The Whimperer ran a delightful story on Sunday, called "The City that Almost Works." The author argues that Portland city government is dysfunctional and is airing its dirty laundry in public instead of settling disputes nicely, in private.
Public disputation is a consequence of public participation. One characteristic of The Good Old Days is that a lot of things happened without much (or any) public participation and discussion. For example, Tri-Met (which had the hyphen then) was created in a series of backroom discussions that resulted in some emergency legislation and an overnight takeover of the ailing private bus system. It wasn't the result of months of focus groups (which we now call charrettes, because everything sounds better in French, like nouilles au fromage and merde du jour) and neighborhood meetings. Pioneer Square came about through a similar process, guided behind the scenes by William E. Roberts (not coincidentally, one of the inventors of Tri-Met). The fundraising was public -- my name's on a brick somewhere in the Square -- but the process that led to Meier & Frank selling the block to the City was not.
The closure of Harbor Drive is another fine example. In 1968 Governor Tom McCall called for the city and state to work together to improve public access to the river from downtown Portland, across what was then Harbor Drive. His vision was not to close Harbor Drive, but to put it underground. (His remarks, from the minutes of an October 1968 committee meeting, are about 3/5 of the way down this PDF.)
How did Harbor Drive get closed? Not through public process, but in the same private way. In 1970, Glenn Jackson, the powerful chairman of the State Highway Commission, decided to close it. (I imagine he obtained the votes of the rest of the Commission as a formality first.) On September 9, 1970, he wrote to Mayor Terry Schrunk to say that the state would close Harbor Drive when the Fremont Bridge opened, and the city should build some alternate connections. A PDF of his letter is here. Almost as an afterthought, he wrote, "It is recognized that public hearings will be necessary..." The City didn't jump on the bandwagon, but wrote back that it was premature to schedule a hearing to close Harbor Drive -- more studies needed to be done. But when the Fremont Bridge opened, Harbor Drive closed, as promised by Mr. Jackson.
Closed-door government can work, if the people making the closed-door decisions are making good decisions, meaning decisions based on adequate information. The City Council can get good information without holding public hearings. The decisionmakers gain speed in exchange for giving up public involvement. Closed-door government doesn't work if the council gets bad information or no information. (Problem for the student: compare the process for closing Harbor Drive with the process for approving the Tram.) The reason the City almost works (in the Whimperer's view) is that the current council is doing things mostly in the open. We see their disagreements and we get to comment on them. They're not going to accomplish as much as if they did everything behind closed doors, in the Good Old style, but what they do accomplish, they're likely to do better.