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Jeremiah Hayden at Street Roots is doing excellent reporting on the backroom dealings (yes) of the Portland Metro Chamber of Horrors--I mean, Commerce, aka the Portland Business Alliance.
excerpt:
The new records raise the ongoing question of how deputy city administrators like Oliveira — appointed by City Administrator Michael Jordan to cover six distinct service areas — make decisions in Portland’s new form of government and whether the City Council, Mayor Keith Wilson or Metro Chamber lobbyists should hold the power to guide the city’s work.
Wilson and city bureau staff approved Zenith’s LUCS on Feb. 3, despite a resolution City Councilors Mitch Green and Angelita Morillo filed on Jan. 31 directing Wilson to investigate Zenith’s potential violations of its franchise agreement. The resolution also seeks to increase transparency and accountability from public officials — a central tenet of Portland’s new form of government. Councilors Tiffany Koyama Lane and Jamie Dunphy also co-signed the resolution.
Despite the broad public interest and his persistent involvement with city bureau staff, Oliveira long argued that land use approval was an apolitical administrative decision that the City Council could not influence.
Street Roots published multiple stories in the weeks before the City Council’s Jan. 21 work session on Zenith, including a Jan. 9 story outlining Zenith’s efforts to position itself as the preeminent renewable fuels hub on the West Coast and a Jan. 10 story outlining how a city attorney sought to protect a political strategy around Zenith by ensuring their office was included in a meeting to justify attorney-client privilege. Public records revealed an opaque process to rubber stamping Zenith’s LUCS, fueling critics’ fears that the city would engage in a “backroom deal” with business interests, similar to the process that led to Zenith’s previous approval in 2022.
Read it all:
