CUB Wraps Up Utility Oversight Commission’s Final Meeting

Last night (Monday, November 24th, 2014) the Utility Oversight Blue Ribbon Commission held its third public hearing followed by a work session to finalize its final report to the Portland City Council. The group demonstrated its hard work and commitment by listening, discussing, and making final decisions from 6:00pm—9:30pm. The Commission reviewed input from a work session with the City Council that took place on November 16th, resulting in several enhancements of the Commission’s final report. I have been honored to serve on the Utility Oversight Commission, and want to thank everyone on the panel for their efforts.

The three main elements of the Oversight Commission’s recommendations in its final report to the City Council are:

• Replace two currently dysfunctional oversight processes with one group: a Public Utility Board (PUB) that will have stronger staff support and a broader scope including review of big construction projects that are the major drivers of increasing water, stormwater, and sewer rates.
• The City Council must officially integrate the PUB into all steps of its budget process for the utility bureaus and adopt other procedures to ensure that it listens and responds to recommendations from the PUB.
• CUB should continue in its role as residential ratepayer advocate, providing independent analysis from outside City Hall. CUB is not paid by the city but is given full access to financial and other public utility information so we can advocate for Portland’s residential ratepayers.

Two particularly important topics discussed last night at the Utility Oversight Commission’s final work session were:

1. The scope of the Commission’s recommendations, and
2. The level of budget setting authority for the PUB

Mayor Hales and Commissioner Fish established the Utility Oversight Blue Ribbon Commission in June with the request that it focus on recommendations that could promptly be implemented. This meant that any recommendations requiring City Charter changes were off the table. This actually shouldn’t be too surprising, given that Portlanders voted down the May 2014 ballot measure to change the charter regarding Portland’s public utility management by a three-to-one margin.

Nevertheless, the Utility Oversight Commission heard presentations and conducted discussions on two proposals that would have required charter changes - one from the City Club of Portland and one from the Portland Business Alliance. Both proposals included creating an unelected management committee that would have significant budget and administrative authority over the Portland Water Bureau and Bureau of Environmental Services. The City Council would have still played a leadership role, but several of their responsibilities related to the utility bureaus would have been removed or subject to oversight from the management committee.

Separate from the question of any needed charter changes, my view is that the Utility Oversight group did not move forward with the management committee approach for two reasons:

1. This proposed change would not have seemed commensurate with the problem it aimed to solve, especially after voters had just rejected changing the charter to remove utility authority from the City Council.
2. The Utility Oversight group considered unintended consequences and had significant concerns about adding a new bureaucratic layer. The possible advantages of a management committee did not outweigh the more complicated lines of communication and authority. In other words, even if Mayor Hales and Commissioner Fish had welcomed charter changes, it seems quite unlikely that these management committee ideas would have survived on their merits.

At its final meeting, the Utility Oversight Commission had its last round of discussion on the proposal to have utility bureau budgets from the PUB be the baseline for presentation to the Mayor, rather than retaining that as a prerogative of the Commissioner-in-Charge. Based on the discussion of this idea during the City Council work session, both the Oregonian editorial and a letter from the League of Women Voters of Portland disagreed with this proposal because it gave undue authority to an unelected oversight group.

There were only a couple of votes on the Utility Oversight Commission for this proposal last night, indicating that most of the group felt it had hit the sweet spot without that addition. It is notable that both the League of Women Voters of Portland and the Oregonian shared this conclusion, since it isn’t every day that they agree. All of the other Utility Oversight Commission’s recommendations for extensive and new integration of the PUB into the budget process were adopted and will be in the final report.

My consistent comment about level of budget authority for the new oversight group was that CUB wouldn’t trust either the new oversight body or the City Council. After the November 16th work session, Commissioner Steve Novick made a point of commending CUB for taking this skeptical stance.

The next step is pushing the City Council to fully adopt the Utility Oversight Commission’s final recommendations and to get the PUB up and running as soon as possible. CUB will be leading the charge advocating for full implementation. Stay tuned at oregoncub.org for the continuing story.

To keep up with CUB, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

• Share this post on Facebook.
• Share this post on LinkedIn.
• Share this post with email.

« Back