District 3 City Council candidate Jesse Cornett has sharply criticized Portland’s decision to post a job listing for shared staff positions for the expanded City Council, set to grow from five to twelve members in January. In a letter to the city’s transition team, Cornett took issue with what he sees as a lack of leadership from the current administration.
“The elected Mayor seems all too happy to have ceded power to the bureaucracy, and 75% of the current council is busy trying to be the next Mayor,” Cornett wrote, adding that the transition team had “filled a leadership vacuum” over the past year. However, he emphasized that staffing decisions should be made by those who will be elected to serve on the new council, not by the current administration or transition team.
“The decision to post and make hiring decisions about who will staff the next council is not acceptable,” Cornett continued. He argued that staffing choices should fall under the purview of those elected by Portlanders: “It will be their prerogative. Not the current council’s and not your office’s.”
Concerns Over Exclusionary Hiring Process
Cornett also questioned the one-week application period for the role, calling it “exclusionary” and suggesting it raised concerns about whether the city already had preferred candidates in mind.
The job posting is intended to be a shared administrative position assisting incoming council members. While it’s still unclear how many such roles will be created, the city has determined that each councilor will receive one individual staff member, a number several council candidates have called insufficient.
Cornett went on to criticize how resources are being allocated during the transition, arguing that much of the spending seems focused on expanding the bureaucracy rather than delivering on the voter-approved reforms. “That’s not what I had in mind when I voted yes, and I’m confident few voters did either,” he wrote, adding that resources should instead be spent on creating in-district offices to serve constituents.
In closing, Cornett urged the transition team to remove the job postings and refrain from making decisions that could limit the authority of the incoming council.
Shared Frustration Among Candidates
Cornett is not the only candidate expressing concern over staffing decisions. District 4 candidate Bob Weinstein raised similar issues in an August email to the city council, criticizing the reduction in council staff from an originally recommended two staffers per member to just one. Weinstein cited a study by the Government Transition Advisory Committee, a volunteer body overseeing the government transition, which found that Portland’s per-councilor staffing would be the lowest among peer cities, potentially hampering the council’s ability to effectively engage with constituents.
Weinstein was particularly critical of the city’s suggestion that councilors rely on the 311 system to handle constituent concerns, saying, “In other words, the same transition team that recommended 1 staffer then says 1 staffer is inadequate for council members to respond to constituents, so they won’t need to (or be able to) do that anymore. Catch-22!”
Like Cornett, Weinstein questioned the city’s priorities in how resources are being allocated during this transition, emphasizing that under-resourcing the new council would diminish its effectiveness from the outset.
