Isaac Laquedem

Esse quam videri: Frank Ivancie (1924-2019) and the changing nature of mayorship

In 1966 Portland's city councilors were collectively remarkable for their years of service, their longevity, and their uniformity.  The five white men on the commission included Mayor Terry Schrunk, age 53, who was midway through his third term, Mark A. "Buck" Grayson, age 58, who was about to start his third term, and Stan Earl, age 56, who was midway through his fourth term.  Commissioner Bill Bowes, age 71, was in his seventh full term - he had been in office since before the Second World War -- but he was not the oldest or most senior commissioner: those honors belonged to Ormond Bean, a venerable 80 years old, who had first joined the council in 1933.

Nothing lasts forever.  In the following six years the council turned over completely.  Mr. Bean did not run in 1966, Mr. Grayson did not run in 1970, Messrs. Bowes and Earl died in office in 1970 a few months apart, and Mayor Schrunk decided, under some political pressure, not to stand for re-election in 1972.  By January 1973 not a single councilor from 1966 was still in office.

The first of the five replacements won Ormond Bean's seat in the 1966 election.  He was a 42-year-old staffer in the mayor's office with a master's degree in education and a professional background as a public school teacher and principal, named Francis J. Ivancie.

Mr. Ivancie, who died last week at 94, is remembered by Portlanders below a certain age mainly for his one term (1981-1984) as mayor of our fair city, when he was a staunchly conservative and not particularly intellectual defender of the establishment.  His conservative politics contrasted sharply with the liberal views of three other councilors.  (No one was ever really sure what Mildred Schwab thought about any issue until she actually voted on it.)  Fifteen years earlier his views contrasted almost as sharply with those of the rest of the council, except that Frank Ivancie was then the lone liberal on the council.

Governing the city has changed since Mr. Ivancie was in office.  We expect our politicians to be scintillating public speakers but also to say nothing that gives offense to anyone.  We expect our politicians to be fast and decisive, but also to build consensus among a long list of unions, neighborhood associations, civic leagues, and people-about-city-hall before they do anything.  Perhaps most difficult for the modern politicians to accomplish, we expect them to budget money instantly for the crisis of the moment, and then complain when they try to raise money to pay for what we have demanded.  (Think of potholes, bridges, congestion, and gasoline taxes.)

If Frank Ivancie was troubled by those conflicts, he did not show it.  Charming and perceptive in small groups, he never seriously tried to learn the skills of oratory or to master public speaking.  He was always willing to listen to the civic-minded, and quick to correct them if they thought that they were giving him not suggestions but instructions.  And he was consummately interested in keeping the budget balanced.  Sometimes that was through revenue (he arranged for a small hydroelectric powerhouse to be built at one of the Bull Run dams to produce electricity for sale), sometimes through promotion (in 1983 he had the Water Bureau bottle and sell Bull Run Water, far ahead of the bottled-water fad), and sometimes through cost control (he pushed the Portland Building through as a fixed-price design-build job and then held the line on requests for budget-busting change orders).  Sometimes it was through raising federal funds: when Interstate 205 was built past the city's Rocky Butte Jail he argued that the freeway passed too close to the jail for safety and advocated for the federal government to reimburse Portland for the cost to build a new jail.  When the money had safely arrived he and others then tried to persuade the federal government that the city could use the old jail a little while longer and put the federal money to a different purpose.  (The feds didn't bite.)

The city government did not always look as if it was working well in the Ivancie administration, but in general it did.  Roads were paved, water was delivered, projects were built on time and on budget, and the daily business of government got done without much fuss.  Mr. Ivancie thought those accomplishments so unremarkable that in his 1984 campaign for re-election he didn't bother to pass out lawn signs or do much advertising.  Dignified in his personal appearance, he rarely stood on ceremony, and was more content to unwind after a day's work with some beer and music at the Euphoria Tavern than in the houses and private clubs of the rich.  His most prominent campaign tag line from his earlier city council races was the relatively modest "I'm Proud of Portland - Frank Ivancie for City Council."  It was esse quam videri -- what is, rather than what seems to be -- that mattered to him.

We may never again have a mayor as conservative as Frank Ivancie, nor one as insouciantly unconcerned with public opinion of his performance.  We might, however, encourage our current crop of leaders to take one political lesson from Mr. Ivancie and to become as concerned with the esse as they are with the videri.

The three careers of Dennis Buchanan (1932-2017), and how chicken salad for lunch could have derailed MAX

Fifty-five years ago Dennis Buchanan left his job at the Chicago Tribune to come to Portland, where he took a job as an investigative reporter for the Oregon Journal.  He got the public’s attention with a story on the December 22, 1964 collapse of the John Day Bridge, which the chairman of the Oregon Highway Department termed an Act of God.  Mr. Buchanan found the blameworthy in a less lofty place.  As Mr. Buchanan put it years later, “My articles acquitted God and assigned responsibility to highway engineers who allowed a change order without following prescribed procedures.”  A few years later he moved to KGW-TV, also as an investigative reporter, where he broke a story about auto dealers fraudulently rolling back odometers on used cars, that included interviews with the mechanics themselves.  An affable man with an “aw, shucks” manner who spoke with a subtle touch of Texas drawl, Mr. Buchanan didn’t get the culprits to confess so much as he persuaded them to brag on camera about their skills with a screwdriver.

In his time as a reporter, Mr. Buchanan, who died on December 26, broadened his interests to include urban planning.  He researched and presented stories on the Forecourt Fountain, redevelopment of the Willamette riverfront, billboards, and visual clutter, and as a reporter developed connections with the elected officials and backstage political players of the day.

In 1973 he gave up journalism to become a stockbroker, but had the misfortune to enter the financial world immediately before a recession struck.  As he pondered the silent phones at the office a year later, a seat on the Multnomah County Commission became vacant, and the four remaining commissioners had the opportunity to appoint someone to fill it.

The hot local issue of the time was the Mount Hood Freeway, which would have connected the Marquam Bridge to US 26 east of Gresham, cutting a swath through southeast Portland.  Commissioners Alice Corbett and Dan Mosee supported the freeway; Commissioners Don Clark and Mel Gordon opposed the freeway.  A dozen or so public-spirited citizens applied for the vacant seat, some who favored the freeway and some who opposed it.  Mrs. Corbett and Mr. Mosee voted against every applicant who opposed the freeway; Messrs. Clark and Gordon voted against every applicant who supported it.

It occurred to Mr. Buchanan that he had been more active in Democratic politics than many of the applicants, and also that he’d never said anything in public about the Mount Hood Freeway.  Also, no one was trading stocks.  He had a word with a backstage player who made a few phone calls, and Mr. Buchanan’s name suddenly appeared on Alice Corbett’s lunch schedule.

He didn’t know Alice Corbett, and he asked his friends what to expect.  “Be careful,” one warned him, “she will come across as a lady, and she is, but don’t be fooled by her manner: she’s sharp, and she can tell the difference between chicken salad and chickens**t.”  Mr. Buchanan was prepared to give a noncommittal answer if she asked him what he thought of the Mount Hood Freeway, but he didn’t have to hedge, as she didn’t mention the freeway at all.  (She may have assumed that any stockbroker in pinstripes would of course support the freeway.)  He did, however, struggle to keep a straight face when Mrs. Corbett ordered chicken salad for lunch.

A few days later, after the commission had rejected a fresh crop of nominees on a series of 2-2 votes, Mrs. Corbett nominated Dennis Buchanan to fill the vacancy, he was invited to say a few words about his willingness to serve, and his nomination was put to a vote.  Don Clark and Mel Gordon, who were in on the secret, joined Mrs. Corbett in voting yes, and Mr. Buchanan began his public service.  He soon joined Messrs. Clark and Gordon in a procedural vote that effectively killed the Mount Hood Freeway.  The federal dollars that would have paid for the freeway were redirected a few years later to build the MAX Blue Line to Gresham, made financially possible only because the freeway was cancelled.

After several years of service on the county commission, Mr. Buchanan ran for and was elected as the second County Executive, succeeding Don Clark.  The county’s biggest problem of the time was mid-county, the unincorporated area between Portland and Gresham, in which 150,000 people lived without sewers.  It was the largest urban area in the United States without sanitary sewers.  The county provided police service through the sheriff’s office, and other public services were provided either by a patchwork of agencies or not at all.  In Mr. Buchanan’s view, which he and Don Clark shared, the county couldn’t afford to provide urban services to the area without dragging down the county’s financial structure.

Some more backstage discussions ensued, resulting in Mr. Buchanan presenting to the county commission, in 1983, the famous “Resolution A,” in which the county resolved to get out of the business of providing urban services over the next three years.  Residents of mid-county who wanted police protection and urban-level services would have to annex to Portland or Gresham, and over the next ten years the two cities expanded until they met in the middle.  With city government came city sewers, city water, city fire protection, and the other services that mid-county residents wanted to enjoy but didn’t want to pay for. 

Unknown to the public at the time, when Mr. Buchanan presented Resolution A to the county commission, he had in his pocket an alternative, “Resolution B,” which he intended to propose if the commission rejected Resolution A.  Resolution B said in essence that the county would continue to provide urban services until it went broke.  He gambled that none of the commissioners would want to vote for a resolution that admitted that they were being financially irresponsible, and he was right.

In 1988 the county voters restructured county government and eliminated Mr. Buchanan’s position as County Executive.  He retired from public service, dabbled in private business, and became a poet and a painter.  Unusually among our local Solons, he sought no higher office and he didn’t care if he was recognized for what he accomplished.  He was a model that others might do well to emulate.

Dennis Buchanan’s political life demonstrates that big things sometimes come from small actions.  The next time you ride to work on MAX, imagine how you might be commuting today if, forty-plus years ago when Alice Corbett ordered chicken salad, Dennis Buchanan had laughed.

How well does Portland's Office of Equity do its job? Its leading proponent is spending $40,000 on an alternative provider

I was not the first, or the second, or even the six hundredth person to be surprised by Amanda Fritz's decision to close her City Hall office and travel to Arizona with six of her senior staff to attend a three-day residential training session on diversity in the workplace, at a cost to the city of $4,750 per person plus travel costs, for a total cost to the city of about $40,000.  Many of the raised eyebrows, including mine, arched skyward because White Men As Full Diversity Partners, the organization that will provide the diversity training, is headquartered in Portland a mere two miles from City Hall.  (To be fair, the organization offers the residential training only in Arizona and Illinois, but not in Oregon.)

In 2011 the city created an agency, named the "Office of Equity and Human Rights," to educate city elected officials and their staff on issues of access, opportunity, race, and disability.  Commissioner Fritz was the Council's strongest voice to support its creation.  The Office has a staff of ten and provides mandatory training to all city employees.   That Commissioner Fritz believes it valuable to take her staff out of town for three days or more to obtain diversity training that is readily available in Portland, from the same organization that's providing the training in Arizona, suggests that she believes that the Office of Equity and Human Rights is failing at its job.  Else why would the additional training be necessary?

Sometimes I think that the Portland City Council does not understand that a dollar spent on Project A is a dollar that is not available to spend on Project B.  This is one of those times.

The definition of "contributory negligence" is

. . . giving money to state and local candidates who finish second.  I committed a lot of it this year.

Endorsements II: Isaac's picks in the United States Senate and House races

Herewith my views on the races for Congress:

Ron Wyden is running for a fourth full term in the Senate.  Among the most liberal of the senators, he was a voice against deep involvement in Iraq and more recently has been speaking out against the government's Google-like desire to know absolutely everything about everyone.  He is the 14th most senior senator and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee; if the Democrats take control of the Senate he will become the chair.  His challenger, Medford city councilor Kevin Stine, is a serious candidate with a future in politics who has not advanced a good reason for Oregonians to change senators.  Democrats should renominate him.

Four Republicans want the chance to challenge Senator Wyden in November.  Only one has held meaningful elective office (another is a precinct committeeman).  Faye Stewart, who is the chair of the Lane County Commission, is the most practical and experienced of the four Republican contenders.  Besides his terms in elective and appointive office, he has firsthand experience in the lumber industry from his family's connection with the former Bohemia Corporation and civic involvement.  (Stub Stewart State Park, near Vernonia, is named after his great-uncle.)  Two candidates make a virtue of their lack of political experience, and the third wants to be our "constitutionally conservative" Senator, a phrase which reminds me, uncomfortably, of the ill-informed claimants to the office of "constitutional sheriff."  Mr. Stewart describes his accomplishments in office; the other candidates don't seem to understand the role of a Senator.  I recommend a vote for Mr. Stewart.

Over at the House, in the 1st District incumbent Suzanne Bonamici is challenged by Shabba Woodley, a political newcomer who did not file a statement in the Voter's Pamphlet, but whose website does describe issues that Congress can help.  I would like to see Mr. Woodley strive for the state House, but he is not ready to run for Congress.  Rep. Bonamici should be renominated.  Three Republicans filed for the 1st District nomination, Jonathan Burgess, Brian Heinrich, and Delinda Morgan.  It's hard for me to recommend one of them, because not one of them submitted a Voter's Pamphlet statement.  Mr. Heinrich and Ms. Morgan do have campaign websites -- I couldn't find one for Mr. Burgess.  Mr. Heinrich seems an engaging enough fellow, but Ms. Morgan's website does stake out positions on how she would vote if elected.  I can't say that I find her positions logical -- she wants to cut taxes and also stop borrowing to finance federal spending -- but she is trying, however awkwardly, to grapple with the issues that Congress faces.  She is the best of the Republicans' choices to lose to Rep. Bonamici in November.

In the 3rd District, Earl Blumenauer is unopposed in either party, a sensible decision by all of the would-be candidates for his seat.  The hyperenergetic congressman has for years seemingly been able to be in the Capitol and in Portland at the same time, a feat that few challengers could match.  I suspect that he's cloned himself.

In the 5th District, incumbent Democrat Kurt Schrader faces a strong challenge from Dave McTeague, who served 5 terms in the Oregon house and was later the executive director of a small state agency for 18 years.  He is capable and competent, but so is Rep. Schrader.  The district would be well-served with either man in office.  Dr. Schrader is among the more liberal Congressmen on both domestic policy (repealing the Citizens United decision) and foreign policy (opposing increasing our ground troops in the Middle East), and is well in line with Oregonians.  The 5th District is finely balanced between Democrats and Republicans, and in my view Dr. Schrader is more likely than Mr. McTeague to carry the centrists in the district.  Mr. McTeague has aligned his campaign platform with that of Bernie Sanders, which gives an easy way for voters to choose: Democrats who support Senator Sanders and who would not vote for Secretary Clinton in the general election should vote for Mr. McTeague.  Democrats who would vote for Secretary Clinton in the general election should support Dr. Schrader for another term.

Four Republicans have filed in the 5th District.  Three submitted candidate statements.  They reflect, sadly, the weakness of the Republican candidate bench in Oregon.  None has held elective office.  Colm Willis, an attorney, states that he is a "limited government, Constitutional conservative who will defend our freedoms and stand up for our rights."  He also wants to "cut taxes and stop deficit spending," two great tastes that do not go well together.  Another candidate, Seth Allan, says that the federal government "owns 53% of Oregon's land which is more than they can properly manage."  If elected he will work to transfer those lands to state and local governments or to sell the lands to private parties.  No one who has been to Josephine County or Curry County can possibly believe that those local governments have the wherewithal to manage even more land than they own now.  I find his platform inspiring and completely impractical.  That leaves Ben West, a mortgage banker who is about to receive a degree in nursing.  Although parts of his platform are politically infirm, his candidate statement does give the impression that he understands that the role of government includes providing services to people who cannot help themselves, and for that reason I invite Republicans in the 5th District to vote for Mr. West.

Isaac to Council: Spend all of the unexpected money on roads and sewers

One consequence of giving money to a committee of persons who represent different interests is that they will quickly find ways to spend the largesse several times over.  The City of Portland discovered in January that it believes it will have $19 million more in revenue in the next fiscal year than it had planned to receive: $4.6 million of recurring revenue and $14.4 million of one-time income.  At the end of January the council voted 4-1 (Commissioner Saltzman dissenting) to adopt a policy proposed by Amanda Fritz to allocate at least half of the extra money (so about $7.2 million) to "infrastructure maintenance or replacement," meaning "emergency preparedness, parks and recreation, and transportation."  This policy will apply not only to fiscal year 2015-2016 but also to the three following fiscal years.

Within a week after the council adopted Commissioner Fritz's resolution, the Housing Bureau made a pitch to receive all of the remaining $7.2 million.  Not coincidentally, the Housing Bureau operates under Commissioner Saltzman.

It's a wise idea for the city to devote some more money to maintaining what it already owns instead of building new things and starting new programs such as the Office of Equity (a project of Commissioner Fritz, as it happens).  I'd like to encourage the council to resist every temptation to allocate any of the unexpected manna to any new project or program -- not just the $7.2 million that Commissioner Fritz's resolution requires to be allocated to maintenance and replacement, but the entire $14.4 million. I would allocate half of the $14.4 million to patch and repair roads and the other half to repair sewer and water lines underneath the roads before they're patched and repaired.

Until the city repairs the potholes and cracking pavement that it already owns, it shouldn't be building any more.  Similarly, until the city brings its parks up to par, it shouldn't acquire any more.  Feed the pets we already have before buying new ones.

Portland's streets - the question the council should be asking voters

The Portland City Council, having awakened to find that the city's streets are falling apart, has scheduled an advisory vote for May to solicit the public's opinion on how to best tax homeowners to pay for repairing the streets.  The council will then adopt the winning proposal and move on to determine how to tax nonresidential property.  Options include an income tax, a property tax, a gasoline tax, and others yet to be named.

The particular history is that in 1988 when the City Council first realized that Portland's streets were deteriorating, the council considered allocating 28% of the utility franchise fees that it receives to street maintenance and repair.  At the time, the city needed $38 million to catch up on street repairs.  The council set 28% as a target, but never achieved that target; in the first 8 years the council sent 12% of the utility fees ($29 million) to the transportation department for street repairs, instead of the 28% ($67 million) that the target called for.  The amount of money that the council chose not to send would have caught the city completely up on street repairs and the city would not now be facing a cost of $200 million or more to catch up.

I like the idea of the council asking the voters for their thoughts, except that the council is asking one question too few.  Instead of merely asking how the voters prefer to be taxed -- rather like the choice that Utah used to offer to condemned criminals, asking whether they would prefer to be shot or hanged -- the council should also ask the voters whether they agree or disagree with the choices of twenty years of city councils to divert money from street repair to other projects -- that is, whether the voters agree or disagree with the council's view that it's more important for the city to subsidize the Portland Public Schools and the Regional Arts Coordinating Council than to maintain the streets.

Portland's mayor hales Uber into court, calling it a taxi -- maybe

Uber started operating in Portland Friday evening at 5:00.  Welcomed by riders, Uber faced frowns from the City, which filed suit against Uber on Monday in state court.  Today Uber removed the suit to federal court (a routine step) and the battle lines are being drawn.

A few days ago I advanced the idea that Uber could comply with part of the City's car-for-hire code by recruiting its drivers from among the hundreds of persons whom the City's licensed to drive taxicabs, and then to bypass the strict limit on taxicabs by prohibiting the passengers from specifying which route the drivers will take to the passengers' destinations. (This would make the Uber vehicles not be taxicabs, thanks to a quirk of the City's code.)

A well-connected member of the Laquedemimonde passes along the tantalizing tidbit that despite this loophole being wide open for Uber to transit (so to speak), Uber won't do business with licensed cabdrivers.  Why this should be, I do not know. 

One unlikely possibility is that Uber hasn't figured out this loophole.  I call this unlikely because Uber's lawyers have undoubtedly already parsed the City's code with attention usually reserved for the Talmud or the utterances of the chair of the Federal Reserve.  Another more likely reason is that Uber believes  that licensed cabdrivers must then charge riders the rates that the City has fixed for taxicabs, without the discounts that Uber usually offers or the surge pricing that it commands in peak times -- or, even worse for Uber and its passengers, that Uber must charge the 35% premium over taxi rates if it is a limousine or executive sedan service

When I read the City's complaint (the filed suit is here), I noticed that the City asserts that Uber's cars violate either the taxicab or the limited passenger transportation (LPT) vehicle rules, meaning that the City doesn't know whether Uber's cars are taxis or not.  (The LPT rules are a catchall for anything that doesn't meet the definition of a taxicab.)  Whether they are taxicabs depends on whether the drivers let the passengers pick the routes, something the City doesn't know.  It should be a jolly bit of litigation.

An even simpler way for Uber to operate in Portland legally

Uber has an even simpler answer to getting into Portland legally than I'd thought of this morning, which is to get the roster of licensed vehicle operators from the City (the City must sell the roster to Uber if Uber asks; it's a public record) and then to solicit those operators to use their own cars to provide Uber service.  Because Uber doesn't need to be licensed if it doesn't operate taxicabs, and because the cars aren't required to be licensed as taxicabs if the passengers can choose the destination but not the route, and because the drivers will be licensed as operators (thus properly tested and insured), Uber's Portland operation will comply with the city code.  Presto!  Legal Uber!

Two candidates for Congress joke about

As Congress often inadvertently provides comic relief to the public, and comes in for a full meed of satire and derision, it's remarkable to see two conservative Congressional candidates brave enough to advertise their campaigns by doing stand-up political comedy.  This unusual event (the promoters say it's the first time ever that candidates have tried to raise funds by being intentionally funny) happens tomorrow evening at Harvey's Comedy Club, under the name of Standup for the Constitution.  James Buchal (Republican candidate for the Third District, running against Earl Blumenauer, shown in this video) and Jason Yates (Republican candidate for the First District, running against Suzanne Bonamici).  I don't know Rep. Bonamici's sense of humor, but Rep. Blumenauer's ability to be self-deprecatory might give Mr. Buchal some challenges to equal; some years ago when Rep. Blumenauer was on the ballot three times in one year he cheerfully used the slogan "Vote Earl, Vote Often."