Why Mayor Brennan is toast

Portland Mayor Michael Brennan. BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett.

Portland Mayor Michael Brennan. BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett.

Politically speaking, Portland Mayor Mike Brennan is toast. He’s a thin slice of white bread scorched by the turmoil in City Hall and burnt by the criticism of city councilors whom one would expect to be his allies.

The next mayoral election is less than seven months away, and Brennan has not indicated whether he’ll seek another four-year term. Although no challengers have yet announced their intention to run, it’s now clear that Brennan would have a very difficult time winning again.

The political fault lines dividing the City Council were exposed in a Portland Press Herald article last week headlined, “Turnover leads to calls for Portland to change its government structure again.” Half of the eight councilors went public with their dissatisfaction with Brennan’s leadership, or lack thereof.

The last straw for those councilors seems to have been the decision by interim City Manager Sheila Hill-Christian not to pursue the job of running City Hall on a permanent basis. Hill-Christian, who was formerly Portland’s assistant city manager, is leaving to be an assistant manager for the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her last day will be May 8.

Hill-Christian’s departure leaves Portland without a permanent city manager or assistant manager. It comes on the heels of the departure of numerous department heads since Brennan took office in 2011. Those managers left for a variety of personal and professional reasons, so it’s not fair to lay them all at the mayor’s feet, but Brennan does deserve some of the blame.

City Hall staff have long had to negotiate the treacherous terrain between the dictates of their boss (the city manager) and the demands of nine city councilors with nearly as many different agendas. In recent decades, Portland had district councilors like Karen Geraghty (who represented the West End and Parkside), Peter O’Donnell (the East End and islands) and Will Gorham (East End and islands) who were notoriously tenacious and vociferous advocates for their neighborhoods. That was great if you were a resident with a complaint about a proposed development or off-street parking. It wasn’t so great if you were a mild-mannered member of the planning staff or the parking division on the receiving end of those tirades.

It was the city manager’s responsibility to mollify councilors and shield staff, as much as possible, from their conflicting demands. The mayor — who was then a figurehead appointed to a one-year term — couldn’t be counted on to resolve these issues (and may have been a district councilor his- or herself).

Bob Ganley, who was Portland’s city manager from the mid-’80s until his untimely death in 2000, accomplished this by being tougher and gruffer than any individual councilor. His successor, Joe Gray, had worked his way up through the ranks at City Hall, so he knew how the game was played. Though less mercurial than Ganley, Gray was no pushover and he’d earned the respect of councilors and staff.

By comparison, Gray’s successor, Mark Rees, was a disaster. As I wrote in a column last August, after he was essentially fired, Rees arrived here from a town in Massachusetts, so he had no institutional experience with Portland’s city government, and it seemed like he never fully embraced the city or the job. Compounding the problem, Rees’ tenure coincided with Brennan’s election as a “weak” mayor with a mandate to lead the city but without the singular authority to hire or fire staff or make budgetary decisions.

Caught between the directives of a “weak” mayor and a disengaged manager, city staff were understandably frustrated, and that was certainly a factor in some of their departures. Brennan could and should have done more to clarify the lines of authority, even at the expense of his own, and promote stability in the ranks. The fact that half the Council now feels emboldened enough to criticize him for this failure — albeit obliquely, by saying the position of a “weak” elected mayor should either be abolished or strengthened — is a sure sign his mayoral days are numbered.

Councilor Ed Suslovic — like Brennan, a left-leaning Democrat — called the current situation in City Hall “the worst of both worlds.” Councilor Jon Hinck, another liberal Democrat, pinned the loss of Hill-Christian directly onto the mayor’s lapel. Longtime Councilor Nick Mavodones, a Democrat who lost to Brennan in 2011, told the paper he wishes the elected-mayor position he once sought had never been created.

Councilor Dave Marshall, however, is correct in saying the new political system isn’t the problem. Portland needs a competent manager and an effective mayor who can work together. By the end of this year, I expect we’ll have new people in both positions. In the meantime, pass the jam.

Chris Busby

About Chris Busby

Chris Busby is editor and publisher of The Bollard, a monthly magazine about Portland. He writes a weekly column for the BDN.