Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler may soon shuffle the bureaus each city commissioner is assigned to oversee, a change that could have sweeping effects for the city and its sprawling bureaucracy.

As mayor, Wheeler has exclusive power to decree which bureaus each of the five elected commissioners is in charge of. Each commissioner-in-charge can wield significant control over the bureaus he or she is assigned, with the power to hire and fire agency leaders and direct program offerings.

Perhaps no deliberations within City Hall are more secretive than the mayor's thinking on bureau assignments.

But multiple City Hall sources said Wheeler is contemplating whether to take from Commissioner Chloe Eudaly the city permitting agency, the Bureau of Development Services, and assign it to himself. Complaints from developers about the time-consuming city permitting process sparked the discussions, said the sources, who spoke on background to discuss the mayor's deliberations.

Michael Cox, Wheeler's newly-named chief of staff and top spokesman, said the mayor has spoken with each commissioner's office about bureau assignments and gone so far as to convey that there will be "a meaningful reconfiguration" of assignments in this fall. Cox said no decisions have been finalized. Talks have centered on how to achieve "sound governance," he said.

Eudaly's chief of staff, Marshall Runkel, said Monday that reassignment discussions have taken the form of "a healthy dialogue" between Eudaly's office and the mayor, who is considering "a couple different reconfigurations" of bureau assignments. Runkel added, "Nothing is concrete."

Runkel also acknowledged rumors that Wheeler, in exchange for reassigning to himself the permitting agency, would allocate to first-termer Eudaly the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Eudaly's office is preparing for the possibility that she will take the reins of the transportation agency and its more than $520 million annual budget, he said.

The current commissioner in charge of transportation, Dan Saltzman, is not seeking re-election and his term expires at year-end.

Like many city agencies, the Bureau of Transportation is undergoing a revolution of sorts in an effort to modernize and prepare for a bigger, denser Portland. And the bureau is one of eight without a permanent director, leaving open the chance for its commissioner-in-charge to leave an outsized mark by hiring a director who aligns with his or her vision for the city roads and transit systems.

Wheeler has kept bureau assignments mostly static throughout his 18-month tenure, making only one long-term change in reassigning the Office of Neighborhood Involvement from Commissioner Amanda Fritz to Eudaly. Yet Wheeler has given himself a heavy workload from the beginning, naming himself commissioner in charge of police, housing, development, management and finance, planning and a host of smaller city offices.

City Hall sources said Wheeler is considering more than just Eudaly's bureau portfolio, including mulling whether to bundle the city's public safety bureaus with a single commissioner, whether to allow Fritz to continue overseeing Portland Parks & Recreation and whether to keep Commissioner Nick Fish as head of the city utilities.

Fish's chief of staff, Sonia Schmanski, said the commissioner has not pitched the mayor on specific bureaus he would prefer to run should assignments be redone. But Schmanski said Fish, who previously oversaw the parks bureau, "loved his time with that bureau" and said it was a "terrific assignment."

Fritz's chief of staff, Tim Crail, said in an email, "There have been no in-depth conversations about the Mayor's thinking on bureau assignments." A spokesman for Saltzman declined to comment.

On top of Wheeler's considerations for the current commissioners, an election looms large. Whomever voters choose to fill Saltzman's seat in November – Jo Ann Hardesty or Loretta Smith – will also need Wheeler to assign them bureaus. He could assign the winner to oversee the same bureau or bureaus overseen by Saltzman, who is stepping down, but whether he will do so or seek further bureau changes is unclear.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

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