The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-08-11
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (14,042 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Governance Committee met on August 11, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance. The committee reviewed the statement of conduct, approved minutes covering April 7 through July 7, 2025 by unanimous consent, and heard chair updates on a council handbook project, council meeting cadence and committee structure discussions, an upcoming ordinance presentation on committee restructuring, and the first day of a new council operations manager. During public testimony, one speaker proposed a "committee of the whole" structure to address council workload and committee procedures, prompting extended discussion and questions from committee members about its function compared to work sessions. The committee then received a presentation from Portland Elections Commission representatives on the Small Donor Elections 2024 election cycle report, covering contribution trends, program funding history, match cap reductions, and quid pro quo contribution concerns from the 2024 cycle. Discussion followed on proposed code amendments, including alignment with state law, auditor match cap reductions, and rules for candidates who ran for other offices. Figures describing contribution amounts and match caps were stated inconsistently across the discussion. Committee members raised questions about donation thresholds, geographic distribution of funds, and third-party fundraising practices, requesting additional data before further action. A motion was made regarding the ordinance, and votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The next meeting was scheduled for September 8, 2025.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Okay. Yeah.
1 Good afternoon everyone. I call the governance committee to order. It is Monday, August 11th, and it's 2:31 p.m. Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
2 Clerk.
3 Here. Dunfee here.
4 Pirtle-guiney here. Ryan, here.
5 Koyama Lane here. Craig, will you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Welcome to this meeting of the governance committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at w-w-w. Ed.gov agenda slash governance committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes until the chair, unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Great. Thank you, rebecca and craig. In today's meeting, the governance committee will approve the committee. Minutes. Minutes. Here. Chair. Updates here. Public testimony on governance issues. Receive a presentation from on the small donors elections 2024 election cycle report and consider an ordinance to amend the small donors election code to adopt the recommendations of the Portland elections committee. Rebecca, will you please read the first item?
8 Item one. April 7th, 2025 through July 7th, 2025. Governance committee meetings minutes.
9 This first item is to approve the minutes for the governance committee meetings that occurred April 7th through July 7th, 2025. These minutes are available online as part of the meeting agenda minutes are approved by unanimous consent. Without objection, the minutes can be approved. Oh, should we pause? Is there an audio problem on zoom?
10 I'm hearing that we are not able to be heard online.
11 Yeah. All right.
12 You can take a moment to work on that.
13 Here we go.
14 Test, test. Open signal. Can you hear us in zoom? Are we good to go?
15 We're good.
16 We're good to go.
17 Great. So we were just approving our minutes by unanimous consent. And it looks like, without objection, the minutes are approved, and. Rebecca, can you read the next item, please?
18 Item two. Chair's announcements.
19 Great. There were just a few things I'm going to give updates on. One is on the council handbook process. Folks from my office are working with council operations to draft a handbook that will gather council rules and procedures in one place. It is something that can be hopefully helpful to the public and to staff. We envision this as a useful document for our council offices and the public. Aubrey from my team and craig from council ops will be reaching out to councilors and staff to gather input for this handbook. Thank you to the members of the public who follow governance and have given some suggestions about making, some doing some work in this area. And a brief recap and comments on our recent conversations around council meeting, cadence and committee structure work sessions. For those that are following, you know that discussions are continuing about the restructuring of our city council meeting schedule and committee structure. The full council has had two work sessions about proposals and weighed a lot of pros and cons. Councilor Kanal ordinance will officially be presented this Wednesday at our full council meeting, and the only other announcement issue that I'd like to bring up is that I want folks to know that I'm hearing I've heard some different questions and wonderings around if and when the governance committee or council as a whole can have some more conversations about the different roles of the executive branch and legislative branch. That makes sense that as we are in this new form of government, that we are figuring that out and having those conversations. And so I hear that and I hear that that's something that we can discuss at some point in the near future, hopefully. And I don't think vice chair Ryan has any announcements or updates today. And so anything you'd like.
20 To say to announce the new hire?
21 I certainly can. So counselors know this, but for members of the public to know, I think relevant to the work of this committee, we have been going through the process over the last couple of months of hiring a new council operations manager. Council operations is the team that coordinates a lot of the work that that we do as a body. It's the team that our analysts who sit with us at all of these committees and who help to make sure that we have great information about the policies that come to committee are a part of, as well as a number of other folks who we work with. And today is the first day for our new council operations manager. We are very excited to have dana richardson on the on the team for council operations with us.
22 Wonderful. Thank you for that update. Council president rebecca, can you please read the next item?
23 Item three governance public testimony. Our first speaker is terry harris.
24 Well.
25 Thank you for letting me comment in my air conditioned three minutes here. I'm going to try and pitch something coming out of your work sessions relating to the committee of the whole, and consider this a little bit of workshopping for Wednesday, where I'll try and pitch it again. The council currently has trouble with the workload getting to the full council. And it's mainly because the council hasn't sort of sorted out what the role of committees are. What's the procedural structure for how that is implemented and how to provide meaningful public comment and involvement in that process. The problem that you have, and it's the same as the old council has, is there's too much business of the city that has to go through this room and this room in a full council setting. You need to do work in parallel, and you haven't been able to do work in parallel, because the committee structure isn't quite working yet. So what I'm going to do is pitch a committee of the whole to take care of some of that, and also pitch a stronger committee system where the committees actually can dispose of things for you to filter things out for you and still give you the flexibility and procedure that you need. So anyway, the committee of the whole, you need to think of it as a committee of the council where you can refer things. When you refer things to committee, you can refer it to the governance committee, or you can refer it to the committee of the whole. And then you can hold a committee hearing there, just as you would hold a committee hearing anywhere else. And then those committees, whether it's the committee of the whole or other committee, will make a recommendation to the full council and to start weeding things out. If that recommendation is, say, unanimous, well, I think that should automatically qualify it for the consent agenda. If the recommendation is negative, it should probably just stay in committee until somebody petitions it out. For some reason, if there's enough energy to do so, and if it's a mixed bag, if it's a 3 to 2 vote, then maybe it can go get rereferred to the committee of the whole for another hearing. And or it can be referred directly to the council for a deliberation vote without a public hearing. So if you use that committee of the whole as a committee to have another hearing or have the original hearing, that's that's what they're used for. And I think you can set a whole structure around it to make it work better. If bear with me a minute and I'll give you the robert's rules problem and explain it. Otherwise I'll sit down and save it, for.
26 I think you're the only one signed up for public testimony. We have some more time.
27 So the robert's rules problem is that committee of the whole is in robert's rules. And what robert's rules says is you can have rules of debate that are looser and easier to deal with, but you have the ability. You only use robert's rules here in this council if there's not another rule that applies. So you make your own committee of the whole rule and use it as how you're going to operate that way. And I think that saves you a lot of. Energy. It seems it is simpler for the people in the public to understand. And all the legislation is going to have the same flow chart that way. So anyway, that's that's the pitch. Clearly I need to work on it some more to get it down. Another cut a minute, nine out of it. But thank you.
28 And because this is committee not full council, we have a little more flexibility. And I think councilor Clark has her hand up and maybe wants to ask a question or make a comment.
29 Thank you, madam chair. Yeah, I really struggle with this. Terry. The difference between just having a work session or another council meeting and the committee, the whole. And I think what I hear you say is that there is more flexibility with committee of the whole. Is that what you're saying?
30 I guess I'm yes. I mean, I think you're going to want to have work sessions where you work on stuff where you don't need public input or you don't want public input, and you do have a committee of a whole where operates as a committee where you put the legislation out there. You have people March up here for three minutes, and they're just two different things, and you can have those two different things. You can wing it and say that a work session, some work sessions are going to have public comment like this, and some will not. And that's just part of the confusion that will continue. This is a way to not be confusing.
31 Well, I'm confused, so it's just really hard for me to distinguish. Maybe I need a chart that shows, you know, here's the committee of the whole, here's a work session slash council meeting. What the differences, advantages and disadvantages. Because it's just I'm having a really hard time holding on to it. I sound like I'm, you know, afternoon I need coffee, but it's just a difficult concept for me to get my head around.
32 I hear what you're saying, councilor Clark, and I think even adding a work session, how those three are different. What can you do in committee of the whole separate from a work session? I understand why we might want to have it outside of full council meetings. And I think some of that is for work workload and how much is coming through to make sure that those aren't getting bogged down.
33 And I think the committee of the whole also helps you with public meetings law, and that you can notice it as a committee meeting on a separate date and for a limited purpose, so that you can't convene as a full council, suspend the rules and do something else. Right. It's a way to structure it within just a committee hearing.
34 Councilor pirtle-guiney also has a question or comment.
35 I think.
36 My question is along the same lines, and perhaps I am conflating your arguments with the arguments I've heard from some of my colleagues. But I continue to hear this idea that committee of the whole will help save us time, and I, I'm struggling because in my mind, I'm sure I'm missing something here. An hour in a work session, with or without opportunity for public comment attached. Right? We can have a public comment period attached to a work session if we choose to an hour and a work session, an hour of extra council time, an hour of committee of the whole is an hour of time for all 12 people who sit up here and our staff who support the work. We don't limit the amount of time folks are going to debate. In fact, we might actually increase it by having it something move through a committee of the whole and council. And perhaps your argument is different, that it doesn't help us with time management. But I I'm trying to understand that argument, and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that.
37 Some of it is just structural. I don't think it saves you much time, but I think it's a way of thinking about the process of legislation that it comes in. It goes to committee, comes out of committee, the council deals with it. Okay. If it comes out of committee, that structure will be the same for everything. And I think that's important because I heard in in your work sessions about things that come out of the ether and get plopped on a consent calendar because nobody cares about it or something for that. And you can't do that. Everything needs eyes by some committee, I think is a rule of thumb that good legislature should live by.
38 So currently, those things I mean, right now nothing comes out of the ether. Right now everything is going through either a committee or a work session. So this would essentially replace the things that are going through work sessions in your in your mind. Is that correct?
39 It could or it could be. You know, it's a way to take formal public testimony for in a full council setting. And be able to dispose of it at the committee level, like if it doesn't pass out of the committee of the whole, it sits there.
40 As with.
41 Any.
42 Other committee.
43 Okay. But if it does pass out of the committee, the whole, then it can go to the full council. And that discussion might be a lot quicker because you've already had it.
44 Thank you.
45 Vice chair Ryan.
46 Thank you chair.
47 You made me think about what could be the difference between a work session and the committee as a whole. I don't think we've leaned into work sessions in this council in the same way that we have in the past. I think in the past, we treated work sessions as a way to take a deep topic and try to understand it and be transparent from the public why we're diving into it. We used to sit at tables so we could actually see each other, and not in this formal setup we have here in a committee structure. And I actually think the way we were set up structurally helped the work session be truly more that as we're rolling up our sleeves trying to understand the topic that we were tackling, and then from that, people would get a sense of what we were thinking about. After that, people would begin to lobby us, if you will, and start coming in for testimony. But it was usually at least there was a time frame before the between the work session and when it would come to the full council. And so I personally think that we haven't leaned into the value of a work session in this current council, the way we're set up. So they feel like a committee of the whole with without testimony. But it seems like we're all making our points, and a lot of thoughts seem like they're already baked. And I think it's really important that we have time to think out loud together. And I think it's important to get it right, but not know exactly what we think. Before we dive into the curiosity of the complexity. So where do you think that would be in a committee as a whole? I don't see that being as an informal as a work session could be. Terry.
48 I think part of the problem is you have too many sessions where it's the full council debating things and sorting things out. And in a way I'd say do the work sessions in committees, do that work earlier so you can sort it out earlier and filter what comes up to the full council as only the most important or only the most difficult to wrestle with.
49 So you dismissed the work session and talked about council meetings being more like the work sessions of the past.
50 I don't I'm trying to help you not duplicate the effort and duplicate the debates.
51 From from committee meetings to council meetings.
52 At the full council level. Yeah. And give the give the committees the ability to dispose of things.
53 When they.
54 So you know why that's challenging for some of us.
55 I know that and what I'll say to that.
56 Oh, you know, what do you think I know that you know to.
57 Is that I realize everybody represents their district and they represent their constituents, and they feel like they have to be involved and engaged on every single item. And that's fine. But it's not the public's problem if you all can't keep up with the work. Okay. Which is you all have to organize yourselves to keep up with the work and get the work done. And that means use committees to do it. I think that's that was predicting the problem.
58 Well, no one's going to. I think everyone would understand and appreciate what you said. I think it's become a workload in terms of if you're on four committees, but you're not on the other four, and you can barely keep up with the four you're on. And so when items come from the other four and you haven't been briefed, it is challenging. So I think that's why all of the trend is for fewer committees.
59 And you know, if that's the case, what you have is the exact same council as the old government, but just more people talking. And, and I think.
60 Explain that further, terry. That was a big statement. Is that. You have to work in parallel and you have to trust your colleagues. You have to do homework, you have to trust your your district mates. You have to communicate to your district mates, communicate with your colleagues so that you individual council members don't have to do all the work on every piece of legislation that comes down the pike.
61 That's fair. And that's why my comment I hopefully you could respect. That said, when there's eight committees, it's difficult to do that when you're on four. There's only so much time. Because you know what, terry? I really like the fact that we should be out in district more. And so I push back on saying we should just be focusing on committees. We need to listen to what the constituents are saying, which is sometimes not heard here at all. Thank you.
62 Thank you so much.
63 So now I'm going to have.
64 To work it down 11 minutes.
65 Thank you.
66 Thank you so much. All right. I believe items four and five will be read together. Rebecca, can you read those please?
67 Item four presentation on the small donor elections 2024 election cycle report. Item five. Amend small donor elections code to adopt the recommendations of the Portland elections commission.
68 Thank you.
69 After every.
70 After every election cycle, the Portland elections commission issues a public report analyzing the performance of the small donor elections program's impact on strengthening our democracy. Today, we will hear from members of the hear from the commission about the report on the 2024 cycle. This is a public report that does not require a council vote for acceptance or any further action for the committee or council. After covering the top lines from the report, we will hear about the commission's recommendations to council on changes to the small donors election code, which arise from the programs evaluation. So with that, I will hand this over to our presenters that we have today, Portland elections commission chair amy sample ward and small donors. Election deputy director danita harris, thank you so much for being here today.
71 Thank you. You good? Great. Well, chair Koyama Lane, vice chair Ryan, members of the committee. For the record, my name is amy sample ward. I use they them. I'm the chair of the Portland elections commission, where I work alongside director susan mattei and the full Portland elections commission to support this small donor elections program.
72 And for the record, my name is anita harris. I'm the deputy director of small donor elections program, and I get the privilege of working alongside susan vote yea and amy sample ward.
73 The privilege is mine. Today. We are here, as you have already shared, to provide you all with an overview of the 2024 election cycle report. It is public and an overview of the peck's recommended code changes because there's a lot of data and graphs. We have notes and slides. So thanks for your patience as we bring two laptops up here today. As a reminder, the small donor elections program is implemented exclusively by the psc, which provides oversight, guidance and input to the small donor elections program. It's made up of volunteers from many different communities, all of whom provide their expertise on how small donor matching could operate in Portland, great purpose of the small donor elections program is to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption caused by the real or imagined coercive influence of large financial contributions on candidates positions and on their actions if elected to office. The program does this by enabling campaigns to raise enough to run a competitive campaign from small contributions from portlanders and matching funds alone. By doing so, the program makes portland's democracy more participatory, inclusive, reflective, and accountable to measure our impacts. After each election cycle. The psc, I'm going to say psc to save time. Just super clear. That means Portland elections commission carries out three key tasks to ensure the program is effective and responsive to the needs and challenges that arise in, gosh, an ever evolving electoral space. These three pieces include. First, to evaluate the program's performance using quantitative and qualitative data collected through means such as user experience, research and campaign contribution data. Second, to monitor emerging issues such as candidate swapping contributions and make recommendations regarding how to address them, as well as keep the program up to date. For again, that constantly changing soup that we all operate in. And third, to publish the pecs report that includes the findings mentioned, as well as proposals and recommendations for changes to the program, to administrative rules or to code. This reporting really ensures that the program's performance and the recommendations are transparent to the public. The evaluative process includes, like I said, both qualitative and quantitative data and stakeholder research.
74 While the report is publicly available, we want to summarize some of the key findings from the report for you all today. When reviewing the average and median contributions from 2016 to 2024, we see a dramatic drop in average contribution sizes. In 2016, the average contribution was over $300, and the median contribution was roughly $100, whereas in 2024 the average contribution was $52 and the median contribution was only 21, illustrating a dramatic decrease in campaign reliance on large contributions in favor of much smaller ones. Clearly, the small donor elections program was extremely efficient at reducing the reliance on large donors and increasing a focus on small donors.
75 To further illustrate this shift, we're looking at a new chart going sideways now. The percentage of campaign funds shifted from being dominated by large donors in 2016 and in 2018, prior to implementation of the small donor elections program and contribution limits outside of the program to small donors and matching funds. Since the program's launch in 2020. Before the program launched, large contributions, especially those over $250 and $1,000 dominated campaign fundraising. But since then, the $1,000 plus contributions have dropped to just 0 to 3%, and the 250 up to 999 contributions to not more than 14%. As a result, small donations of $1 up to $250, boosted by the matching funds, now make up the bulk of campaign funding.
76 In 2024, only five of 13 winning candidates had the highest or second highest average contribution, and only one had an average contribution of $100 or more. Instead, half of the winning council candidates had an average contribution of under $40. Small donor elections and concert, of course, with all of the other democracy reforms, is making it possible for candidates to win by raising only small contributions and matching funds as the program within this new electoral structure helped to broaden and diversify the group of people who give to campaigns and enable campaigns to collect only small contributions and matching funds. It increases public confidence that elected officials are representing all portlanders. Now what this slide doesn't show or demonstrate, but can be found in the Portland elections commission report, is to continue progress in raising campaign funds more evenly throughout the city. While competitive campaign data. Excuse me, comparative campaign data is not apples to apples due to the implementation of charter changes and the evolving nature of campaign finance laws, our data has shown significant improvements in more evenly distributed campaign funds being raised across the city, especially when amplified by matching funds. When compared 2016 to 2024, it is reasonable to equate a more equitable campaign finance distribution with how candidates are engaging with city residents, who they are speaking with, and whose voices are really being heard. Furthermore, this can serve as an indicator for which demographic groups are participating in funding our elections.
77 Looking at some user survey data as a part of this evaluative process, individual donors who contributed to participating candidates were sent a user experience survey as well. So we don't only survey campaigns and their staff, but also donors across the spectrum. The user survey consisted of a number of multiple choice questions, while also providing, of course, opportunities for users to narrate their their answers. Further, through a series of open ended questions. The responses give us important insights about their experience and thoughts about the program and their role in democracy. Findings include that over 90% agreed the program achieved at least one of its goals related to democratic representation. While views on the program's three goals remain steady, the share of respondents who believe the program reduces actual and perceived corruption rose from one third in 2020 to nearly half in 2024. Though shifting long held beliefs may take some time, the these results do show some promising progress. Additionally, survey respondents reported giving because matching funds increased the impact of their small contribution and to help candidates collect hundreds of small donations necessary to qualify for matching funds, respondents emphasized how they valued grassroots participation in campaigns fundraising. By collecting lots of small contributions from many portlanders. Overwhelmingly, respondents found that the program reduces barriers for everyday people to run for elected office, ensured representation by a more diverse array of portlanders, and ensured that elected leaders are accountable to all portlanders. You want to go to the.
78 Next oh.
79 Is it all right if we ask a question?
80 Okay. Thank you. Amy, when you.
81 Go back to the last slide, please. Yeah. Reduced actual and perceived corruption in city elections. This was from the last elections in 2024.
82 Yes.
83 And it's 47%. And you said it actually went up.
84 Yes.
85 What was it in 2022?
86 You know, off the top of my head, I actually don't know what the percentage was in 2022. But that report is also available online so I bet I can find it for you.
87 That'd be nice because when you say it went up, that's a concern and we'd like to know why it went up.
88 Yeah 2020 it was at a third. So but we can check.
89 That.
90 Was 22.
91 It was lower in both 2020 and 2022 okay. That's fascinating I'll think. Yeah. Thanks.
92 Fiscal years 2324 and 2425 elections saw a departure from previous trends in program funding. As a result, the charter reform as a result of the charter reform requiring a historic election, bringing on 100% of the city offices. In 2024, the psc recommended a budget of $4 million. However, the prior mayor and commissioners underfunding resulted in the program significantly reducing match caps by 60% to 40. This reduction was necessary to prevent the program from running out of matching funds in the middle of the election cycle, the psc reduces only as strictly as necessary because reductions interfere with the program's ability to achieve its purpose in improving our democracy and increasing public trust in the program and in our local government. Underfunding also resulted in a number of challenges for campaigns, resulting in what we would refer to as creative fundraising activities, most notably the quid pro quo agreements to exchange contributions. We're going to discuss that further on in the presentation. It's ongoing funding levels at 1.3 million annually, is 41% lower than what is needed for the program to stand a reasonable chance at solvency. As a result, the Portland elections commission had to reduce matching funds for candidates in the 2026 and 2028 elections by 65%, down to 35 of the amount provided and the small donor elections law. As always, the commission is committed to restoring the funds as much as possible. If additional funds are appropriated, so the current council for the fiscal year 2526 budget appropriated adequate funding through a one time additional allocation. As such, it is unclear whether the program will adequately be funded in 26, 27 and fiscal year 2829. That said, in recognition of full funding for this fiscal year, the Portland elections commission increased matching funds available to campaigns in 2026 and as opposed to the 35% which was originally slated, that was approved in March, the program has actually gone up, and the caps will be fully restored for the 2026 and 2028 elections.
93 Perfect recommendation is it okay?
94 I was just wondering if you can share a little bit more about why is that? Because we're expecting less people to be running or.
95 It's a mix, but also because the funding that was needed through that. I mean, our calculations consider that for every race that's open, there are, you know, a certain number of any candidates, whoever they might be, that will hit the full funding sum, that will get 75%. You know, we just kind of take a calculation across the spectrum and then average that out. And so of course, this year the math was the worst case math because all the seats were open. But going forward, that will be able to be returning to a split.
96 Thank you for clarifying.
97 Yeah.
98 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
99 I, I.
100 Want to make sure I heard what you said about the last slide correctly because council found one time funds, you increased the caps for the next two election cycles. Is that because there is enough funding in the door for that level of expenditure from the program? Or is that because you are assuming that that level of funding will be continued, that that one time funding will be made permanent over the next few budget cycles?
101 Yeah. On this slide to kind of help walk folks through because I know it can be a little bit confusing, is there are two different decisions that have been made in the course of a few months. Right. And that's if you look here on this slide, you've got your 2024 reductions that had happened previously. We had our 2020, 2026 and 28 reductions that were our initial reductions. We were like, if we get no additional funding, this is what we're looking at. But because we got additional funding, that decision has been amended in order to meet that. The 50% of the caps, which is exciting. If we were to receive more funding next year than that, would what the cap would be able to go up beyond the 50%.
102 But that still includes annual allocation to the program without a one time additional each time.
103 So if we continue the ongoing funding that you received this past year, but not the additional funding, that's right. We'll be able to afford that 50,100, 150 numbers. If we reduce the ongoing funding that will go down. If we find more one time funding in the future, that will go up. That's right. Okay.
104 Thank you.
105 Okay.
106 Sorry.
107 No worries.
108 I just had my hand. If you go back to the other slide, is that assuming I want people to hear this. So it's just the first say I give three contributions to Tiffany. Only my first ones match. Correct.
109 As a counselor or as an individual.
110 Oh, sorry. That was a bad example.
111 Yeah.
112 We're going to talk.
113 About that more. If I give to Tiffany, someone out there who lives in Portland gives.
114 Me, I'll give it three. They gave to me three times. Only their first one is match, correct?
115 No, no.
116 It's up. It's up to the amount.
117 Up to $20.
118 That's right.
119 But that was a change from the first time. In the second time. Did you know that?
120 I mean.
121 It used to be just your first donation to a candidate was matched, not the later ones.
122 And you used to only be able to give to one candidate. Where now.
123 Is that correct?
124 And now you can give to.
125 Up to up to your full 20.
126 So now it's if you get $5 and you're just picking one, you can give that four times and that will be matched four times.
127 Yes. That is my understanding of the program today.
128 Fascinating.
129 Thank you. Thanks for letting us interject.
130 Yeah.
131 If it's better for us to just get through the whole thing, you can let.
132 Us know.
133 Susan is also listening. And so she might fact check all of us.
134 Yeah, if I may.
135 Yes.
136 The program always matched all the way up to the matching amount, even if it was given in, say, $5 increments. We just keep matching each $5 contribution until they hit the match amount. But yes, in the first election cycle you could only give to one candidate per race and get matched, whereas that has been lifted for 2024 and beyond. For susan. Thank you. That was helpful. I, I have the distinct honor of being the only person that's run in all three of them. And so it starts to get a little nutty when you're comparing because it's changed each time. I am glad since I got in late in the first one. I'm glad that that will change. But so now it makes sense. Got it. There were a lot of nuances.
137 That's the constantly evolving political soup I mentioned. Okay, next. Great. Next slide. Recommendations made by the pcc were brought forward after a careful analysis of all of that qualitative and quantitative data of the program's performance program experience, all of the stakeholder feedback we discussed these four months. These recommendations include improving the program practices, updating administrative rules and code changes, top lines from the recommendations include adjustments to align with the new state campaign finance law. Increasing match rate after the elimination of the primary halved the amount of funding the program provides. Campaigns. Decentralizing quid pro quo arrangements and providing ongoing adequate funding to the program. Some are carried out through changing the small donor elections code, some through amending the administrative rules and some through changing program practices. The summary of.
138 The Portland elections commission found that overall, the small donor elections program performed well in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles and the 2024 election cycle performance was mixed. Despite underfunding, participation metrics were high. Campaign finance metrics show continued progress towards a democracy that is more reflective and responsive to all portlanders, and user experience. Research and program staff observation show that many of the successes of the program in 2024 were result of participating campaigns working tirelessly to overcome the challenges that over underfunding the program creates. When the recommended challenges and adequate funding the small donor elections program is well positioned to continue playing. An important role in ensuring portland's democracy is fair, reflective, equitable and inclusive, enjoying high participation and results in a government that is accountable to all portlanders. And now I'm going to transition us into our conversation around code changes. After each election cycle. The Portland elections commission analyzes user experience, research, and campaign finance data to evaluate the small donor elections program's performance. This evaluation, which includes reviewing any emerging issues, drives the recommendation on how to improve the program and how to align the programs designed to be more effective in a constantly changing campaign finance climate. The evaluation and the recommendations then are published in the public report that we were just reporting on and. Yeah, some of the recommendations require code amendments. This afternoon we'll be going over six code amendments, which is actually five. And those include aligning aspects of small donor elections code with newly passed state law, lowering the auditor's match from 100,000 to 50,000, amending or delegating to rulemaking a change to allow candidates who run for a different office during the same election cycle to later participate in the program without being penalized for collecting and spending contributions. Think school boards delegate to rulemaking whether to exclude contributions from candidates from thresholds needed to qualify for matching funds, and then fixing some some errors, making codes not very clear. The Portland elections commission uses the evaluative process to respond to community and stakeholder feedback, recognizing again evolving needs, and then support the commission's goal to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption caused by the real or imagined coercive influence of large financial contributions on candidates positions and their actions when elected in office. We want to make sure that we operate with accuracy and we keep the program up to date with current campaign finance climate and continually improve the program.
139 In 2024, the state legislature adopted a new campaign finance law, which in part carves out portland's campaign finance laws and in small part supersedes it. A few small changes need to be made to ensure city law is aligned with state law. The first is to align the start and end dates of the program's election cycle with the state's, so that aggregate contributions are calculated in the same between both jurisdictions. If the election cycle timeline is changed, it makes sense to change the last day to return unspent funds to December 31st after the election, rather than 45 days after the election, which is typically around December 20th, so return funds are not due before the election cycle is technically over. This change will result in far less confusion for donors and for campaigns.
140 If the program is underfunded. The Portland elections commission is required by code to first ask the council for more funding if it is not received to prevent the program from running out of matching funds. The middle. In the middle of the election cycle, the Portland elections commission is required to reduce match caps for the match rate or both. The commission may reduce the match caps by a different amount for different seats, but would like the option to make the same reduction across the board. In theory, this should be felt evenly between and amongst all candidates. However, because the match cap for the auditor is so much higher than the competitive auditor, race actually costs, an even reduction is not felt by auditor candidates, while candidates running for mayor and city council is deeply felt. To remedy this, the Portland elections commission recommends reducing the match cap for the auditor from 100,000 to 50,000. While we were creating this docket, it actually came to my attention that this has been moved to administrative rules, and we are working with the city attorney's office.
141 When the code was written, it was not contemplated that a candidate who wishes to use the program may have run for another office, such as school board, during the current election cycle. Since those cycles overlap, the current law includes a blanket prohibition on raising or spending campaign funds on any election other than for city office, which means that a former candidate for school board would have violated that prohibition by fundraising for and spending money on that campaign. To participate, they would have to either cure all school board campaign fundraising and spending, or pay a penalty for it, even though running for a prior office does not violate any principle of the program. In addition, if they raised $350 from a contributor for school board, they cannot fundraise from that contributor when running for city office, as that contributor already gave up to the limit for the other campaign, the pec recommends the council amend the code to delegate the rulemaking to rulemaking, a remedy for this, which would permit candidates who ran for another office and completed that election, which falls within the current election cycle, to participate in the small donor elections program without penalty and raise contributions up to program limits if they zero out their prior campaign account first.
142 Candidates. Candidate contributions. As a part of the evaluative process, the Portland elections commission reviews emerging issues and makes recommendations on how to address this concern. The program does not match contributions made in exchange for an item of value. In spite of this, an issue arose in 2024 with some quid pro quo agreements to exchange contributions between candidates. Furthermore, and the mandatory training provided to candidates and their treasurers, the program outlines that contributions that are exchanged for an item of value are not matchable, and warned campaigns not to run afoul of state inducement law and to reach out and ask the secretary of state's office if they have questions about how to comply with the law. When asked about this from campaigns during the election cycle, the campaigns and candidates were then directed to the secretary of state to investigate whether or not whatever they were attempting to do violated the law. The program conducted its own investigation in order to maintain the program's integrity. The program was unable to announce the planned impromptu investigation that took place after the contributions were reported. Mind you, this was all happening within 30 day reporting. Okay, in order to determine which contributions were part of the quid pro quo exchange and which were not, at which point, contributions that were found unmatchable for a variety of reasons were then not matched. The program cannot interpret, apply or enforce the state's laws. It is worth noting that we are still waiting for the secretary of state to conclude their investigation and announce their determination on this matter. However, the practice gave the perception of fraud, raised questions regarding the efficient management of public funds, and eroded the public's perception of trust of the program and of the city government at large. To remove the incentive to do this, the Portland elections commission recommends multiple changes, one of which is to not count contributions from participating candidates toward the threshold needed for certification, or qualifying for the next tier. To do that, we recommend that council amend the code to delegate that decision to the administrative rules. After implementing this rule for an election cycle, the Portland elections commission will analyze feedback to determine whether or not this change was effective.
143 I just ask, is that in the code? I'm sorry, I'm not following along. Where where is that in the code where you're making that change?
144 We would be adding this to the code to make the administrative, to delegate it to the administrative.
145 Not the only language that's in the program now is that donation cannot be made in exchange for a value, an item of value. And this would give clarity to this actual scenario.
146 Can I clarify? So elected candidates can give to one another, but it will not count towards the different tiers and it will not be matched.
147 To be matched.
148 Or it just doesn't count.
149 I think susan is still on here, so if I'm wrong she can chime in, but my understanding is that it just will not match. It will not count towards the threshold. But you are also portlanders that are participating in the elections.
150 Will be matched, but.
151 So it will be matched, but it will not count towards the tiers.
152 Or initial certification.
153 Okay.
154 Yep.
155 Why?
156 Why we're on this topic. Just clarify for anyone watching. So if you only one only one donation could be counted toward the threshold from a Portland voter. So if a Portland voter gave three times to somebody and it still is under 20, yes. You don't count that person's each contribution. You just count them as one person, even though they gave three times.
157 Yes.
158 For the threshold and for, you know, if there's going to a next tier. Yes. But in matchable contributions, it's up to the full amount that they are able to.
159 That's a frequently asked question. And so thank you.
160 Yeah.
161 Great. Next one. Always my favorite fixing errors. Some past code changes resulted in errors which council change how penalties could be paid in 2021. But some of the language it was replacing, which was quote, paid by any private source was not removed. That leaves a contradiction like literally within the sentences. So we just want to remove that language so that it's clarifying and not confusing for folks to read. In the past, matchable contributions and allowable contributions were the same, and a prior amendment made the two types of contributions distinct, with allowable contributions being contributions from non matchable individuals. The code prohibits candidates from collecting matchable contributions until after they have filed their notice of intent to participate in the program. When separating these two definitions, the code was not updated to say that only matchable contributions cannot be collected before finding before filing the notice of intent, even though that was what it is meant to say. So this would be an amendment to correct that error for clarification.
162 Okay.
163 So the big takeaways from this presentation is that after every election cycle, we use an evaluative process utilizing qualitative and quantitative data that is illustrated throughout the presentation and also throughout the Portland election commission report. This information is necessary to ensure that the program is operating and is achieving our three primary goals, which again, are to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption caused by the real or imagined coercive influence of large financial contributions on candidates positions and their actions if elected to office, to operate with accuracy and to keep the program up to date with the current campaign finance climate and continually improve the program. This process provides the Portland elections commission the necessary information to make grounded recommendations through administrative rules, code changes, or program practice changes. Code changes being recommended are clarifying they're responsive to the challenges that we face in 2024, and they keep the program in alignment with the state laws and the state timeline. Everything that we shared in this presentation and much, much more is available in the 2024 Portland election commission report, and that can be found as it is published online. And I just really want to thank you all for inviting us here to share this presentation with you.
164 The pc is full of nerds, and we love it when people let us talk about all the election data.
165 Thank you so much for all of this. Clerk. Do we have any public testimony? I believe we okay.
166 No one signed up.
167 All right, well, this is a time when our committee can ask questions, discuss, deliberate. And I see councilor Clark in the queue.
168 Thank you, madam chair. Thanks for the report. I think it clearly indicates that the program has fulfilled its intent. That would seem to me it's pretty clear cut. But I do have a question, though. The one thing that's not you don't have to change the code for is the change in the state contribution limits. And I understand that we're changing our limits as in response to that. Could you clarify that for me because we're not putting it in code. State changed their contribution limits.
169 Okay.
170 Do you want to answer.
171 No I don't okay.
172 We are contribution limits are actually largely already aligned with the state contribution limits, which is really exciting for us. There are minor areas that there have been some changes which we also go over during our training. And that's where we are talking about seed money adjustments. Right. And I can go into more detail with that. But what I would encourage is for everybody to stop by our training, where we really do go in-depth on what the seed money changes are. That would be in better alignment with what you are working on.
173 I did go through the training. I just thought you might want to put it on the record. What the changes are.
174 I'm happy to submit them formally if you'd like to take a look at it.
175 That'd be great. Thank you, vice chair.
176 Ryan chair. My question has to do with I don't think I heard this in the report that you just gave, but the other besides the folks doing the quid pro quo thing, which I think when you give us the data on why there's been more concerns about the last election, that probably is primary. But there was another one that I don't think you mentioned that a lot of people were complaining about. And that's when a political lobby organization was going door to door, and they were basically doing commission work, commission based sales. And so when they would get a contribution, they would pocket some of the money as an individual for their good work of getting, say, $5 to the said candidate that they were asking for. And it was in a lobby, a group of candidates that was widely, widely reported. Is this in the report? And I just haven't seen it. Did you mention it? I didn't hear it.
177 It's not in the in the report that we just gave, but it is in the official 2024 report where we discuss that.
178 Can you tell me more about what you discovered with that, since it was, I think, the other concern that should be highlighted in this meeting today.
179 Well, one of the things that I will say that really came to light is that folks felt like the services that were being provided were also being provided for different amounts per candidate. So what they were paying for that service, and that was a concern. One of the things that we are working on doing within our candidate training and making sure that it's in the candidate guide as well, is a general costing for services so that folks have an idea of what that would cost if they decided to go that route and make sure that it's a more transparent process in that space. I will say that from user feedback, it came up a few times, but not as much as you'd think. But we did include a couple of quotes that are inside of the report as well, where folks are asking about process and how that happened.
180 I.
181 I think that it's because it's a little bit wonkier and tough to understand than the quid pro quo, but I do believe when anyone actually takes time to understand what took place, the concerns were were there. So I look forward to reading the details on what you have discovered with that and what course correction. I didn't hear much of a course correction.
182 Well, there's I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind with what we can and can't do is that things that are happening outside of the program, but are still legal, we can't stop like the practice itself is, I think, described as icky, fairly regularly. It was it felt icky. But we can't we can't infer the law that says you can or cannot do that within the confines of a program. What we can do is discourage folks from it. We can have open conversations about, again, that the way that it feels and what folks may or may not get out of that practice, but we can't necessarily stop it. So I think that's a bigger conversation.
183 Yeah. And I would add that mostly what we covered today were the places where there there needs to be operational change with council, so changing code etc. But the report also includes many places where the change is really just our practices. So naming things like what's covered in the candidate training so that we could say, hey, this isn't about whether it's quote unquote legal or illegal, this is about your donors may not feel great if they hear that you do this. This is what we heard in 24 people felt this way or this way about some of these practices. We can't say that they can be used or not. They are legal practices. Instead, we can say that this is what the findings were when previous candidates used those methods. But we can't. It's not in our. In our space to say that they're illegal or that you can't do them.
184 Okay, that's surprising to me. I'll give it more thought. Thanks.
185 May I follow up?
186 Yes.
187 Are we preempted by state law on this?
188 That's a good question. I don't believe that we are, I believe that, no, I don't believe that we are at all.
189 So at the state level, can you pay someone to help you get more donations?
190 Yes.
191 And this is something that we could have influence over if we wanted to say, bring another code change. Sure. Right. We could. Maybe it's something we look into, discuss more.
192 I will definitely be looking into that practice.
193 But.
194 It wouldn't be within our program. Right. Because our program can only then say that that would be the rule for people in the program. And I think what I'm hearing you say is you wouldn't want it to be for anyone.
195 I think what I'm saying is a campaign for the said candidate should run their own fundraising program, not subcontract subcontracted out with another political entity that's then making bank, and the taxpayers are then giving them money for being involved in that. It that's what.
196 Totally, totally. I'm just saying the code change in our program within. Portlanders for our candidates in the program.
197 Portlanders want clean elections. So they'd like to know that the solicitations for that said candidate, not for something bigger that could confuse them. And then they don't know exactly where that's landing.
198 Sure. Yeah.
199 Can you help me understand why it couldn't be part of the small donors election program? If there are city funds that are matching? No. Didn't we say you can't get matching funds? I might not be understanding fully. Sorry.
200 I think what we're actually saying here is that it absolutely can be. We can say that as a condition of the small donor matching program, you can't participate in this, right? You can you can make that a rule. But it wouldn't stop the practice from happening if folks aren't participating in the program. We do have very high participation though. So, you know, I think that's something to explore. It just wouldn't be a blanket law. It would be the way that this program works.
201 I'm just trying to distinguish between all elections versus candidates in our program.
202 Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks for your patience. And no worries.
203 Yeah.
204 Councilor Dunphy, thanks.
205 I have a couple of questions here. I'm looking at slides three and four with regard to the size of donations and the average median contributions, how much do you all interpret the change in the dollar amount being to the success of the program versus 2024 sort of being an anomaly with so many candidates and so many open seats?
206 I think that is an excellent question. And in the report you will see that we say anomalous year a lot, right? Because it was it was a unique set of circumstances that we will likely never experience again. But with that being said, you can also see that there's a downward trend that's actually happening from the implementation 2016 on. So it's not outside of like a reasonable realm to say, hey, this is also happening. One of the things that I would also add is that none of this is happening in a vacuum. While we are obviously primarily talking about donor elections, ranked choice voting also happened, right? You have multi-member districts. There are so many things that took place in 2024 that I think it'll be interesting to see what 26 and 28 looks like, where we have some more consistency in this model.
207 Were you able to determine in this based off of both timeline of when donations came in, and also who was contributing where, whether there was an effect of us or whether there was a notable effect with fundraising with regard to not having a primary anymore, and also whether or not there was an increase in split donors or donors giving five bucks to five candidates, rather than 20 to 20 5 to 1 person.
208 I wasn't here when that was happening, but I do know that the data that we have collected, and I imagine we can get that to you.
209 Okay.
210 Was there any discussion about changing the tiers for qualification? The two 5750 1250.
211 There were conversations, but we've stuck to those numbers.
212 Largely what we found in the user research and then also reaching out because you all are also users, people that ran for election. We talked to many of you as well. And what we found is that folks didn't really have many issues with the tiers. It was just the underfunding of the program. So like by the time that you were able to get there, you got such a small amount for how hard you had to work to get to that tier. And that's where our conversation around underfunding and making sure that our tiers are caps are fully funded, that we I don't think that will be as deeply felt in the future.
213 Okay. You know.
214 I would just.
215 Go ahead.
216 Susan.
217 If I could just add that the tiers, the reason they exist is not it doesn't really benefit the campaign directly. It just so that when there has to be a reduction to the match caps due to underfunding, it enables us to spread that match cap more evenly between high fundraising candidates, medium fundraising candidates and minor fundraising candidates, and by being able to spread it over all of the candidates in that race and not just have to take it out of the top fundraising candidates, you know, we were able to lower the contribution. The match caps only down to 40% in 2024. If we only were taking that savings from the top fundraising candidates, we would have to have lowered that to maybe more like 25 or 30% of the match caps. So it exists really. They exist really for those situations where there's underfunding to reduce the fiscal exposure of the program more evenly across all candidates.
218 Well.
219 Could would that not? Also, I mean, if the initial cap, I mean 250 being the initial and then having to go all the way to 750, tripling the number of donors that you have, that was a large step for a lot of candidates, but a lot of candidates make that 250 relatively quickly. From a funding perspective, wouldn't it better, better serve the overall program if the initial tier was higher and potentially less dollars going out?
220 It sort of depends on how at at the 4,060% cut to the match caps, it felt like a huge jump. But if with a fully funded program, that's going to feel like a pretty smooth, smooth transition, and so. If, if, if it might make sense when there is a significant decrease to the match cap to adjust the tiers a little bit, but the more we smooth them out so that you so that candidates don't experience a gap in funding. There's only so much funding in the pot when we're underfunded. And so anything that kind of smooths it out for the candidates is going to it's going to be us giving money that we don't have, and then we run out of money before the election is occurs. And, you know, and that's the thing we have to avoid. So I think there's it's a little bit tricky. But I would encourage I would encourage you to maybe like write down, well okay, here's a, here's maybe a midpoint between tier one and tier two that we could add. And then what would that effect be. And if that gives the campaign more money then that's us. That's the program running out of funding before the election. And to avoid that, having to take it down to okay, now the match caps have to be 25%, not 40%, if that makes sense.
221 Sure. Absolutely.
222 One thing I would add real quick is that it's also about campaign viability. I think this is something I also heard from a lot of portlanders, specifically with 2024, because there were just so many candidates. Right. But I do know that we do have a lot of crowded ballots. And so there's a the idea is like, when does a candidate actually shine as a viable candidate? And then what's going into a campaign where a person might be doing this as a vanity project as opposed to, like, seriously running an election? I think that's one of the benefits. The tier one, tier two system as well, is that it allows viable candidates to really shine. And to susan's point, it will smooth itself out as we have more funding and fewer candidates.
223 My last question is with regard to the auditor cap auditors race cap being reduced. I think you said specifically that the cost to run an election typically is lower. Does this first has the auditor, the current auditor weighed in on this this change? And second, does this preclude the possibility of there being an expensive and competitive auditor's race in the future that we may be this change may be shortsighted in some capacity.
224 I don't think that this precludes the chance. And that's a ratio like it could possibly happen. Right. So I would never say that that's a never. But the chances are, as like history has shown us, that we likely will not end up in a space that is a competitive multi-candidate auditor race as opposed to what we might see in the mayoral race or in district races, that ultimately, because they're not incredibly competitive races, they don't cost as much. And that's just a reality of an auditor race.
225 And it's also the only race that we all just can't run for, right? You have to have certain qualifications. And so that's really limiting the scope of how many candidates there may be. We did look at the cost of campaigns when there had been more than one person in the race, and those campaigns were I think the highest one was 41,000. So we did try to be data informed in making that lower cap. And all of these recommendations have been shared with the auditor's office.
226 You know, my only my only concern is that we saw some nationally, not locally, but we saw some situations in which people were spending over $1 million on a school board race, which historically has been in the low four digits, right as far as races go. I worry about this a little bit just. But it's also always something we can come back to. But the other part was has has the auditor and a previous auditor. Candidates weighed in on this proposal in any capacity.
227 They have not.
228 Okay.
229 Thank you.
230 That's all my questions. Thank you.
231 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
232 I was going to ask about the auditor as well. If we don't lower the cap for the auditor, does the commission still have the ability to lower it disproportionately more than council and the mayor in the future if needed by rule? Or is this the only way I what I'm thinking about is where we don't think we have a competitive race. This makes a lot of sense. Should we in the future have a competitive race? We don't have the ability to change this immediately in the middle of the election cycle. Or I guess maybe we do. It's a code change. We could, but it becomes very political then, right? What discretion do you all have if we don't make this change?
233 I think the biggest influence of this right now, when there isn't a politicized race happening in this, in this space, is that this goes into our calculations. We have to, as we try and think about everything. If we know that this is at a 100,000, that the cap, we have to do math that says, okay, well, what if there's two people and hitting that cap? But if we lowered this, that's already, say, $100,000 back into the pool of how we're deciding, do we need to lower match caps or match rate. Right. So it's really, I think, helpful for us now to why we are suggesting it to be lowered now so that we have a better knowledge of the math that we're working with as we go into the next budget year. Technically, could we say that we're lowering it mid cycle differently? Yes. But again, we don't want to be in a position where we're having to do it while it's also politicized. Right.
234 And so.
235 Understood. Thank you colleagues I'm happy to support this. Today. I will reach out just to make sure that the auditor, not in her role as somebody who might run for office, but in her role as somebody who has budgeted for an auditor's campaign, has an opportunity to share with us if she has any concerns with this or not.
236 Great, great.
237 Thank you, vice chair Ryan.
238 Thank you. I'm really happy that you're here. And thank you for taking these questions. This is an issue that's really important to a lot of portlanders, and I want to make sure before I can support this, that we continue to have this dialog. I thought the question that councilor Dunphy asked was a really good one, and I, I might ask it in a different way. I think I'm complimenting what you asked about, but I didn't really hear the answer. The threshold where you start to leverage the matching gifts has been at 250, correct all three cycles. Okay, this last time it did stick out to me as like, I think I heard from you that that gap between 250 and 750 was quite wide. I kept thinking to myself, I wonder why the initial threshold wasn't higher this time, and especially when news came out about the quid pro quo and about the third parties hustling gifts for candidates. It just there were so many people that met that 250 threshold, and that was a lot of taxpayer money that was being spent on those candidates. I won't use language that you used about what was the term you used anyway? I didn't really think about that. I was just thinking about the fact that it was a lot of candidates receiving those public dollars. So what kind of data could we look at that would allow us to know if the threshold should be increased from 250 to something higher? What was your conversation about that like? I'd like to hear that, amy, on what you when you discussed that in your meetings.
239 Sure.
240 I mean, I think, you know, if we have all day, we could recap the many conversations, but I think the high level is what we were looking at is if we raise this, are there people who maybe did not win and maybe are not regular participants in electoral races, but really were earnestly trying to run for office that would have been stopped, right? That it wasn't just frivolous or vanity or whatever. Right? They really, legitimately were running for office. They just maybe didn't get very far. And so what we're looking at that data to, to say, okay, let's look at how many can contributors all of these different folks had. If we moved that, would anyone have been dropped out? Right. And really trying to understand it from the goal of regular people having access to participate in this type of democracy. And that's why in looking through the data and having conversations from that perspective, we actually came back to reaffirm to stay at the 250.
241 Well.
242 I have to believe that everyone running is doing it in an earnest manner. And so I don't I'm not going to put labels on them like vanity or something like that. Right? I'm trying to get at this. You went to great lengths to do some data analysis of the average gifts, and you made it clear that even though someone had a high average gift, it didn't mean that they won. That was helpful just to look at that data. Where's that comparable scrutiny with the data on the number of gifts you received and how that impacted one? Becoming elected? Is it in this report as well? Because that's what we're talking about here, is the quantity of gifts that that that gets to the thresholds.
243 Yes.
244 Elections commission did look at that. And it's specifically in the context of the 250 threshold. They also looked at. What how many votes did the different candidates get who either just, you know, failed to get to the 250 threshold, barely got to the 250 threshold or exceeded the 250 threshold significantly. And were there candidates who clearly from their number of number one rankings, had genuine community support, who failed to get to the 250 threshold? Or were there a bunch of candidates who got the 250? And then when you look at number one rankings, really didn't have significant community support. There's never a clean line where you can just draw it and at, you know, 275 or 225 and you're going to find, you know, there's always going to be a couple of dots above and below that line that are kind of anomalies. But that was the line that the main data looked at when just looking at the 250. And is it appropriate. And so anyway I it wasn't, it wasn't that wasn't directly in the report. But that was something the Portland elections commission did look at.
245 Susan, I first of all, I appreciate you being remote today and I'm sorry what you're managing in your life. I won't say any more than that. I just really appreciate you as a public servant showing up today. And on this topic, I think what I'd like you to give me that I didn't hear yet is you were able to look at the average gift, and you really made a case to say the program's been working, because we're seeing that money in politics is less, that it doesn't influence like it used to. Based on this program providing an even playing field. But I don't see that same data on the quantity of gifts. And so where's the data that says, did you get 750 and above? And there they were more likely to be elected than those that were less than seven that hit the 750. Is that data somewhere in here. And I just can't find it.
246 Not in the report. But the commission did look at charts that showed, you know, each candidate, how many total donors they had, how many, how much they raised privately, how much they raised publicly, etc, to look at whether there was anything interesting there that they wanted to put in the report or they wanted to discuss as a commission. As it relates to should we adjust the program design to make the program more, you know, improve the program?
247 I, I hear that it's scattered the way I'm listening to it. What I'm just what I'm disappointed in not seeing then is hitting those thresholds. Two 5750 the ones from last time and how that had a parallel impact on who got elected, just like you did with the average gift. I think it's missing for this committee to not have that data.
248 Yeah. Would you like us to provide that to the committee?
249 Yes.
250 Because when we're talking about the question that councilor Dunphy brought up about is 250 still the right threshold, it's difficult for us as lawmakers to make that decision without that type of data to observe and to study.
251 Sure.
252 You got it.
253 Thanks for the record. I also want to point people towards a resource that we have and want to make sure that folks are that are listening. Also know that this resource exists. If you go to open elections Portland org, you'll be able to actually take a look at a lot of this is where we get a lot of our data and it will show various thresholds. It will let you know how many donors participated. You can look across a plethora of elections. You can see where money is actually coming in throughout the city. It's a really interactive tool, and I highly recommend folks that are interested in campaign and campaign finance work to utilize it.
254 Yeah.
255 Councilor Dunphy, thanks.
256 I have just a couple of flags that I would like for you all to just keep in the back of your brain. The first is, I think it is concerning when there are more than a handful of candidates who received more donations than votes. I think that that may imply that the donation tier is too low for viability. And if that that may have been a consequence of there being 95 candidates in this election and people just struggling to get out there later as the campaign moves on, but I do I do hope that your office will continue to watch that for the next report following the next election, the other one that I want. And I don't have a solution for this, but I just want to flag it is that districts two, three and four, the majority of the candidates raised their dollars primarily from districts two, three and four respectively. But districts one candidates, the majority of candidates had to raise their money outside of those districts. And looking at turnout numbers, the number of people who voted in district one was half the number of people who voted in district four. I worry that that will create some equity, some some harder abilities for people to enter the race in the future when I'm no longer in this seat and whoever is going to come in and try and run for that office afterwards, there may be some need for geographic equity as and some alterations as this program moves on. I don't know what those look like, but I'd just like to make sure that that is on the record and in the back of your brains.
257 I really appreciate that in the program. I'm sorry. I'm having a coughing fit in the middle of all of this too. I'm sorry, everyone. But in the program or in the program, in the report, you actually will see a geographic over time where money is coming from to fund our elections. What is exciting is that we do see some improvement from district one.
258 And further out district three.
259 So it's it is expanding, which is exciting, but there is certainly work to be done. So I really appreciate the point that you elevated.
260 Thank you. Go ahead.
261 Councilor Ryan, I know that we're going to get some official data from the folks at the small donor election program, but I just don't want to let the questions you are asking about number of donors go without some sort of information today for portlanders who are listening and might not be able to tune in to a future committee meeting or council session. So I thought I'd note that of the 12 of us who were elected, I just looked at the data and three people had less than 750 donors. All of them had more than 500. But we're below the seven 52nd tier threshold. Five people were above that second threshold, but below the top threshold, and four people who were elected received the upper threshold were above that upper level of 12 1250 donors.
262 You just did that during the meeting right now.
263 I just looked that up on open elections, the wonderful. Record that our folks told us about. But I wanted to make sure if people were listening today and not in the future, that they heard that all 12 of us did receive that first level of match, but it was split between the three levels three people, five people, four people. So relatively evenly between the three levels of match, those who were elected first.
264 Thank you for doing that. Council president two I think that is important. I'd like to dig into that further. I'm going to ask I'm going to ask a protocol here. I think that the combination of having more time to understand the threshold question that councilor Dunphy first posed and getting more data about that. So we have the same playing field as we did with the average gift, coupled with, I think, more. I want to have more dialog about the third party involvement in these in the last elections. I think for me, I need this to be tabled until a further date, because I don't think there's an urgency at this moment. I know there will be an urgency coming up in the months ahead, but I'd like to make sure that we take more time on this and get it right. The public is really wants to make sure that after the last election, just like you, that we take some time to make sure that that we really listen to this and looked at all angles and don't rush this through too fast. Is that fair? I would just put that on the table.
265 I'd be comfortable.
266 With that. I'd love to hear from our staff. If it feels like this is time sensitive, if it could wait a little while, if we were to get some more information, I can say that it's something we would prioritize to discuss again right away.
267 I might offer if it's okay. Two pronged solution so that the changes that we're proposing today, which don't have to do with the tiers or the those components, but do immediately help with clarity, help with, you know, changing the dates that are associated with the program. Any current campaign trainings that are happening can be updated, right? So if there's a way to move some of these forward while also saying, let's come back on these three topics that you just outlined with more data.
268 On the surface, that sounds great. Is there anything that we want? The items that I was interested in, would it impact what we're voting on today when we when we look at those?
269 I don't believe so. And moving them forward, you know, they won't be immediately.
270 The threshold.
271 The threshold number.
272 No that's not on any of those changes.
273 Yeah I could live with that, I really could. I just wanted to make sure that we didn't, that we do spend more time on. Totally doing our jobs on the other two.
274 Yeah. And I'd like to be able to bring maybe some dedicated slides and charts on those topics and then move these into 30 days of public comment. People can see them, you know, keep that process moving for some of these, fixing the errors, making things more clear.
275 Right?
276 Okay. No, amy, you offered an adaptive solution with the two prong approach. So thank you. And so I guess we're half tabling this. Yeah.
277 Great. And I will.
278 I would suggest that before if this does pass out of this committee before it gets to full council, that we have time to look at the data that you just mentioned. Oh I would entertain a motion.
279 Okay. So I'll go ahead and move. Council chair I move ordinance document number 2020 5-3 ten be sent to the full council for a due pass recommendation.
280 Second.
281 All right.
282 I will add this. This is not on the script that we make it really clear that it's a two prong. And this is phase one.
283 We're coming.
284 Back with more time.
285 Yes.
286 We'll come back for the second leg of the relay.
287 Sounds good. Yeah. Thank you.
288 The motion has been moved by councilor Ryan and seconded by councilor Pirtle-guiney. Is that right? Is there any discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll.
289 Clerk?
290 I.
291 Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane.
292 I the motion carries and the ordinance to amend small donors election code to adopt the recommendations of the Portland elections commission will move to full council with a due pass recommendation.
293 Thank you all for your time.
294 Thank you so much. All right. At this point, our next governance committee is scheduled for Monday, September 8th. And for those who have been closely following our governance committees and our work sessions, know that there have been a lot of conversations about the cadence of our meetings and committee structure. So we will plan on Monday, September 8th. Any changes decided on will be communicated to the public, and with that, I will adjourn the meeting of the governance committee. Thank you.
295 All right.
296 Thank you.