The mayor of Portland surrenders

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

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

Last month I predicted that, politically speaking, Portland Mayor Mike Brennan is toast. Earlier this week, Brennan all-but-officially abdicated his authority to lead Maine’s largest city, literally throwing up his hands in surrender during a City Council meeting when confronted with allegations he’d abused his authority and the trust of the people who elected him.

Though the mayor isn’t man enough to admit it, there’s every indication that he pressured city staff to issue a press release on Monday afternoon announcing, falsely, that the council had decided to postpone its vote on the city budget until June 15. The press release was sent less than four hours before the meeting was scheduled to begin, but was picked up by local media, which relayed the lie to the entire community.

Let’s be clear about why this matters. This year’s budget isn’t just a matter of money. As Preble Street executive director Mark Swann pointed out in a powerful op-ed published in the Press Herald Monday morning, lives are at stake. The budget currently on the table would close the city’s emergency “overflow” shelter and discontinue the practice of providing hotel rooms to families in need when the shelter is full.

“If this budget takes effect,” Swann wrote, “more than 100 people, including children, will have nowhere to go …. To save $139,000 needed for the overflow shelter out of a total municipal budget of $221 million, the city will put lives at risk.”

This reduction and other cruel cuts embedded in the budget have prompted hundreds of citizens to demonstrate on the steps of City Hall. Monday’s meeting was supposed to be the public’s last chance to speak directly to the decision-makers before the budget passed, but the press release made a point of claiming — again, falsely — that “no public comment will be taken on the budget tonight.”

When councilors assembled for Monday night’s meeting, several had pointed questions about the bogus announcement claiming they’d approved the postponement. “I am completely baffled as to how this council could have made this decision and announced it this afternoon,” longtime councilor and former mayor Nick Mavodones said, imploring Brennan to “help me understand.”

“To this,” the Press Herald reported, “Brennan, seated on the dais, leaned back and threw up his hands.” Acting city manager Mike Sauschuck, who until earlier this spring was Portland’s police chief, exercised his right to remain silent.

In fact, Brennan had attempted to engineer a postponement by calling councilors on Monday afternoon to gauge their willingness to make that decision in secret — a clear violation of the public’s trust. “This is not how municipal government works,” said Jill Duson, another longtime councilor and former mayor. “We do not caucus behind closed doors and then come into the chamber and present a fait accompli.”

Councilor Ed Suslovic, a former mayor who’s strongly considering running for the position this fall, also expressed bewilderment and noted that there are financial costs to delaying the vote.

“Obviously, the news release … was problematic as to the wording of it,” Brennan reportedly said.

Yeah, you could say that publicly issuing blatant lies and misinformation about the most important decision city government makes all year is “problematic.” I’d say it’s also grounds for removal from office, but if Brennan is foolish enough to seek a second term, I’m confident voters will take care of that themselves a few months from now.

By the end of the meeting, the council decided to postpone the public hearing (and, most likely, the vote) on the budget until June 1, rather than June 15. And public comment was allowed on Monday night after all; most of the nine people who spoke urged the council not to close the homeless shelter or cut other assistance to the needy, the daily reported.

On Tuesday morning, I called the city’s communications director, Jessica Grondin, and left a voicemail asking who had authorized her to send out the false press release. She replied via e-mail that afternoon: “The City Manager’s Office is ultimately responsible for the release of information to the media and public.”

So it’s “Silent” Mike Sauschuck’s fault, eh? The cop tapped to run the city after Brennan’s meddling allegedly pushed the rest of the responsible adults out the door of City Hall gets blamed for more meddling by the mayor.

That’s pitiful. If Brennan can’t step up and take the heat for this mistake, he may as well step down.

 

 

 

 

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.