After more than a year of work, the Charter Review Commission last night voted to finalize their report to city council, outlining recommendations on Portland’s form of government, the Portland Development Commission and its relationship to the city, civil services reform, and periodic charter review. Next Thursday, January 18, the commission will present their recommendations to city council.

The full report is in a pdf here. But here are some of the highlights after the jump:

The commission is recommending a version of the "strong mayor" form of government--even if the commission members bristle at that term. Essentially, it sets up an executive/legislative split between the mayor and the city council. All of the city's bureaus would be managed by a chief administrative officer, who is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. After the CAO is approved, though, he or she reports only to the mayor--city council doesn't have the ability to fire the administrator, since that would, in the words of the report, "overpoliticize" the CAO by making him or her constantly seek majority support on council. Looked at another way, "overpoliticizing" is a synonym for "holding the city administrator accountable to the voters of the city," and that lack of accountability isn't going to win over critics.

Since members of city council would no longer have bureaus to head up, their duties would be proposing legislation, approving and adopting the budget, and dealing with constituents. The mayor, in addition to being ultimately responsible for all bureaus, would be a regular voting member of the council, with no special veto powers.

Curiously, though, the report doesn't recommend dividing up the city into districts--members of city council would still be elected at large from the city. If the goal is to increase city council's responsiveness to and representation of voters, why not divide that representation up geographically?

Even more curiously, the commission's report doesn't address the "why change?" question until several pages in, and even then there's not much information about what it is they're trying to fix. Under the current system, the report says, the city's bureaus aren't connected, so citizens "may" have a hard time "navigating cross-bureau issues." The CAO-mayor form would bring all bureaus under one line of accountability--trouble is, the first layer of that accountability, the CAO, isn't an elected representative and isn't even accountable to city council, and is, in fact, a bureaucrat.

As for PDC, the commission is recommending, well, not a lot besides clarifying that the agency is supposed to implement city council's priorities. Last year, Randy Leonard, Erik Sten, and Sam Adams asked the commission to consider the possibility of gaining more control over PDC, either through its budget or taking over full control. The commission's PDC subcommittee, though, found that state law prevents the city council from controlling PDC's budget, and reported back that there was nothing they could do.

That wasn't quite the answer that a majority of council was looking for, though, and Sten has since spearheaded a charge to change state law that would give city council authority over PDC's budget. On Tuesday, he and the mayor sent the commission a memo, asking them to include in their report a section that would make city council PDC's budget committee, assuming that the state legislature adopts the needed changes. Last night, the commission declined to adopt the memo.

That means that council will probably tack that on to the commission's recommendations later--that possibility elicited anxiety from commission members, who consider city council tinkering with their report to be an "insult." From the tone of last night's meeting, the commission members want nothing less than to have their report adopted as a whole, and the sent to voters as a whole.

And that, of course, brings us to the million dollar question--will the city council agree to send the recommendations to the ballot box? Potter and Saltzman are a solid yes, and Sten and Leonard are a solid no on the form of government recommendations, but might send a stronger PDC reform package out to voters. The mayor's office and the commission have prodded Sten and Leonard to send all of the recommendations to voters, even if they disagree with them; Sten and Leonard have both said they believe voting for something they disagree with sends a confusing message to voters--something similar to John Kerry voting for the war in Iraq before he voted against it.

That leaves Sam Adams smack in the middle. He's on record as supporting a strong mayor form of government, but he's also on record as saying he doesn't like the commission's specific recommendations. He's also said that he's not satisfied with the commission's PDC recommendations. But will he agree to let the voters decide?

More on that later.