Let’s be real. Portland City Council has always had coalitions. For decades, a handful of white men, who overwhelmingly came from the same couple of neighborhoods, ran this city by making deals with each other and with landlords, developers, and business interests.
That was business as usual, and it meant those shut out of the conversation — like East Portland — got left with the scraps.
Now that the coalitions include women, people of color, renters, and people with working-class roots, we’re seeing city councilors willing to fight for the communities that too often have been left behind in our city. That’s something we should be celebrating, but instead the front-page news is caught up in legalese and whether it’s “sneaky,” or “a threat to democracy” when elected representatives with common interests work toward shared goals. That double standard says more about who’s uncomfortable with change than it does about anything we’ve actually done.
Here’s the truth: we were elected to work together. Portlanders voted for charter reform because they wanted a council that actually reflects the people of this city. Over 80% of voters ranked a candidate they helped send to City Hall. That’s more representation than Portland has ever had. So when people say “you don’t represent us,” what they really mean is “you don’t share my politics.” That’s not the same thing.
And let’s talk about the law. The serial communications law is new, confusing, and even the people in charge of enforcing it admit they don’t fully understand it. Robert Taylor, the City Attorney, didn’t find fault with what we did. Instead, he called this whole situation a “critical opportunity for additional training.” He pointed out that the Legislature passed this law in 2023 without clarifying how it’s supposed to work, and that it’s being rolled out at the same time Portland is implementing a brand-new form of government. Even the Oregon Government Ethics Commission’s own vice chair admitted she didn’t know how to tell when a violation had actually occurred. If the lawyers can’t figure it out, how are councilors supposed to?
That’s what makes all this “gotcha” framing so cynical. The facts are simple: the chat was below the number of councilors needed for quorum, on a platform subject to public records, and nothing in it was hidden from the public. Our conversations were the blunt, unpolished way colleagues talk when they’re trying to move through long days of policy debate. The actual decisions, the votes, the outcomes — they all happened in the open.
The real story here isn’t that a group of us worked together. The real story is that Portland finally has a representative council, and that makes some people uncomfortable. Coalitions on council aren’t new. What’s new is that they’re finally working for the people who’ve been left out for too long.
And that’s exactly what Portlanders voted for.
Note: Some people have suggested we owe the public a running commentary of every text or chat between councilors. That’s not how open government works. What we owe is that decisions and deliberations concerning city business are made in public— not that every private message is broadcast in real time. During budget negotiations, every single one of our policy positions and debate showing how we got there were expressed in public, on the dais.
We used a Teams channel precisely because we knew it was under public records law. The reason why this story exists is because public records law ensures accountability. What it doesn’t require — and shouldn’t — is that every conversation between councilors be livestreamed to everyone.