Free bird

The mayor of Salem. Salary: Zero.

In the debate on the charter change ballot measure now before Portland voters (I'm a big no, and have been from the get-go), everybody seems to agree that the current setup of the City Council is out of date and holding the town back.

But wow, I didn't know that the state's second largest city and state capital, Salem, has an even stranger structure. The mayor and City Council down there are all still unpaid volunteers. The reason I'm noticing that fact now is that the newly appointed mayor is also in the state legislature, and there's some doubt as to whether that's kosher under the state constitution.

Article II, Section 10 of the state constitution prohibits anyone holding a “lucrative office” or an appointed state or federal job from serving in the Legislature. [Chris] Hoy reasons that serving on the Salem City Council or as mayor doesn’t count as a lucrative office, as Oregon’s second-largest city doesn’t pay its city councilors or mayor.

Is this a case where you get what you pay for?  I don't know, maybe Salem is on to something. By not paying the political bobbleheads, the city ensures that all the council members have to be smart enough to hold down actual day jobs elsewhere. It seems like it could be a sort of quality control check.

In contrast, Portland City Council members often look like they couldn't hold down a legitimate job if they tried. And we the taxpayers pay for their political campaigns, and so there isn't even the sanity check of their having to have coherent people vouch for them.

Maybe the best charter change for Portland would be to emulate its neighbors to the south. Make the City Council an all-volunteer outfit. I'm not kidding; we should think about it.

Comments

  1. As if you didn't need another reason to vote against the Portland charter change, it looks like the 12 new "councilor" positions would be full-time jobs with full-time pay.

    That's because one thing that doesn't change is the charter provision that: "No official appointed or elected to elective office shall, during the official’s term of service, hold any other office or position of profit, or pursue any other business or vocation ..."

    You know the equity folks will make the case that since councilors can't have any other jobs, then they should be paid at least as well as a CEO in the nonprofit industrial complex.

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    1. The truly wonderful thing about this line of argument is that when unpaid amateurs screw up, you get to criticize them as...amateurs.

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  2. "[T]he sanity check of their having to have coherent people vouch for them...." OH, I see, kind of like Phil Knight cutting a multi-million dollar check for Christine Drazan. That's OK, but if Kotek accepts donations from a labor union, that's corruption and influence peddling.

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    1. Ah, my little Tina troll, rant on. Yes, anything would be better than city tax dollars going to local yokels for their political campaigns. Union dues, business people's money, all fine with me. There should be strict dollar limits, but the once-proud Supreme Court has apparently made that impossible.

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  3. Pros and cons of ranked choice voting discussed at length here: https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)

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    1. Is that “regular” RCV, or the dopey experimental version being pushed in Portland?

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    2. "Regular" ranked-choice voting, I do believe. Used in various states and local jurisdictions and some other countries.

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  4. Many cities offer only a small stipend to council members for time spent in meetings, and occasionally mayors as well, although mayors are more likely to be well compensated, full-time employees. It seems to work pretty well, but somehow or other a lot of real estate developers seem to end up holding office and ending up significantly richer when they retire than when they were first elected.

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  5. I always wanted to see an experiment where government positions were treated like Jury Duty. Crazy but it might educate the masses on how government actually works or doesn't.

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