Who Really Rules Portland

Via Alliance Watch (an interesting new blog specializing in news about the Portland Business Alliance), I came across an article in the Portland Mercury about the Portland Business Alliance. Here’s a passage from the article:

The Portland Business Alliance may not be widely recognized by name, but their actions are well known and maligned by many in social service and activism circles. Housed in two separate offices, the organization that represents downtown businesses is as big as a mid-sized business itself. Its intentions are broad: According to its mission statement, it is “the primary advocate for the business community and [is] active in all aspects of public policy which could adversely effect [sic] that community.”

Last spring, claiming that the homeless and street punks populating downtown were bad for business, the PBA drafted and lobbied for a sit-lie ordinance, a law allowing police to move along any person loitering on streets or sidewalks.

Over the course of several months, Mayor Katz sponsored roundtable discussions with representatives from both the Business Alliance and homeless advocacy groups like Sisters of the Road. Then, suddenly, in August, Mayor Katz swiftly enacted modifications to the city code…changes that reflected suggestions solely from the Business Alliance and rejected pleas from homeless advocates for compassion. Moreover, these changes to the city code were announced not in a public forum, but during a closed-door session; a meeting in which the mayor’s office failed to invite representatives from the Sisters of the Road. Members of the Business Alliance, however, were in attendance. […]

The Business Alliance has become so powerful that they are regarded as a de facto governmental agency. In December, without hesitation, a representative from the organization was guaranteed a seat on the board overseeing the newly formed Children’s Initiative, the $50-million fund generated by a voter-approved ballot measure last November. […]

This begs the question, “Why is a representative from an organization whose primary concern is invigorating downtown commerce, directing where and how $50 million in taxes are spent for local youth programs?” […]

Our tax dollars at work

The Business Alliance has two primary sources of income…they have the power to tax downtown businesses within a 212-block area; they also have a staggering $9 million contract with the city to manage the six Smart Parks and run a downtown marketing campaign.

Council member Sten calls the Smart Park and marketing contract a “sweetheart deal,” which essentially subsidizes the Business Alliance. “Literally, the government is sponsoring an organization to use those funds to ban homeless people and stop the council from taking on a peace resolution,” he says.

Portlanders should read the whole article – it’s pretty scary stuff.

Another Portland weekly paper, Willamette Week, has a profile of Portland Business Alliance head honcho Kim Kimbrough. Best bit:

Kimbrough’s public behavior is equally unusual. As president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, he’s supposed to market the city to the rest of the world, yet he has spent most of his two years here talking about what a terrible place Portland is to do business. “When you start a mantra that Portland is anti-business, you’re helping to make that reality,” says City Commissioner Erik Sten. “It’s a strange message for a group that we’re paying to market the city.” (More than 80 percent of Kimbrough’s $11 million budget is public money.)

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