In emotional speech, Earl Blumenauer urges city planners to go it alone

This morning, for the first time in over 50 years, former U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer had an opportunity to give a speech unencumbered by the responsibilities of an elected official. Facing a large crowd in the Grand Ballroom of the downtown Portland Hilton Hotel on opening morning of a conference he founded 30 years ago, Blumenauer urged the assembled transportation professionals to go it alone.

“The federal government in this administration will do the right thing only by accident,” Blumenauer said. “And you can’t count on them.” “We control the land use. We price the curb. We can establish a policy framework that skips over the federal government,” he added.

Blumenauer spoke at the opening plenary of the MPACT Conference, which started in Portland in 1996 when it was called Rail-Volution. Back then, Blumenauer was a rookie in Congress and had just finished a 10-year stint as a Portland city commissioner where built his brand as a transit-oriented leader of a livable cities movement he would go on to export nationwide.

During one moment in his remarks this morning, Blumenauer appeared to become emotional when speaking about Portland’s recent challenges.

“We’ve had some tough times in Portland to be sure,” he said. “There are a few blocks you can see in the downtown that are challenging.” Then, as he said the next line, he gained strength and seemed to tear up at the same time: “But you can take a 10 minute walk in any direction and find some of the most livable neighborhoods anywhere in America!” he said, defiantly. “People here are committed to those goals and those values.”

Blumenauer likened the Trump administration to previous White House denizens who failed to see the writing on the wall. He told the story of how Portland led the renaissance in streetcars before there was any federal funding to make it happen. “We figured out a way to do it… and today we have 23 streetcar systems around the country,” he said, to loud applause. He urged his former colleagues in the crowd to focus on what they can control and to, “Not get all caught up in what the federal government takes away, or hoops they force you to jump through.”

While local and regional insiders are already laying the groundwork for a new transportation funding initiative, Blumenauer gave them even more motivation to plan the future without an expectation of federal support. He shared the example of public media and how the Trump administration has cut its funding. “We have seen every single dollar [of public broadcasting] cuts replaced by private donations, and then some,” he said. “This is what we can do when we’re committed, when we work together, and we are willing to make those investments.”

Blumenauer also brought up New York City’s successful congestion pricing policy as an example of something that, despite the federal government’s attempts to, “destroy it” and the difficult politics it took to make it happen, “It works as designed: Congestion is reduced. Air pollution is down, and there’s more money for transit.”

Politically, Blumenauer seems to think that the transportation funding pullbacks (he mentioned the $488 million Portland won for the Albina Vision Trust and Broadway Main Street projects specifically) by Trump and his transportation secretary will come back to haunt them come election time.

“Our challenge is to make sure our voices are loud and that we are heard,” he said at the end of his remarks. “Not just in elections, but in the transformational work you are doing around the country.”