Full Circle Part 6: We Can’t Clean Ourselves Out of This Mess
About a year ago, I started a blog so I could share some reflections and learnings. As I stated then, no one asked me to write about my experience. But I find writing to be clarifying and therapeutic.
In my first post, I shared about the beauty and difficulties of birthing an organization and then sending “my little one” out into the world after I passed the leadership baton. I went on to use the platform to share about an ambassador of love in the form of a Golden Lab, the ways in which our corporate leaders failed our small business community during Covid, the gift from heaven who was Julie Mancini, a detailed account of the Portland Business Alliance’s threat to sue me and the massive public subsidy they receive, and then, most recently, a celebration of the beauty of Oregon and of healing.
In that first piece, I also shared about advocacy for a more equitable economic recovery during the Covid crisis, and described how there was a lot of work that went undone because of systemic and structural discrimination against small businesses that lacked a lobbyist or a Political Action Committee. I expressed hope that someday, someone would document that.
Well, a little over a year since that post, things are coming Full Circle. I am sharing a new piece of writing that I’ve been working on for several months. What was intended to be a brief update kept growing as I dug into the details, so it turns out that I will publish it in three installments over the coming days.
I recognize that long form writing is not very popular these days and may even be frowned upon by some. I also acknowledge that very few people will read this all the way through. That’s ok. I believe there are some things that really matter that just aren’t Tweetable. (X-able?) Despite all the attention that “thought leaders” get for their ‘hot takes,” details and nuance matter. For those of you who do read all the way through and want to offer thoughtful remarks in the comments or have a conversation over a cup of tea, be in touch.
It has been exhausting to pull this all together, and I sure haven’t been paid for my time documenting what should be someone else’s job to investigate. But I consider this three part post to be a labor of love for my community.
Recently, I heard an interview with Oprah about the work she (as well as normal folks like you and me) do to heal this broken world. She shared a painful story about naysayers and haters questioning her motives. Oprah called on her listeners to let go of desired outcomes and make peace with what you have to offer.
And so I am.
I may not be in a professional position to impact these matters I care so deeply about, but I wanted to make sure that I documented what I learned in hopes that it will benefit others who are working to make change in this space and possibly inspire a few people who are in positions of influence to insist that our city and region do better.
We Can’t Clean Ourselves Out of This Mess: We Need An Economy That Works For More People
Part One, Fall 2023
There was a great event several weeks ago to get folks involved in downtown cleanup. The leaders of this new “We Believe in Portland’’ initiative and the positive messages they sent out at such a pivotal time in our city are commendable. The event garnered great acclaim on social media, built a lot of positive community spirit, and was a generous sign of collaboration with our city’s dysfunctional government. It’s inspiring that the organizers encouraged participants to return for future cleanups (next one tentatively scheduled for April 2024) and meetups at local restaurants to support small businesses and build community.
It was a heartening development during what has been a dark time for our city. I want to give a special shout out to Ryan Buchanan, the CEO of Thesis, who is one of We Believe in Portland’s champions. Leaders like Ryan are no stranger to the hard, behind the scenes work that makes events like these possible, as well as the laborious and often hidden efforts that go into building organizations to sustain programs he supports year after year.
But I’ve noticed that a lot of folks in our community look for quick fixes and often take action in the present, without considering how we got here in the first place.
Given the recent trash cleanup, I’d like to take you down Memory Lane to the Fall of 2018 to share a story about our city’s relatively recent history addressing garbage and explore how things could have turned out differently had a more holistic approach been taken.
On a brisk fall 2018 morning in Director Park in downtown Portland, Mayor Wheeler and leaders from the Portland Business Alliance held a press conference to celebrate…the unveiling of 200 new trash cans.
It seemed an odd thing to celebrate. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good thing to have plenty of garbage receptacles in a functioning city. The ones we had downtown at the time were overflowing, so more of them was a good thing. Plus, the trash cans were and still are pretty cute. Adorable birds and whimsical critters riding bikes and skateboards were painted in bright colors on them. A very pre-pandemic Portland occasion.
You can even purchase images of the cute artsy cans on Esty.
But an occasion worthy of a press conference? (KOIN did consider the gathering worthy of a TV clip.) Senior Communications Geniuses subsidized by taxpayer dollars were paid six figure salaries to create this campaign which cleverly leveraged local hipster artsyness to decorate trash cans that were desperately needed to collect all the garbage of….
Well, strangely, there was no discussion at the time about why there was so much trash, except a passing mention by Mayor Wheeler that “Portland is growing fast, its economy is booming and its population is diversifying.”
No press releases about where the trash was coming from, or how to stem its tide. No mention of how we could take a different approach to the booming economy, so that it could deliver more benefits of that economic growth to more people…so that there wouldn’t be so much trash in the first place.
But trash cans were worth celebrating, and so celebrate they did.
Why in the world am I writing about trash cans that were ceremonially unveiled 5 years ago? Have I lost my mind, or do I just have a chip on my shoulder?
Nope.
It turns out that while The Trash Can Press Conference itself was a harmless endeavor in the grand scheme of things, powerful players who had the ability to create very different outcomes for our city skipped over a critical step in addressing the trash.
They didn’t take on the difficult task of changing the economic conditions that were forcing folks to struggle and leave behind so much trash. Their oversight (willful blindness?) and unwillingness to go upstream to address the drivers of the trash offers an important lesson for our city, region and state leaders as well as average folks so focused on the trash of today.
But that was 5 years ago, right? What does it have to do with a garbage pick up event a couple months ago? A lot. But you have to be willing to read beyond a clever clip on social media to learn more.
It turns out that despite the promises our elected and business leaders made over the past 5 years — and more intensively since 2020 — to build a more inclusive economy, our city, region and state have actually been doubling down on economic development strategies that are creating more, not less, trash. So if it’s less trash that we want, we’re gonna need to do more than just participate in an occasional cleanup.
I can imagine a reader’s thought bubble now: “Can’t you just let go of things that didn’t go right back then and move on?” I’ll respond with a phrase from NPR’s Throughline podcast, “The past is never past. Every headline has a history….go back in time to understand the present.”
The history I am sharing is a cautionary tale for all those earnest and genuinely good people who took a Friday off work with their teams to clean up trash (and the ones who have since earnestly attended Gov. Kotek’s Downtown Task Force meetings for so many weeks.)
What our business and elected leaders did and didn’t do after that 2018 trash can press conference — and what is still so sorely missing from the current public outcry — has a lot to tell us about why Covid hit our economy so hard, why our economic recovery has been so rough, and why there’s still so much trash.
Here in Portland at the time of that press conference, there were several relatively new initiatives working to address the inequitable economy that was growing after the Great Recession, not the least of which was Prosper Portland’s important work to focus economic development efforts on historically marginalized communities. Programs like the Inclusive Business Resource Network and events such as My People’s Market were and continue to be important efforts to create more economic opportunity for more people, especially those from communities historically excluded from economic opportunities.
Amidst concerns that growing income inequality was adversely impacting our city, Mayor Wheeler hosted a genuinely inspiring kick off event in the Spring of 2019 for Portland Means Progress, a city-wide initiative to engage Portland businesses in a variety of concrete and measurable actions that would deliver economic opportunity to more Portlanders. That kick off event was sincerely one of my happiest memories of the era. It was both substantive and celebratory — coming together across Portland’s political spectrum, to make meaningful commitments to tangible programs to develop an economy that works for more Portlanders.
Alongside these citywide efforts, groups like Business for a Better Portland highlighted the perils of this rapid economic growth and elevated the voices of small business owners calling for changes in the banking system needed to ensure that the benefits of a growing economy were flowing to women and people of color. (Pretty wild to re-read that piece from 2019 referencing the glowing national rankings for Portland. We’re Number One!)
But despite all the good work that went into these initiatives, they were no match for the powerful forces of an economic system that focuses on short-term profits over all other goals.
Institutions — ranging from economic development agencies at all jurisdictional levels, to chambers of commerce and their business development arms — operate within an economic framework that orients almost exclusively around quarterly returns for investors, rather than the needs of the communities in which they operate. Staff of our region’s economic development agency report to their investors/ board members, who in turn report to their bosses and investors, whose primary focus is near-term returns, not the long-term well-being of our communities.
Even the most influential downtown Portland leaders — no matter how many Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives they champion internally — are ultimately judged by the numbers. Their compensation depends on them. To hit those numbers, they make short-sighted decisions that provide short-term gains and punt the downside to future leaders, our social safety net and well intended volunteers who offer to take a Friday break from the office to clean it up. (And yes, I know that there are studies that show that DEI efforts can positively impact financial outcomes. I am not an expert on that topic and that is not the focus of this post.)
If there had ever been a time in Portland that institutions could have shifted the metrics by which they measured their success, it would have been 2020–2022, a time period when the social and cultural narrative was about “never going back to normal” and ensuring that Black lives really mattered.
Instead, after nearly 3 years of having a truly inclusive Regional Economic Recovery Plan that was informed by likely the largest and most diverse group of stakeholders in the history of the organization, the region has reverted to relying on recruitment, tax incentives, and PR campaigns as its central economic development strategy.
So what does this all mean in the day to day and what does it have to do with garbage?
Consider our region’s recruitment-focused economic development strategy led by an organization called Greater Portland Inc (GPI). That strategy brought in droves of new highly paid workers for the knowledge economy after the Great Recession, but did not (and still doesn’t) consider housing to be part of its mandate.
The organization leading that recruitment-based strategy was not part of efforts to pass our region’s bond to build more affordable housing. It certainly wasn’t proactively engaging in the growing pre-Covid efforts to address our increasing homelessness crisis, which unfortunately was a significant (but not only) source of so much trash. GPI maintained an almost singular focus on recruiting more high wage jobs by marketing our region as “destination for global brands seeking creative solutions and room to grow.”
Back in the 2018-times when new garbage cans were cause for celebration, our city would also regularly celebrate the recruitment of a Bay Area company that’d just taken over a few floors of the Big Pink or the Lloyd Tower. Elected officials would be on hand to cut ribbons and celebrate the influx of high wage jobs, without planning for the impact these mostly imported high-wage workers would have on housing prices, much less what the sidewalk conditions would look like a year later.
To be sure, restaurants and boutiques were bustling, but small business owners were already reporting that their employees could no longer afford to live nearby, and the workforce retention crisis that our city’s small businesses face now was already beginning to reveal itself.
Commercial real estate investors were understandably thrilled that their offices were full, but what good would that do them when a major disruption hit and we went to work at our kitchen tables? What were those commercial real estate folks, their banks, insurance companies and their investors doing to ensure that the prosperity they were experiencing was more broadly shared so that when disaster struck — and strike it did — we wouldn’t end up with our streets looking like a dystopian scene?
It’s not as if they had not been well-advised by the very organization they’d created.
As I referenced in my post in Fall 2022, the imperative of inclusive economic growth was a primary takeaway from the keynote speech at the 2020 Greater Portland Economic Summit. This gathering of our region’s top private and public sector leaders was held in February 2020, mere weeks before lockdown. At that Summit, Texas-based Tracye McDaniel, President of TIP Strategies, spoke to the audience about the power of regionalism, trends in technology and the impact of younger generations on workforce and workplace trends. We could not have possibly imagined what we were on the cusp of that January 2020 day in the Art Museum ballroom.
McDaniel implored the audience to “make sure growth is inclusive or you undermine your success.” Boy, was she right.
While our region’s corporations have, on some accounts, excelled in their commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion, such endeavors turned out to be entirely insufficient when not paired with a commitment to creating an economy in which all people can thrive. Our regional economic development strategy — and the corporate and commercial real estate interests behind it — had not focused on inclusive growth.
But these are just corporations acting on their own behalf, right? What do our elected officials have to do with this?
It turns out that these corporate and commercial real estate interests are mostly represented in City Hall and beyond by a business association that is emboldened by a roughly $6 million per year contract with the City of Portland. While some of that $6 million is paid for by willing private property owners, you can imagine that many of the private payers would question why in the world they should pay to subsidize six figure executive salaries and operational expenses of a lobbying entity when they cannot join the organization and have no say in the organization’s work.
What’s more, many public agencies such as the Oregon Department of Transportation, Multnomah County Library, Portland Bureau of Transportation, Trimet, Portland Community College, Portland State University, the Housing Authority of Portland, and Prosper Portland (our city’s economic development agency) pay into this fund to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
Here’s a spreadsheet provided by the City of Portland that shows all the 2022 ratepayers including dozens of public entities and even some leading nonprofits.
The dues those local, county, regional and state agencies are paying are actually taxpayer dollars coming from folks like you and me. Those are our tax dollars contributing to 6 figure salaries of folks who lobby City Hall, Multnomah County, Metro, the State of Oregon and our Federal delegation on behalf of their most powerful and highest dues-paying members from sectors like banking, insurance, commercial real estate, fossil gas, Amazon and other large tech — all sectors that are thriving for their shareholders and executives but are creating more inequality and…generating more trash.
While the publicly subsidized Portland Business Alliance may have a large number of small businesses among its membership — often referenced as high as 80% — the needs of those small businesses is not what drives the decisions made at the powerful government affairs and executive committee levels.
You have to admit, it’s rather an ingenious setup: Create a government-sanctioned mechanism that casts a wide net for dues collection that goes well beyond the relatively small group of companies actually willing to pay to be members of your organization, use government employees and infrastructure to collect those millions, use some of those funds to perform needed functions that most anyone considers to be a good idea like cleanliness, safety and small business promotion, take a big administrative overhead fee for those services, and then use the balance (roughly $1.5 million based on analysis of budgets and tax returns) to pay your very well compensated staff to lobby for the interests of your most powerful members.
What a great deal for those powerful members. Instead of paying for the full value of the lobbying services they receive, they’ve managed to get everyone else to pay for it. Brilliant for them! What a short end of the stick for the rest of us!
It bears repeating: city, county and state agencies, public colleges and universities and our regional transit agency all pay into this fund. While there is without a doubt some good services that are paid for with some of those dollars, it can’t be overlooked that 45-50% of PBA’s executive salaries are covered by these dues. But those same executives aren’t then required to advocate for you and me, the taxpayers, or even the small businesses who also end up having the fees embedded in their rent by their landlords.
(To add insult to injury, these lobbyists seem to spend a lot of time berating the very elected officials whose agencies, it turn out, pay a good portion of their salaries. This is one bizarre set up.)
Needless to say, the well intentioned and under-resourced work that so many organizations were doing to promote more inclusive approaches to economic development — the kind of economic development that would have created greater shared prosperity and less trash — was simply no match for that kind of concentrated power.
While emerging pre-Covid approaches to promote inclusive economic growth described earlier were commendable and gaining some traction, they were ultimately just a drop in the bucket in contrast to the strategy championed by publicly subsidized lobbyists, big banks and other large corporations. A strategy focused on generating high wages and profits for a few that has the downside of creating greater challenges and even despair for so many. Then, the pandemic created a K-shaped economy, in which one segment prospers while the other continues to suffer.
Those left to suffer left even more garbage on our streets.
If you want to learn more about how things unfolded with that regional economic recovery plan and what it has to do with yet another press conference earlier this year about cleaning up garbage, come back soon to read Part 2.
