The eight committees will be the primary conduit for public engagement and policy proposals from councilors.  by Taylor Griggs Among the many changes to Portland’s city government, one of the most consequential—for both councilors and members of the public—is the introduction of council committees. These committees, which City Council members hashed out at a Wednesday evening meeting, will serve as the primary venue for councilors to “consider, develop, and recommend legislation.” They’ll also be the principal avenue for public engagement with proposed city policy.  At a January 15 meeting, City Council voted to create eight new committees, each of which will consist of five members tasked with discussing city policy subjects from transportation and infrastructure to housing, arts and the economy.  The council committees mark a break from the practices of Portland’s previous City Council, in which commissioners were assigned administrative oversight for city bureaus and offices. That’s no longer the case under the city’s new form of government, in which councilors’ roles are more akin to those of state legislators. Committees will allow the Council to carve out areas of focus. Members of the Government Transition Advisory Committee (GTAC), which helped guide the city’s transition after the charter reform measure was adopted in 2022, made recommendations for the future council committees. But it was up to the councilors to make final decisions about committee details, including how many members should be on each, which topics they should cover, and district representation within each group.  A January 8 City Council work session prior to Wednesday’s vote on committees shed light on transparency and ethical issues the new Council will have to navigate. Councilors will assemble frequently outside regular Council meetings through their committee assignments, and will need to stay within the bounds of public meetings laws.  Legal questions arose during discourse on committee size, and whether a majority of the 12-person City Council could or should serve on a committee. Councilors Candace Avalos and Steve Novick questioned why it mattered, given that committee meetings, just like council meetings, are open to the public.  The city’s attorney, Robert Taylor, confirmed that having seven or more members on the same committee “is a quorum of the Council for the purposes of taking action.” Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney posited that committees should not be the functional equivalent of the City Council. She emphasized that large committees “could in fact, take action as a Council on things outside the jurisdiction of that committee, without others realizing that might happen.”  Councilors also had to decide how to name committees and which topics to group together. The councilors agreed the committees shouldn’t overlap with the city’s service areas, but should remain open to joint work, as to avoid building silos and encourage collaboration on interconnected issues.  Each of the eight committees will each have a chair and vice chair (or co-chair, in some cases), who will set meeting and long-term committee agendas. Chairs and vice chairs will also be prioritized for placement on intergovernmental boards, which were previously filled by the commissioner in charge of the relevant bureau. For example, the commissioner in charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation has historically represented the city on Metro’s Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation.   The committee topics and assignments are as follows: Transportation and Infrastructure:  Olivia Clark, chair (District 4)  Angelita Morillo, vice Chair (District 3)  Loretta Smith (District 1)  Mitch Green (District 4)  Tiffany Koyama Lane (District 3)  Homelessness and Housing:  Candace Avalos, chair (District 1)  Jamie Dunphy, vice chair (District 1)  Angelita Morillo (District 3)  Dan Ryan (District 2)  Eric Zimmerman (District 4)  Climate, Resilience, and Land Use:  Steve Novick, co-chair (District 3)  Angelita Morillo, co-chair (District 3)  Candace Avalos (District 1)  Dan Ryan (District 2)  Sameer Kanal (District 2)  Community and Public Safety:  Steve Novick, co-chair (District 3)  Sameer Kanal, co-chair (District 2)  Angelita Morillo (District 3) Eric Zimmerman (District 4)  Loretta Smith (District 1)  Arts and Economy:  Mitch Green, co-chair (District 4)  Dan Ryan, co-chair (District 2)  Jamie Dunphy (District 1)  Loretta Smith (District 1) Olivia Clark (District 4)  Labor and Workforce Development:  Loretta Smith, chair (District 1)  Mitch Green, vice chair (District 4)  Jamie Dunphy (District 1)  Steve Novick (District 3)  Sameer Kanal (District 2)  Finance:  Eric Zimmerman, chair (District 4)  Elana Pirtle-Guiney, vice chair (District 2)  Candace Avalos (District 1)  Mitch Green (District 4)  Steve Novick (District 3)  Governance:  Tiffany Koyama Lane, chair (District 3)  Dan Ryan, vice chair (District 2)  Elana Pirtle-Guiney (District 2) Jamie Dunphy (District 1)  Olivia Clark (District 4)  While it’s unclear whether specific criteria was used to decide committee assignments, in some cases, the relationship between councilor and committee topic is clear. For example, Olivia Clark, who will chair the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, worked in government and public affairs at TriMet for more than 20 years prior to launching her City Council campaign. Mitch Green, chair of the Arts and Economy committee, is an economist by education and trade. And Sameer Kanal, who will co-chair the Community and Public Safety committee, previously worked in Portland’s Community Safety Division and managed the city’s Police Accountability Commission.  With the exception of Pirtle-Guiney and Tiffany Koyama Lane, the Council’s president and vice president, who will each serve on two committees, each councilor has between three and four committee assignments. Despite efforts to find balance, not all committees are equal when it comes to representation across the city’s geographic districts. This became a point of contention among some councilors and members of the public.  Ahead of the January 15 Council meeting, District 2 resident Zef Wagner submitted public testimony about the lack of representation from his district in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  “I strongly believe this will tend to mean that on certain topics, one or more districts will not have their interests represented and will have a harder time getting City Council to address issues of that topic specific to the district without a Councilmember on the committee, and the districts that do have representation will be more well-served,” Wagner wrote. “This seems to subvert the very idea of district representation.”  In its recommendations to Council last year, the GTAC suggested each committee include at least one representative from each district. Several members of the GTAC addressed the new Council Wednesday evening urging them to follow this specific recommendation.  “We heard in our community engagement that residents worried about how committees would distribute and balance power across districts, across councilors within districts, and across committee jurisdictions,” GTAC members Terry J. Harris, Amy Randal, and Juliet Hyams wrote. “Of specific concern to community members was that no committee should be hearing and deciding legislative items without representation from their district.”  The Climate, Resilience, and Land Use and Arts and Economy committees also lack representation from Districts 4 and 3, respectively.  Councilors acknowledged concerns about district representation. Green said he liked the current assignments but urged the Council to remain open to potential changes down the road.  “We’ll have an opportunity to check in on this, and we can always propose a change. I look at transportation and infrastructure, and I don’t see representation from District 2. I think that’s okay for now, because I believe the people on that committee are going to be thinking about District 2,” Green said. “If we find that’s not okay, I hope we can bring that discussion into play.”  Pirtle-Guiney noted that counselors can bring policies to committees they don’t sit on. The resolution passed 11-1, with Kanal as the sole voice of dissent. He stressed the importance of geographic representation on each committee, especially on topics that may be of heightened concern to members of a specific district.  For example, District 4 is home to the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub, but lacks representation on the Climate, Resilience, and Land Use committee. Kanal said District 2, which he represents, has unique concerns about transportation safety.  “I think the resolution needs to ensure the policy discussions are as rich as possible,” Kanal said. “It also needs to ensure that representation exists, in particular in places where it’s most relevant.”  It’s unclear how often or when the committees will meet. The City Council is scheduled to convene again for a regular meeting on February 5, with several work sessions set for the interim.