“Reducing transparency will make it harder to gain support for the types of changes that will be necessary.”
– David Stein, former committee member
The Portland Bureau of Transportation will no longer have a dedicated advisory committee to watchdog and help flesh out its budget. It’s a step the City of Portland is taking as a cost-cutting and efficiency measure as it leans into the new form of government that will begin January 1, 2025.
But those dynamics are precisely why two former members of the PBOT Bureau Budget Advisory Committee (BBAC) we’ve spoken to are not happy about the decision.
On September 16th, bureau Director Millicent Williams sent an email to people who follow the work of the PBOT BBAC and its members, stating, “I am writing to let you know that PBOT will be dissolving the committee and we will not reconvene this September… The city budget process will be different moving forward, among many other changes,” Williams explains in the email.
Williams also mentioned “severe fiscal constraints,” “staff capacity constraints” and a, “need to continue to seek efficiencies” as reasons for her decision.
The BBAC costs the city money because it has a PBOT staff liaison and there’s also time and resources involved in prepping and holding the frequent meetings. Williams pointed to an August 5th memo from Mayor Ted Wheeler that laid out another grim financial outlook for the city budget in the upcoming 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Wheeler’s memo said bureau budget advisory committees are no longer required, but he left the option of dissolving them up to individual bureau directors.
Williams opted to get rid of the BBAC, an active committee that had 17 members representing different modes, labor unions, and interested citizens. She said, “this decision was not made lightly” but that she looks forward to the city’s “new engagement structure” once the transition is complete.
One former member of the PBOT BBAC, David Stein, said he thinks Williams made the wrong decision. “It was surprising to hear that the committee was being dissolved. In light of the Mayor’s unusual warning just last month about the dire prospects for the coming fiscal year, this would also seem to be an unnecessary risk,” Stein shared in an email to BikePortland.
Stein said since the two other bureaus in the Public Works service area — Environmental Services and Water — haven’t dissolved their budget committees, “now puts PBOT at a distinct disadvantage.”
Without assurance about what the new engagement process will look like, Stein feels that the change in government — which includes an expansion of city council members from five to 12 and an entire new wing of government under the city administrator’s office — makes the need of the PBOT BBAC more important than ever and “add uncertainty” to the process.
“None of the structural problems with PBOT’s funding were solved last year and reducing transparency will make it harder to gain support for the types of changes that will be necessary if the bureau, and Public Works more broadly, is going to provide the services that people expect,” Stein said.
But beyond Wheeler’s blessing, Williams has the City’s transition team to lean on. A report released this month from the Government Transition Advisory Committee titled, Recommendations to City Leaders of the New Government included 17 specific recommendations.
One of them was to, “dissolve bureau-specific budget advisory committees.” Their recommendation seems to be based, not on whether or not the committees are valuable and necessary, but because feedback from members and staff, “Consistently found the committees ineffective due to lack of training, information, time to do their work, and authority.”
That tracked with one former PBOT BBAC committee member who asked to remain anonymous so they could speak freely about the committee. “It’s unfortunate… But on the other hand, PBOT did seem to just treat the committee as obligatory rather than a place to truly get advice or ideas. So in the end I guess we’re all just getting our time back.”
