The night desk at Portland Communique reports that the gloves are off at City Hall, with the Mayor attacking Commissioner Francesconi for daring to propose an ordinance relating to one of the city bureaus assigned to the Mayor, in this case the Police Bureau. The Mayor, implausibly backed by the City Attorney’s office, asserts that the City Charter prohibits a councilor from introducing an ordinance that relates to any bureau assigned to another councilor. b!X takes the Mayor to task, and rightly so.
I predict that it won’t take long before the Oregonian finds a counterexample: a situation in which one councilor introduced a resolution affecting a bureau assigned to another councilor. A few weeks later, Don McIntyre or one of his followers will identify a slew of similar resolutions, and suggest (maybe to a judge!) that all of those resolutions are invalid because they were introduced by councilors whom the City Attorney says didn’t have the authority to introduce them.
The Mayor should back down. If she can’t command two more votes to defeat Commissioner Francesconi’s proposal, then she should not use parliamentary fiddles to obstruct it. And if she can command two more votes to defeat it (assuming that it’s a bad proposal, on which I take no view at present), then defeat it in public. And if it is a good proposal, then don’t succumb to the “not invented here” syndrome; vote for it.