Mayor Potter has announced his bureau assignments. The biggest innovation is that he is placing the long-range planning functions of Parks, Transportation, Environmental Services, and Water under the supervision of the council as a whole, instead of under the aegis of individual commissioners. He has accepted the resignations of the administrative heads of Water, Transportation, and Emergency Management (meaning that he has asked them to step aside, and they have).
The Mayor is keeping Planning, Police, Finance, and the Portland Development Commission. Commissioner Adams gets Environmental Services and Transportation. Commissioner Leonard gets Water (the day-to-day operations) and Development Services. Commissioner Saltzman gets Parks, and Commissioner Sten gets Fire and Housing. (The complete assignment list, which includes bureaux I haven't named, is here.) His list is different enough from my prediction that I'm fairly confident that I'm not him.
Buried in his announcement is the welcome news that he's separating land use planning from the issuing of land use permits. That is, the people who are in charge of issuing development permits won't be the people tasked with finding reasons not to issue them. That bodes well for business. I think we're in for some lively action between Planning (under the Mayor) and Development Services (under Commissioner Leonard). On the whole, I think the Mayor made some thoughtful choices, including his cheerfully sly assignments to Commissioners Leonard and Sten: Mr. Leonard, a former firefighter, got the symbolically appropriate Water Bureau, and Mr. Sten, who had the Water Bureau during the firestorm over the failed billing system, gets the Fire Bureau in its place.
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