think saying a strong statement of support would mean he would direct the bureau to do something. Unfortunately not.
You know you’re doing something right Johnathan, when you’re getting named and blamed by politicians. Keep up the great work reporting on bike and transportation in Portland!
Every accusation an admission of guilt. Fool me once, shame on me. I won’t be voting for him again. I.E., he is losing voters. He is clearly running the program poorly. I say that based on my own pet peev, 72nd through Rose City Golf Course. That is an absolute mess.
Cheers
Damn, you really shook the guy. He can’t stop thinking about Bike Portland.