Could Portland Become Its Own County?

Unfortunately—as the saying goes—the recent examples aren’t comparable, and the comparable ones aren’t recent.

Fremont Bridge, viewed from industrial North Portland. (Brian Burk)
By Marty Smith

Hello from a fellow ex-pat from St. Louis. I was glad to leave the Gateway City behind, but it seems they are doing one thing right: The city of St. Louis is its own county. Is there any way Portland could arrange the same deal and not have to be constantly at odds with Multnomah County? —Ex-St. Louis Woman

I feel your interjurisdictional pain, St. Louis. When states disagree with the federal government, federal law takes precedence. That’s the Supremacy Clause, and we violate it every time we smoke weed. Still, at least we know who’s supposed to be in charge. When cities and counties disagree, there isn’t even a rule—they’re just supposed to work it out, like your parents trying to hammer out custody arrangements without a lawyer.

Your solution to this problem isn’t unprecedented—U.S. history includes a number of recent, comparable examples. Unfortunately—as the saying goes—the recent examples aren’t comparable, and the comparable ones aren’t recent.

Relatively modern cases of city-county consolidation include Nashville, in 1963; Indianapolis, in 1970 (they called the resulting entity, horribly, “Unigov”); and Louisville, Ky., in 2003. All three efforts were broadly concerned with unifying services (utilities, police, etc.) across the central city and its various suburbs, which is not exactly what you’re talking about.

A closer parallel may indeed be the city of St. Louis’ secession from St. Louis County. (Neither entity changed its name because screw those other guys.) The beef was over taxes, not homeless policy, but the point wasn’t to fold in adjoining suburbs but to evade county control within city limits—kinda like us! Unfortunately, that was in 1877, so it’s not clear how much we can learn.

San Francisco’s situation may be closer still. The city merged with San Francisco County in 1856, but spun off the portion outside S.F.’s city limits, which became San Mateo County. That model sounds pretty workable in our situation (Gresham County, anyone?), but it took the California State Legislature to make it happen. Plus, y’know, 1856.

Could we do it? I suppose anything’s possible. But given that the consequences of Portland’s apocalyptic charter change vote are only now beginning to be felt—we’re at roughly the point in the process where a plane hits the second tower—it’s hard to imagine there’s much appetite among local officials for another round of bureaucratic Calvinball quite so soon. Where were you with this idea in 2021?

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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