Skip to main content
In a meeting last week with the city of Portland’s bureau directors and other top leaders, interim city administrator Michael Jordan delivered a message: Change is coming, and soon.
Jordan told bureau directors that Mayor Keith Wilson is keen on making the city more efficient, and as part of that work, Jordan’s team will look at three specific divisions spread out around the city: communications, engagement and equity. Within those shops, according to three attendees, Jordan said the city will look at where duplications occur and where they might be eliminated.
Jordan stopped short at the Thursday meeting of saying the change would specifically look like layoffs, according to the three attendees—but Jordan made it clear that the changes would be an effort to cut city costs and make the city run more efficiently. And the attendees said it was plain that Jordan and Wilson are eyeing cuts to the communications, engagement and equity operations currently nestled within each city bureau. (Another attendee did not recall Jordan being so specific.)
Shortly after WW published this report of Jordan’s remarks, he sent an email to all city staff on Tuesday afternoon further detailing his plans. In it, Jordan wrote that the city would “re-set our citywide strategies and staffing models” in “procurement, human resources, technology, budget and business operations, communications, engagement and equity”.
Jordan wrote that communications, procurement and human resources would be the very first areas to see major changes, with equity and engagement being tackled a little later in the year.
“Given our budget gap, we are asking project managers to create new strategies and structures that result in leaner work areas and reduce the City’s overall spending,” Jordan wrote. “You can expect clear communication from city leaders at each step of the process, including any specific budget reduction targets that are determined as the process progresses.”
What happened during the Thursday meeting offers a window into how the city’s top administrator is thinking about the city’s ongoing transformation into a new form of government—and his thinking about the $27 million budget hole the city faces in the upcoming fiscal year.
“As we proceed through the assessment process,” Jordan said in a statement to WW, “it is possible that there will be cuts.”
In response to an inquiry from WW, Wilson said in a statement: “Although I did not attend the meeting and do not wish to speak on behalf of City Administrator Michael Jordan, it is evident that the City of Portland is confronting a challenging budget. We are considering significant organizational changes by streamlining operations and enhancing efficiencies across various departments.”
As a product of the city’s previous commission form of government, nearly all of the city’s bureaus established themselves as little fiefdoms, each with their own equity, communications and engagement teams. Under the new form of government, the walls between the bureaus are supposed to be broken down so the city can operate more smoothly.
That means communications, equity and engagement are now considered citywide functions under the new form of government. The city’s transition team created, with the approval of the former City Council, three officer positions overseeing equity, communications and engagement. It’s become increasingly clear that those officers’ first order of business will be to take a hard look at where to trim the fat.
The city recently hired Laura Oppenheimer as its communications officer and is in the process of hiring the engagement and equity officers.
While the city of Portland has begun a massive restructuring over the past two years to create executive, administrative and legislative branches, many of the difficult administrative changes—like altering the reporting structure so that all city bureaus report to the city’s deputy city administrators and Jordan, and getting rid of duplicative teams across the city’s many bureaus—haven’t happened yet.
It’s not clear just how aware the new City Council is of Jordan’s plan to ask for cuts in the communications, engagement and equity shops. Nor is it clear how those cuts would factor into the city’s 2025-26 budget, the development of which begins in February. If the cuts are proposed as part of the 2025-26 budget, the 12-member City Council is by law the city’s budget committee, and is the body that approves the final budget.
That means any decision by the administration that materially affects the budget is subject to a vote by the City Council.