I received this letter today in my mailbox and thought it was a cogent, well-written view from an insider’s perspective. It has already been sent to all the relevant players, but needs a wider audience. With the permission of the author, I am reprinting it here.
This is an open letter to City Council, Sam Adams and his staff, with a special emphasis specifically aimed at Amy Ruiz.
My wise mother once told me. “We all make mistakes. It’s not that you make mistakes, it’s how you handle those mistakes that matters.”
Mayor Adams, what we’ve witnessed the past week is someone who has not been able to rise to the challenge of those mistakes and show leadership. Instead, we have witnessed a public official and mayor’s office that hides, cowers at home, acts immaturely and acts inappropriately in public. We are witnessing a public office that can not seem to pull itself together.
Imagine if this was a real crisis in the city. How are citizens now to believe you could handle one? Your actions this week and the actions of your staff are eroding public trust that you have the ability to govern this city. It’s not about your personal life. It’s about putting city work first over drama, emotions and hurt feelings. It’s about remaining calm and carrying on, and acting on your duties and obligations to the citizens who elected you, showing up to work and to Council and taking charge and leading out of a crisis. This is about pulling together your office and bureaus to get critical work accomplished. It is not about your personal life. It is about potential legalities, honesty, transparency in government and rational work decisions and actions. We need you to be honest and forthcoming from now on. If you are still hiding things, especially issues that could have legal ramifications then you simply need to step down. End of story.
The letter continues after the jump…
Mayor Adams, you have had an opportunity here. An opportunity to show strong character and make things right. An opportunity to put city work first, roll up your sleeves and move forward. You have had an opportunity to let your staff, in your absence, show that they can handle a crisis and rise to the occasion in a professional manner, once again, putting the much needed work of the city first before your own personal issues and dealings.
What we are seeing instead is nothing short of a soap opera and political chaos. It needs to end. Now. Members of your staff are playing into and encouraging this soap opera, rather than conducting themselves in a professional manner that works towards cohesiveness and a rebuilding of trust both within the diversities of the City and within Portland as a whole. This is extremely damaging.
The decision to hire Amy Ruiz brings to light troubling indications of larger problems within the Mayor’s office and I fear the ramifications of this hire will have many negative consequences to come. The decision to hire Amy has been a slap in the face to many within Portland’s strong, highly educated and highly experienced policy, planning and sustainable professional community and to all the qualified people that did apply for her job. Amy’s lack of experience illustrates hiring of personality over qualifications and skills. Her hiring, while she was still reporting on City Hall for the Mercury (but not disclosing as such) shows both a lack of journalistic ethics but more importantly a lack of public political ethics and understanding. Amy’s public statements such as, “I have no experience in policy, planning, or sustainability” show a naïveté in how her actions will be perceived and how she needs to win the respect and trust of bureaus and others who actually do have experience in said arenas. Her strong friendship (and previous marriage) to Dan Savage, then participating at a Pro-Sam rally yesterday where Savage was the main presenter shows that she has no idea on what is appropriate, professional and becoming behavior as a high profile city staff member. Amy appears stuck in the idea that she is working in a government version of an alternative weekly newspaper, not helping communicate and advise on important policy decisions in the city. Amy is simply not qualified for the job, and her resume, her actions during the hiring process and her actions this week show that. You need staff that can quickly gain the respect and trust of your bureaus in order to be given full information, in order to be included in conversations and in order to be involved and understand highly complex, highly technical and highly nuanced discussions and decisions. Instead you have a policy advisor who has no clue or experience on how to navigate the complex channels of city government, and bureaus that are already shutting her out. That’s bad for the City of Portland. Fix it. Now.
I witnessed many similar bad hiring decisions while I was a long term employee at the City. I witnessed people hired on connections, hired due to friendships, and hired due to personality or hired because of their insider information. I saw leadership at the City erode and staff who were unable to get their jobs done due to these hires. I saw agencies and bureaus slip into chaos and dysfunction. Bad hires are bad for the City of Portland. Haven’t we learned anything?
We are at a critical time in the City of Portland. We are facing large economic crises and a looming funding crisis — and we now have a political crisis on our hands. We have bureaus and agencies such as Planning, BHCD and PDC who have been in flux and in some cases stagnant for several years. We are now over 6 years behind schedule in updating crucial city plans and in implementing these plans. You have come in with a strong vision, yet an extremely ambitious agenda that requires top level leadership, trust in your word and abilities and a mobilized top of the line staff who can quickly get the job done now, in the next 100 days and moving forward. You have an agenda to implement that requires trust and faith from the bureaus and citizens you lead. This week, if anything, has shown that you and your office have some serious problems in your abilities and I remain concerned that relationships within the city and morale within bureaus is rapidly eroding even more. Fix it. Now.
I am not asking you to resign. I voted for you and I will continue to have faith that you can pull yourself together. However, you had better move on it quickly and show the city that you are serious about leadership, transparency and can do what it takes to fix things, mend wounds and move forward. You need a staff that can help you in this, not staff that is a hindrance.
I am asking Council to consider these issues and guide you as appropriate. I am asking you to step up to the plate. I am asking you to replace staff members that are a liability and not an asset to getting work done, including Tom Miller who made the decision to hire Amy in the first place. I am asking you, I am appealing to you as someone who cares deeply about the place we all call home.
Please Mayor Adams, make us the City that Works, not the city that lets drama, dishonesty and incompetency lead.
Thank You,
An Ex-City Employee and a Concerned Portland Citizen
I should also note that I have promised to keep the author’s identity private in this blog post until he/she chooses to reveal same.
{ 1 trackback }
Comments on this entry are closed.