The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-03-12
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On March 12, the Portland City Council held a work session focused on an overview of the City Auditor's Office. Presenters described the office's seven divisions, including Archives and Records Management, the Ombudsman's Office, Audit Services, the Council Clerk, Elections, the Hearings Office, and Operations Management, outlining their histories, staffing levels, and functions under the city's charter and new government structure. Topics included the office's independence from council and the mayor, performance and financial auditing practices, the fraud hotline, ombudsman complaint handling, council clerk support for the expanded committee system, election administration and voter education efforts tied to ranked-choice voting, and the hearings office's quasi-judicial process for code and land-use appeals. Councilors asked questions about historical background, audit recommendation implementation rates, staffing capacity, budget development processes, communication practices, and the distinction between the ombudsman and hearings office functions. Some figures, such as audit recommendation implementation rates, were stated inconsistently across speakers. A specific hearings officer decision and its public communication were discussed, with clarification offered about internal notification practices. No formal votes were described as occurring during this session.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Yeah.
1 Cobid certified. Just.
2 Like you've thought about this so much.
3 Good morning everybody. I am opening the council work session on March 12th at 932. I know we have a few folks still finishing up getting logged in, but while they do that, I would like to get us started. We have a work session this morning with the auditor's office talking about the work that they do. Rebecca, would you. We don't need to read it. Okay, perfect. Then let's get our team up here. Auditor rede. Thank you for being with us this morning. We appreciate having your team here and getting this. What I think is our last overview of the work that the city does. So appreciate your patience. I know we had to reschedule once, and your team's flexibility has been really helpful. If you'd like to go ahead and introduce your team and get us started, that'd be great.
4 Sure. Thank you for having me. Good morning, council president pirtle-guiney and council vice president, Koyama Lane and councilors. My name is simone ready. And I'm the elected city auditor of Portland. I'm here to introduce you to you and members of the public, to the auditor's office in portland's new form of government. You can go to the next slide, please. This presentation is the first of many that is meant to inform you of the diverse functions in my office, and allow you and the and the public an opportunity to engage with our work. I reinstituted the practice of presenting our results to council during my first term as city auditor, which began in January 2023, and I'm eager to continue it in the new city. Organization structure. During this session, you'll have a chance to hear about each division of the auditor's office and their planned opportunities for you to ask questions at the midpoint and end point of this presentation. So we ask that you please hold on to your questions until those opportunities arise. That will give us an opportunity to cover what we've prepared to share with you. And I'm confident that we'll have enough time for everyone to engage with us. Next slide please. First, I want to go over a bit of history with you. The city of Portland has had an auditor since 1868, and it has been an elected position since 1891, being directly elected by Portland voters is an important distinction. It gives our office the highest level of independence by government auditing standards, and it means that our work is free from influence from city leadership, including city council, the mayor and city administrator. This allows us to approach our work objectively. It also makes us accountable to voters. This provides a critical feedback loop to portlanders about how their government is working. In 2017, Portland voters approved a charter amendment to increase the auditor's independence from city agencies that gave us the ability to seek advice from independent legal counsel, more autonomy over staffing, as well as budget decisions and contracting authority. At the end of the presentation, you'll be hearing how that independence is operationalized in our executive office, also known as the operations management division. The 2017 ballot measure also established the ombudsman function in charter. Unfortunately, city ombudsman jennifer croft couldn't be with us today, but I'll be delivering her remarks in her absence. Her staff is also here to help. Help me answer questions that you might have about the ombudsman's office. Since voters approved changes to the city's election system and form of government in November 2022. The auditor's responsibilities have grown, namely in our elections duties and as clerk of the council. You're well aware that the expansion of council from 5 to 12 members and the addition of council committee meetings has increased demand on support from our council clerk team in order to facilitate the legislative process. Charter changes also required the elections team to certify a record number of candidates to the ballot, oversee campaign finance regulations of those candidates, and prepare portlanders to elect city officials using ranked choice voting for the first time in November 2024. Next slide. So in charter, the office of the auditor is under the supervision and control of the auditor of the city of Portland. It consists of seven divisions. I oversee our offices general counsel and chief deputy, as well as the managers of three divisions archives and records management, the ombudsman and audit services. And I share the title of chief audit executive with the audit services director, which is why the public will receive results of audits and fraud fraud hotline investigations from me. Chief deputy city auditor reed broderson is also here, and he will introduce you to the divisions of our office that he oversees. Throughout the presentation, you'll be hearing about the work of each division and how you can expect to interact with them in your elected capacity. And now I'd like to invite city archivist madeline moya to tell you about the archives and records management division.
5 Hello.
6 I'm madeline moya. I use she her pronouns and I'm the city archivist for the city of Portland. I manage the archives and records division of the city auditor's office. As simone mentioned, we are the official home of the city's historic records. Our division operates the Portland archives and records center park, where we make city administrative and historical records accessible to the public and city employees for research and inspection in accordance with oregon's public record law. The city records program began in 1976 with the city's first records manager, who worked with the national archives and records administration to create an archives and records program and establish the first set of city retention schedules. The first record center at chimney park opened in 1981, and we moved to the Portland archives and records center that we operate today in 2010, expanding access and services to the city and the public. Within the first year of the move, the number of records pulled for city and public use went up by 249% due to park central location and public research space. Our division has two main functions the city archives and the records program. We have eight full time employees and four part time positions that support operations at park. Most of you have interacted with our records team by now who sets retention schedules, provides guidance and training on record keeping responsibilities, operates the records center to provide secure storage and circulation for the city's business records. Administers content manager, the city's electronic records repository, and ensures public records are compliantly maintained according to legal requirements. The city archives is responsible for the city's historical materials dating back to 1851. Archivists arrange, describe and preserve historical materials following archival best practices, and provide broad access to materials for city staff and the public. They also run our exhibits and oral history programs that work to create a more complete historical record of the city of Portland, and they provide outreach services to community groups to provide archival education and promote use of the resources available at the city archives. The two teams work together to ensure that records created by city staff today are preserved to establish a complete and accurate historical record of the city. Next slide please. Our division interacts with council in several ways. We provide training and guidance on record keeping responsibilities and compliance with Oregon public records law. Many of you have already received training from our division on records management concepts like how to identify records that must be retained, how to use our systems of record, and the tools and resources available to you that will help you manage your records and meet public record keeping obligations. In addition to these initial trainings, we will offer work sessions to your offices and we are always available for continued training and support. In addition to creating the city retention schedule, our division is also available to help interpret retention schedules. We can help you and your staff examine records to answer nuanced questions about record types and formats, and how they fit within the retention schedule. Our staff sets up and provides you with technical support for content manager and electronic records filing processes. Most of the records you produce now are digital things like word documents, pdfs, and spreadsheets, and keeping them on office 365 or the city website does not meet retention requirements. The record copies need to be put into content manager. So we have created licenses and classification structures in content manager for each of your offices, which we have gone over in training, and we will continue to provide support to ensure that filing those electronic records is straightforward and achievable. We work with you and your staff to coordinate routine transfers of physical records, to park as you produce paper records or receive paper materials from the public. Things like constituent mail or meeting notes. You will engage with our records team to send those physical record formats to park, following our procedures. At intervals, you determine we facilitate the transfer of materials to the city archives at the end of your term. So as you come to the end of your tenure with the city, you will need to be sure any physical records that you haven't transferred to park are boxed up in electronic documents that need to be filed. Make it into content manager. As most of your records are considered historical archive staff helps facilitate that process. And finally, our archives team may provide you with reference services for historical research. You may need to do research on previous council actions or city policy in order to inform your work. Or perhaps you want historic neighborhood photos for a report. You can access many records through our online portal, portal e files, or work with our reference archivist to locate the historical materials that support those needs, either over email or in our research room. I'm going to pass it back now to auditor rede to talk about the office of the ombudsman.
7 Thank you. Archivist moya. As I mentioned, I'll be speaking with you today about our ombudsman function. You've all had a chance to meet with city ombudsman jennifer croft, and you can reach out to her after today's presentation. If there are questions that I or her staff cannot readily answer. The ombudsman is an advocate for fairness and justice in city government. The word ombudsman is a gender neutral term from swedish. That means an official who performs investigations into complaints about government. The ombudsman has been part of the city auditor's office since 2001, and as I mentioned, portlanders voted to enshrine the office in city charter in 2017. The office consists of three full time staff. That's the city ombudsman and two deputy ombudsman, and they address complaints or concerns from people who feel that they've been treated unfairly or harmed by the city. Last year, that team handled almost 500 complaints about the city, and they seek to identify when a single complaint or pattern of complaints may affect or reflect systemic issues that are affecting a larger number of portlanders, and where a process or policy change might be needed to ensure fairness and equity. The lens that they use in investigation is fairness. They're looking at whether the city has followed its own rules or made a mistake, but also whether the impact of the city's action might be unfair or inequitable. Even when the rules were followed, and when a broader systemic investigation results in findings and recommendations. The ombudsman generally issues a public report, and that also gives the bureau or the bureau that has been investigated an opportunity to reply to those findings. Next slide please. So there are various ways that the ombudsman's office might interact with council. Community members may raise their concerns with councilors and the ombudsman at the same time. And when that happens, the ombudsman office might reach out to you to coordinate and avoid duplication of effort. We encourage you to share information about the ombudsman services with your constituents and to consider the ombudsman a referral resource. When a constituent situation is complex or might require further investigation. Further investigation if the city is being unfair for some types of complaints, the ombudsman may. Ombudsman may suggest that the community member bring their concerns to council by testifying at a council meeting, and this might happen when a resolution the complainant is seeking can only be achieved with a broader policy change. The ombudsman's ombudsman may bring issues to your attention that aren't resolved with city administration. For example, an urgent or egregious case involving a constituent in a particular district and the ombudsman may also engage with council committees by presenting reports on relevant topics, including highlighting areas where recommendations are focused on policy or legislative changes, and they'll also share information about their office's work in quarterly presentations to council. Now, I'd like to invite casey jones, our audit service director, to tell you about the audit services division and the ways that you can expect to interact with them.
8 Great next slide. Hi, my name is casey jones. I use he him pronouns. And I've been the director of the audit services division for the past three and a half years. In audit services. We work to promote effective, efficient and fully accountable city government. Though the auditor's office dates back to the 1860s, our division was created in 1974. The type of auditing that we do now, performance auditing, was introduced by city auditor jewel lansing in 1983 and codified in charter in 1986. Our division consists of eight performance auditors and two managers. Our primary duty is to conduct performance audits. These are independent assessor assessments of city programs and services that make recommendations for improvement. Performance audits help ensure accountability by evaluating whether public resources are used efficiently, effectively and equitably. We seek to evaluate how well the city serves portlanders through its programs and services. We assess evidence against objective criteria like benchmarks or laws to develop conclusions and recommendations. These projects typically take about a year and start with a planning phase, where we learn about the program or service and seek to identify an objective and scope for our audit. The next phase field work seeks to answer that objective through additional interviews, focused document review, data analysis, and comparison to available criteria. In the final reporting phase, we explain our findings, develop recommendations for improvement, and cite statements in our report back to the evidence that we gathered at the end. We share our audit results in public reports and presentations. Our performance audits are conducted using nationally recognized standards set by the government accountability office or gao. Our audits are intended to help the public and city leaders understand how programs operate and help leaders manage the city better in accordance with financial or sorry with city charter. We also manage the contract with an outside accounting firm for the city's financial audit. The financial audit is meant to determine if the financial information reported by the city is fair and accurate. The city's financial statements and audit of those financial statements are an important resource for decision makers, community members, taxpayers and investors who buy the city's debt. As part of this work, the outside auditors also complete an audit for the city's spending of federal grant money, called the single audit. We administer the city's fraud hotline, which takes anonymous tips from employees and community members about potential fraud, waste and abuse in city government. And then we also follow up and report on the status of our past audit recommendations in our annual audit impact report, and I'll have more on that in the next slide. So the ways that we engage with city council will take many different forms. The city auditor releases the annual audit schedule in June of each year. This contains the topics that we've selected for performance audits in the next fiscal year. In spring, we'll engage with you all to see if there are programs or services you think may benefit from a performance audit. You'll receive the schedule when it's released, and will notify you when new projects from the schedule are started. At the end of a performance audit, we will share our results with the relevant committee and then periodically present on our work to the whole council. We also facilitate the presentation of the financial audit results to council. That presentation typically happens near the end of the calendar year and then in accordance with state law. We also report to you on any sustained findings that result from a fraud hotline tip. Finally, we've shared with all of you our audit impact report from last year, released in December. This report presents the implementation status of audit recommendations from audits conducted in the last five years. Monitoring the status of recommendations not only helps us meet auditing standards, but it also provides us with insights into how the city is performing after our work is done. Work has already begun on this year's report, where we'll be able to give you an update of the progress made in any of those areas. I think we're ready for the next slide and I'll hand it back to auditor rede.
9 Thank you, director jones. At this time, we've got 20 minutes planned for your questions, so we're happy to take those. Now. We also have more time held at the end of the next group of speakers, so feel free to hold them till then.
10 Thank you. Councilors, if there are questions about these three divisions, why don't we try to get those out now? Councilor Novick would you like to start?
11 Yes, I have one question for auditor rede and one question for maura auditor rede. I was curious about the fact that the auditor's office was established in 1868, but didn't become elected until 1891. I'd like to think that that means that in the late 80s, the auditor was exposed as having been co-opted by a corrupt mayor and council and assorted gilded age robber barons, and the public revolted and insisted on an elected auditor. But I'm curious what the real story is.
12 Well, I appreciate your question, councilor Novick. I'm curious, too, about what happened during that history, that time in history, and I wonder if that might be an answer for or a question for our archivist.
13 Yeah, that's not something I know offhand, but we could definitely check the archives for records that would answer your question.
14 Okay. Thank you. And my question for the archivist is, it seems to me that the penny that pettygrove and lovejoy flipped to decide the name of this city properly belongs in the archives. Instead, it's housed within the Oregon historical society, headed by kerry tymchuk, who takes great delight in carrying it with him everywhere and showing it to people, creating, in my view, an unacceptable risk that it might be lost. Would you agree that we should make an effort to recover the penny from mr. Tymchuk by force, if necessary?
15 Certainly, no. You know, we could go back and look at accession paperwork to see how that came to be. I think I would like to see the penny. I have not yet.
16 Thank you.
17 Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor. Ryan.
18 Yeah. Thank you, madam chair. Madam president, thanks for the report. And I realize this is a break, but we have more time for questions. So actually, I have a process question. If we have suggestions for audits, would that be now or later? I know that you're up here. That's why I thought maybe it's now.
19 Well, I would say I'm always listening for audit ideas. Thank you for the question, councilor Ryan. We do have more of a dedicated opportunity for councilors and other city leaders to give us their audit topic ideas. That is about to initiate this spring, where we'll have possibly meetings by district to gather your input. The public, if they're interested also in suggesting audit topics to us, they can fill out a form on our website. And if you have anything else to add, director jones, please do.
20 Always, always listening. So if it's on your mind now.
21 I think that makes sense. It's we're in the public and I think the auditor's office would always want transparency. So some questions that I've been thinking about as we went through, we are going through a pretty challenging because of course it's challenging transition. And a lot took place last year. Is it in your plans to do auditing about the city's transition?
22 Yeah. So there are a number of topics that we flagged as we discussed last year that, you know, wouldn't wouldn't have been established or were not kind of settled where they would land in the city structure that were tied to transition. So I know we've had a number of things that we have tagged as we need to wait to see how this this shakes out sort of thing. And then we can do an early look at something. Recently we did that with the clean energy fund after it started to see which maybe next steps or missing pieces were were not put into place. There are some elements of transition that our office has participated in. So we would have to discuss if we have independence concerns there, specifically around things like election education and that sort of stuff.
23 Sounds like a longer conversation.
24 Yeah.
25 Okay. And then when it comes to funding allocations, I know that you've started on this, but we have to look at the performances of those. Yeah. And that would be something that I hope you can consider continuing a through line on.
26 Yeah. Our initial PCEF work was kind of intended to look at the setup. So now that it is set up and honestly significantly changed since we first looked at it, that.
27 It needs an update.
28 Yeah. On our radar as a next thing.
29 Thank you. And then the third because it's a big deal and it's been quite a big lift. And that's the police accountability board. I assume that you'll have that on your schedule as well.
30 Yeah. That also may be an independence thing that we need to talk about since ipr, the kind of previous version, was in the city auditor's office, it would again be maybe a bigger discussion. But yes, it's something we've been been tracking.
31 So yeah, probably a bigger discussion. But you are the independent auditor's office. Yeah. Thanks.
32 Councilor Green.
33 Thank you, madam president. And I cannot resist the urge to riff on councilor Novick question. So I can imagine a world where if that conversation with the Oregon historical society were to happen, the response would be. Auditor rede has made her decision. Now let her enforce it. Sorry, but I do have a real question, which is that I appreciate the auditors that you're in, the audits that your independent office recommends. It's really valuable service to our to our city, in your view. What is the track record for the city actually taking action in response to those audits?
34 Yeah, it it varies over time. I think our, our data from, from last year's audit impact report shows us a little over 50%, which is below the benchmark that we use in comparing ourselves to other cities through the association of local government auditors. And they just released their their new benchmarking survey. So we're we're digging through that. We you know, honestly, I think a lot of the restructuring through transition and you know that the dedicated layer of city administrator, I think will help with some of the kind of bureau siloing or, hey, we have other priorities now. We have we have you all and a city administrator level of folks interested in getting things moving and don't just have to, you know, make it between us and the bureaus.
35 Thank you for that. And I look forward to getting that percentage up. So a follow up question would be do you think it's appropriate as part of that engagement to invite the auditor's office in to speak at a committee, a policy committee area where we think that the subject matter is relevant, or do you feel like that's a kind of that gets into some weird independence boundary stuff?
36 I think if it's limited to kind of reeducation on the audit, I think we recognize a lot of people have changed. I know every year when we do follow up through the police bureau, folks have moved around a lot. So we do kind of kind of happily meet with folks to kind of discuss the intent behind recommendations, maybe point you back to the part of the report where we would have zeroed in on it a little more. I think by the by the time you're 2 or 3 years out from an audit getting released, people just really focus in on those recommendations and we're happy to kind of unearth that context. But we do need to kind of stay away from policy making so that we can look at it again.
37 Thank you for that.
38 I'd like to add to thank you for that comment and question, councilor Greene, that our office, especially the audit services division, has taken steps to make our work more aligned with the new city structure. So you'll see in our audit impact report that we've organized recommendations, not just the citywide rate of implementation, but by service area. And I think we're continuing to monitor new structures like your committees, where we might have relevant results to deliver in a more focused way. So thank you for the question.
39 Thank you.
40 Councilor Kanal.
41 Thank you, madam president. Thank you, auditor rede and team for being here. I have two questions and a comment. Can you just to follow up on councilor Green's question, speak to what the benchmark actually is it 52% we're at 50 or is it closer, you know, how far off are we?
42 I don't remember exactly. I can follow up with you. It's the benchmark I think is either high 50s or 60s. So not you know, it's not, you know, 80%. And we're we're way behind. But it is something where we are trying to make sure, you know, our recommendations are focused, clear, and, you know, actually doable things, you know, for like for recommendations that are something was bad fix it. That's, you know, maybe something not achievable so that maybe that implement, you know, not implementation is on us.
43 So I have some figures here if I can add to it. So what the key performance metric I think that you're interested in is that it was 40%, 46%. So about half of recommendations, as director jones said, have been implemented citywide. And then the benchmark, at least for 2022 with available data is other cities were at 58% and Portland was at 51. So I just gave you two figures. The 46 was for 2023 and 51% for 2022.
44 And that can change as implemented. Recommendations drop off. So you know, things that are five years old and implemented kind of drop out of the sample. So the number changes.
45 Thanks. And I'd encourage that. I think it's great to have it broken down by service area, but I would encourage by bureau in the future. It would be very helpful, I think, for the committees, my comment was to councilor Ryan's question, the response I would encourage you. Ipr was part of the auditor's office. The new system will be very different for that. There's enough of a change that I would encourage you to consider it not a violation of sort of independence to audit the new police oversight system, because it there's nothing to audit yet. It doesn't exist. But it's a, you know, about to but I would say from the vantage point of having worked on it that it is distinct enough. Yeah.
46 I think I was mostly speaking to my own independence as somebody who worked there. So, yeah, we would have to talk internally more about how that would work.
47 And I would add to councilor Kanal that it really comes down to the scope of the audit and the specific time frame that we're looking at. If we're looking back at how how that transition worked or how those systems were set up, that might create some independence concerns. But if we're forward looking at, you know, what does this need to be successful? It's possible that that line of questioning might pose fewer threats to our independence.
48 Copy that. Thank you. And then my last question, so this relates to the ombudsman function in the early reports of the and it's a similar topic in the early reports, annual reports of the ombudsman. There were specific references to the police bureau being outside of the jurisdiction because of the existence of ipr, and that went away after a few years, and there just wasn't a reference either way to it. The first time I can see any reference to the ombudsman getting involved in a police bureau related complaint was 2015, even though the charts show that it was always about third, fourth, fifth most, it requests for information to that office or about police. Can you speak to is it currently within the scope of the ombudsman's function? And did that change when ipr moved outside of the auditor's office at all?
49 Thanks for that question. So yes, I think you've highlighted a practice we have, which is to refer questions about police to the what was the independent police review? It's possible director jones has more history to share on that.
50 I know we've preserved it for fraud hotline, mostly because we get more specific tips related to police misconduct and ipr being the structure to accept and take those. I'm not sure how the ombudsman. Deals with those. Those tips usually I think there there are other structures to deal with the police tips, but I do think if it relates to fairness, that's still something that the ombudsman can take a look at.
51 My understanding is that most of the things that were coming up were around records, requests that were not being responded. It wasn't about police, actual police officers conduct, but about the bureau and records delays usually. So that kind of is outside the scope of ipr. So I was curious if that.
52 Yeah, I could ask also our deputy ombudsman, tony Green, if he's here to help answer your question.
53 Sorry, tony put you on the spot.
54 Hi, I'm tony Green, I'm one of the deputy ombudsman. Generally speaking, in my almost ten years here, we would defer cases that could result in discipline to ipr. Disciplinary issues generally are not something we look into. And also ipr was set up for that. So the type of thing you're talking about, if there were complaints about how quickly records were being produced, at one point there was an issue about crime victims being charged for their records. Those are the type of things that our office would get involved in. We've issued two reports relatively recently about the police bureau involving u visas and board up. So we take on fairness issues with the police bureau and have as long as I've been here.
55 Thank you. That's very helpful. And that's my last question.
56 I've got 1 or 2 questions. I think one of them you may have answered, but I just want to make sure there's not more to it. My colleague asked about on the audit side how long those were open. It sounds like you close after five years. Are there times where the monitoring isn't really done? And do you ever monitor for longer? If there are still pieces of the audit that a bureau hasn't completed, or if, do you reach a point where you say, we're no longer monitoring this, and the bureau has failed to address some of the pieces of the audit?
57 Yeah. So I think we would approach that on a case by case basis. It would be it's great that we have structures now that we can kind of formally communicate that to, to hey, we're we're very disappointed that this didn't didn't move along. We also save space in our audit schedule discussion for those topics that are sunsetting off of there. And if you know, there is either another kind of next aspect of it, like clean energy fund, like councilor Ryan was speaking to or something, where the risk is so high because they haven't, you know, done what we asked and maybe things have gotten worse. That would be something where we would actually go back in and say, what's what's getting in the way here?
58 Got it. Thank you. And then a question on the complaints filed with the ombudsman. It sounds like there are times where you direct individuals to counsel to tell us what their concerns are. Do you bring to us a comprehensive list annually or on any other cadence of where complaints have been filed? This bureau has had many complaints filed. This bureau has had many filed. So that we have a sense of where portlanders are raising concerns. And I understand, you know, the asterisk on this is some of those complaints may be unfounded, and I don't want us to assume what the outcome of all of those are. But I'm wondering if we ever get a big picture. Look.
59 Yeah, thank you for that question. Council president pirtle-guiney. The ombudsman issues an annual report. Currently the one on available online is for the year 2023. And those do that report does break down the number of complaints by bureau. Typically bureaus that enforce city regulations are the ones that generate the most complaints. So transportation, permitting and development some programs under office of management and finance, or formerly the office of management and finance and police and the water bureau have also been the source of top complaints. And we're also working on a dashboard that will give a longer term view. So more trend data available and the full breakdown of where all those complaints are.
60 Thank you. Counselor Ryan, did you have an additional question?
61 Yeah.
62 So the conversation we were having about follow up basically. So you do the and it was 5,152%.
63 51% at the city and in 2022. And then it dipped to 46% last year.
64 That they respond. They do something. There's implementation of some sort there. How do you define that they're being responsible or responsive.
65 Oh that that the data that I just mentioned is the implementation rate. We also are tracking the response rate to that annual ask of what's the status of the recommendations that are outstanding. So we were at 77% response rate last year.
66 I think we're on to something with this, because my experience has been over the last four and a half years, is that there's a lot at the front end. The media covers the fact that you're doing an audit and this is what it said. And then when you actually do something, it's crickets. For the most part, that's my experience. And I think we should probably work on better communication to build a culture that is responsive and accountable. So I think I think we have to look at the follow up, in my opinion, more than we do both those that are. And it's something that's really complicated. It's a complex problem. It takes a complex solution. It doesn't get fixed overnight. You know, I think I just think that we're missing that fluid dialog after we do the audit. That's been my experience. And that's what somebody that received an audit within three months of being here about the failed permitting system, which was decades old. And then for the first time, we actually looked at it beyond just bts, which you all just had it more bts, but you gave just a little bit of information that it's more than bts. So we went for solution that went beyond bds. And, and I think that was an example where it would have been good for the morale, for the people working really hard to do the changes, to just get some updates, like keep it up and then those that seem to be not doing anything. There's a different style of communication, so I just don't know if we're getting anything out of it from a continuous improvement lens, which I think audits can really lend themselves to. And I'm hoping that with mike jordan and the mayor overseeing the executive branch and the organization, we can start to be more fluid. And in these dialogs.
67 Yeah. Thank you for that. I agree, our office is always looking for ways to keep attention on our recommendations because we don't have the ability to enforce them. So we really do rely on dialog with you, the public and media to keep that pressure on. And we'll be looking for ways to bring things to you on an annual basis and quarterly basis as well.
68 Councilor Kanal I feel like we're I'm getting an idea from every question councilor Ryan asks the I have a quote. I have a question that I'm not sure if it's within your scope, but, you know, we framed a lot of the conversation around around fraud or around improper use of money, I guess. And I wanted to ask about something where it's not necessarily improper, but it's inefficient. And I've seen in other functions, other offices that are similar to yours in other jurisdictions, the idea of a way for employees to say it's not incorrect the way we're doing it, but it's just there's we could do the same service with the same quality for cheaper. In fact, in the state of Washington, there's an award for the most money saved by an idea by an employee. And I've been wanting to pursue that here and ask if that is a function that the auditor's office that is appropriate for you, and if it's a part of what you do in any way already. And I have a follow up to that too.
69 Oh, thank you, councilor Kanal. I appreciate the comment. And I agree that Washington state has a great ecosystem of accountability and performance management. That is really a model, I think, for the region and for the nation. As far as awarding, I guess it I don't know that that would be necessarily something that the auditor's office could provide, but certainly it's a shared value and really is the focus of the work that we do through the fraud hotline.
70 Yeah. Efficiency is a key component of what we're looking at on every performance audit. I would say that on on the fraud hotline, it is a type of case we can look at. Typically the things start more as I don't know what's going on here, I'm worried that something is going wrong or I'm worried that this is very wasteful. And as we dig into it, that's where we bump into the inefficiency. So we do sustain allegations of inefficiency through the fraud hotline, mostly because folks don't know, like they see something wasteful and they're not sure about intent. And our investigation kind of digs into that. So we have we have had fraud hotline reports that have come out with findings of inefficiency about specific issues. Usually those are things where it's coming from a city employee.
71 I guess the follow up to that is I'm curious if there's a gap between the performance audit function, which is not for everything every year, but for a narrow subset of parts of the city. And the fraud hotline, which by its very name might not be communicating to employees its potential breadth of intake. And so I'm trying to understand, having been a city employee who thought there was a more efficient way to do a thing. Yeah, that's not something that I never that I ever knew was a function. And I guess maybe it's not about what you can or can't do it, and maybe it's more about how it's being conveyed, sure. Or communicated.
72 And I think there are still probably some cases where the right place for that might be in, in the existing policy making structure. I think depending on how far along something is. So, you know, our, our ability to point out that something is, is inefficient, may, may go that that far. So it may not solve the problem if you if that person already has a solution to the problem, the best place to do it might be, you know, through the program.
73 Okay. And that that leads me to my, my other idea, which is the state department, the federal one has for now and will probably go away very soon. A dissent channel where employees are able to bring up policy differences they have with leadership. And this is a function that I've been curious about bringing to the city in some way to ensure good governance by at least daylighting it. If there's a way for an employee to ideally anonymously raise a concern and signal that, and I've always thought the auditor's office makes sense for that too. My question is the same as the last idea, which is, is this something that already exists but maybe isn't part of the naming convention, or the way in which we advertise to our employees? The auditor's office functions? Is there a place where that exists within your current seven divisions?
74 Well, I would say that the it may be kind of an issue of naming convention. We use fraud hotlines. It's a very efficient way to convey what that is. Other jurisdictions might call it the, you know, the ethics line to convey that it's more, more broad, but we operate under the same authority from the state, which is the authority to administer hotlines for waste and abuse.
75 Yeah, nothing as explicitly branded as like if you disagree with your the policy decisions. Here's the place for that.
76 And I think as director jones said, we as an office, particularly if we're in a position to be auditing a program, we wouldn't want to be involved in, in setting policy for it, that's that's a line we wouldn't cross. So it's possible that another area of the new form of government would be more appropriate for that kind of dialog.
77 Thanks.
78 Looking forward to following up on that.
79 Thank you. Thank you.
80 Counselors, any additional questions on these three divisions of the auditor's office? Okay. Thank you very much.
81 Thank you. I'll step back and hand it over to chief deputy auditor brodersen to go over the next set of divisions.
82 Thank you. Okay.
83 Director brodersen, if you want to kick us off and introduce the members of the team who are up here with you, that would be great.
84 Thank you. Council president, vice president, members of council. My name is reid brodersen. I use he him pronouns and I'm the chief deputy city auditor. I started my role back in January of 23, when auditor rede took her first term, and my role can really be considered in two parts. First, I act as the chief of staff to the elected auditor, supporting her work with council, the mayor's office and second as a deputy director of the office, overseeing a diverse set of functions including council clerk elections, our hearings office and operations management and the placement of these functions is intentional, either because they're internal facing or to reinforce their independence. For example, I oversee elections to protect from real or perceived conflicts of interest with the elected auditor. And in fact, it's historic precedent that as the auditor, if whether she chooses to run for reelection, she has recused herself from elections, administration and campaign finance enforcement. It's been an honor to serve these divisions the last two years to promote democratic participation and transparency and accountability and decision making. And without further ado, I'll pass it over to our council clerk, keelan mcclymont.
85 All right. Thank you. Read. Good morning, madam president. Madam vice president, members of council, I am really grateful for this opportunity today to sit here in this seat and share with you the work the council clerk team does to support council, your committees and our other charter mandated responsibilities. For the record, my name is keelan mcclymont. I'm the council clerk. Next slide. Actually, let's. Yeah, there we are. Okay, so the council clerk team has six full time staff in addition to myself. Our team is made up of the deputy council clerk, two analysts and two administrative specialists. Our team is small, but our work touches bureaus and offices across the city every day. We are responsible for administering city council business, managing the central repository for Portland policy documents, and maintaining city charter and code. Next slide please. Okay. I want to spend a little time just sharing how our team engages with council. You all see us every week in chambers clerking council and committee meetings in person and supporting the hybrid meeting format in zoom. But I think it's helpful to use the metaphor of the iceberg, because the public facing visible role of supporting meetings is only one part of the work we do to support council, city staff and the public to understand and navigate the city's legislative process. Beyond clerking meetings, there is a large component of our work that is not as visible. Administering council business means that each week we host and clerk hybrid council and committee meetings and work sessions. We receive and review documents for the agenda to ensure adherence to charter and code regulations. Publish and notice the agendas in accordance with state public meetings, law record council actions on each agenda item and ensure documents accurately reflect amendments. Prepare each item to be archived to the permanent record and made available to the public in a timely manner. We prepare meeting minutes in accordance with state public records law. We manage public testimony at council and committee meetings to ensure every portlander that wants to has the opportunity to provide input, verbally or in writing on council decisions. We provide training and one on one support for staff across city bureaus and elected offices, and we work closely with partners around the city to support meeting logistics, including staff in the bureau of technology services council operations staff, facility staff, security personnel and the team that broadcasts the meetings. With the transition to the mayor council form of government, there have been many changes to the processes and procedures required to support the more complex legislative process. One example you are all familiar with is the agenda. With the addition of committee meetings, our team publishes up to 18 agendas each month, which is an increase from the previous form of government, where we published up to five agendas each month. Other work my office is responsible for that is not as visible. Includes maintaining and making available current versions of city charter and code, and maintaining a record of charter and code revisions. The current version of code is available on the city's website, and spans over 4000 web pages. City code can only be changed by ordinance passed by council. Our office reviews every proposed code change to ensure consistency and conformance with existing code, and adherence to the code formatting and style guide. Once council passes a code amendment, our team ensures that the official version of city code is updated and the previous version is archived. To maintain a historical record of how the laws of the city change over time, our team provides training and resources to support staff as they prepare code changes for council consideration. Our office also maintains the online repository for Portland policy documents. This is the central location for all city policies and administrative rules, which currently totals 1465 policy documents. Our team provides training and resources to support staff as they prepare and submit policies. We ensure the appropriate approvals have been attained and the policies are formatted and styled to ensure consistent and accessible policy. Web pages Portland is unique in that the council clerk is located in the auditor's office. This ensures that we can do our work objectively without undue influence from city council or management. Under the mayor and city administrator, the structure allows my team to be customer service focused so that we can provide support to you and your teams, as well as staff across city departments. Our work is grounded in the belief that the decisions made by council that impact portlanders should be open and accessible. Portlanders should be able to participate in the decision making process by providing verbal and written testimony on issues important to them. We take seriously our responsibility to ensure equitable access and participation by the public in council and committee meetings. So thank you so much for this opportunity to present the work of the council clerk's office. We look forward to continuing our work together to serve our community. And with that, I'm pleased to introduce my colleague deborah scroggins, who manages the elections division.
86 Good morning council. My name is deborah scroggin. I use she her pronouns and I manage the Portland elections division. I have been in elections for 13 years, most of that time with the city of Portland. Before I get started on the work that we do as a division that I'm really excited to lead, I wanted to clear up any potential confusion. We are not small donor elections, which is another office in the city. I believe it's in the budget and finance service area, so that is not something I'll be discussing today. Okay. We have five total employees in our office, including the city's lead on elections, education and the city elections officer. We work closely with Multnomah county and the elections division to ensure consistent, fair and accurate ballot qualification, whether that be candidates, city petitions or ballot measures. And then we also certify results to you all after every relevant election. We oversee many aspects of the election cycle, which includes customer service, technical support and required voter education campaigns. Training and providing resources is also a big part of what we do. With regular trainings for candidates. We've provided trainings for you all and your staff, campaigns, lobbyists and community members to help with compliance and understanding of city regulations. Next slide please. So I mentioned voter education. It is a new city charter requirement and is nearly fully transferred to us from the transition team. We're very appreciative of their work and partnership throughout 2024. These images show the results of voter education efforts in 2024. City elections staff created in-house advertising with ballot fraud information across the city, with a focus on district one and district two. Historically excluded communities, and with the focus on also collaborating across existing channels. So we had an internship program. You'll see some of our interns on the bus. We worked closely with 311. Multnomah county also extended this campaign throughout the city and also throughout the election, worked with the transition team as well as community partnerships in the voter education grant program. We know with voter education, there is a lot of work to do. Despite the high levels of reported understanding of ranked choice voting, as shown in the poll we commissioned in November of 2024, the division is currently evaluating working closely with the transition team. As I mentioned, to move over all of the voter education materials approaches and develop plans for voter education ahead of 2026. Our goal is to continually improve community based, accessible outreach and increase levels of understanding of ranked choice voting, while decreasing disparities in voter turnout across the city. Next slide please. Separately, the division administers and enforces regulations that provide transparency about lobbying and campaign finances. We oversee political ad disclaimers and contribution limits. Again, not small donor elections, but these specific parts of campaign finance. We manage lobbying and political consultant disclosures. And as a reminder, we are complaint based. We proactively focus on that front training side and continually trying to improve and update our guidance and materials. Our overarching goal in the division is to increase the amount of public disclosures, and with that, I will hand it over to my colleague.
87 Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. My name is william guzman. I am the chief hearings officer, and I have served in that capacity since approximately 2019. The hearings office is a relatively small team. We handle hundreds of cases a year. In addition to myself, we have two full time hearings, office clerks and two part time hearings officers. Title 22 explains the hearings office's purpose as, quote, to provide a fast, fair and impartial adjudication of the alleged city code violations and to provide persons adversely affected by administrative determinations and decisions with an effective and impartial appeal and review of the legality and appropriateness of the determination. The hearings office utilizes a quasi judicial decision making model. That means that our role is similar to that of an administrative law judge. The similarity is that we conduct an evidentiary hearing where witnesses testify and are subject to cross-examination. The parties make arguments in support of their positions and introduce evidence to support their claims. The hearings officer then makes findings of fact from that record, applies the law as it's written by city council, and issues a legal conclusion in the form of a written decision in order to ensure that everyone receives a full and fair opportunity to present their case to the hearings office. We strive to remove barriers to accessing that justice. For example, we utilize plain language in our forms and rules rather than legalese. We conduct remote hearings. We provide simple forms. We invested in an online case management system that's accessible 24 over seven with internet access, and the hearings, office clerks provide customer customer support in the form of navigation assistance to answer questions. If anyone requests a reasonable accommodation or a language translation service that is provided to the public free of charge. The types of cases that we handle range greatly in their subject matter. They might include a towed vehicle, an exclusion from a public park, a land use application proposal, property compliance violations, permit denials and revocations, penalties and fines, among others. I'm ready for the next slide. There are a few ways in which the city council and the hearings office's roles are entwined. The hearings office decisions are generally the final decision of the city and subject to writ of review by the courts or the land use board of appeals. One notable exception is a type three land use application, the hearings office on those applications would conduct the first public hearing, and if the matter is appealed to city council, you all would conduct the second quasi judicial review. The other area is the hearings office's jurisdiction, generally, jurisdiction for the cases we hear comes directly from city code enacted by city council. When enacting a new area of enforcement in city code, the hearings office's standardized code 22 creates a city wide uniform process by which appeals can be filed directly with the hearings office. This standardization, this uniformity, means that all the cases that fall under title 22 follow the same timelines and the same rules of procedure. Changes to code 22 that detract from that uniform and standardized process should be thoughtfully considered. If a great number of changes are necessary in order to implement council's desires for that particular enforcement action. Perhaps consider utilizing their own process. For example, city code 16 governing vehicle enforcement on the public right of way, or code 33 governing land use applications. Those do not fall under title 22 because they require deviation from that standard uniform process. While we cannot provide legal advice and would not comment on the substance of any code enactments, an opportunity for the hearings office and the auditor's office to be consulted prior to implementation of a new code provision that would give the right to appeal to the hearings office. It would be our request that you consult with our office on whether title 22 is the best fit, or whether the creation of a separate process might be more appropriate. Thank you again for your time. And that concludes my remarks.
88 Hello, my name is robin white. My pronouns are she her. I am the division manager for operations management. This division serves as the auditor's executive office. We provide leadership and internal administrative support to the other divisions that you just heard from today. Operations management is comprised of ten full time employees, including the elected auditor, the chief deputy city auditor, and the auditor's general counsel. The remainder of the personnel in our division are administrative and professional staff, who facilitate office wide operations and provide administrative support for management. The primary focus of our division is to provide internal and independent administrative support to the office of the auditor, and I'm going to pause there simply to address the word independent, because, as auditor rede mentioned earlier, in may of 2017, voters of Portland overwhelmingly voted in favor of a measure to make the auditor and the office of the auditor administratively independent from the rest of the city, establishing independence from the rest of the city was, and currently is necessary because the city auditor and the office of the auditor hold charter authority to audit and investigate the administrative acts of city departments, bureaus and other administrative agencies. Maintaining the office's independence and the rest of the city protects against potential conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest. As a result of the auditor's office being dependent on or beholden to city bureaus or departments for administrative services. Article five in the city charter uses the word administrative broadly to include functions such as human resources, procurement and contracting, rule making, and implementing budget decisions, all of which are internal services that are provided by operations management staff. Our division primarily manages our own hr, finance, procurement and contracts and legal functions, but we have certain things. We leave certain things to other offices to administer for efficiency or their expertise. So, for instance, we still turn to the city for benefits administration, I.t. Support, security and so on. So what this means is that most of our hr and procurement services are actually run out of our office's operations management division, and not the bureau of human resources or the city's procurement services. In addition, the auditor's office also has its own legal counsel, whereas all other city offices go through the city attorney's office and we do not. In summary, the independent and administrative services that our division provides includes legal services, business operations, communications and outreach, budget development, accounting, timekeeping, procurement, the execution of office wide contracts, human resources and other administrative services. While the majority of the services our division provides are internal administrative support for our office, operations management also fulfills the auditor's charter authority to review and issue the auditor's signature on city wide contracts for accountability and assurance to the public. In addition, operations management provides custodial oversight of the city's seal on behalf of the city auditor. That means city officials, city employees, vendors, and members of the public who wish to use or publish the city seal must go through our division for approval of use. And finally, we have our communications and outreach staff who coordinate community engagement activities office wide, ensure compliance with the office's identity guidelines and writing standards. Design publications. Manage web design and content. Administer public records requests and support constituent relations and complaint intake. With that, I will hand it back to chief deputy city auditor reed brodersen.
89 Wonderful. I think we have some time for your questions.
90 And we have some questions. Councilor Green, would you like to kick us off?
91 Thank you, madam president, and thank you, deputy auditor and team. My question is about it's actually for the. Clerk, which is about the impact statements. And this is kind of in the weeds. So I do apologize. But the impact statements for ordinances and resolutions, I don't see that in the charter. And I don't see that in the city code. Is that an administrative rule adopted by the auditor's office?
92 Yeah. So the impact it is in the administrative rule, the manual. But the impact statement has had an interesting kind of history at the city. And it was established long before I was in this role. The impact statement, I think, was originally started by the city budget office to try to capture some of the fiscal and financial impacts of legislation. And then over the years, I believe it's been expanded to include other areas to try to highlight some of the those impacts of the legislation. And yeah, after it's kind of become we included it in the manual because it was determined that it was required for ordinances and resolutions and reports. So we have included it. But that's kind of.
93 So that's that's helpful. So it's the authority to say that you must have these elements is by r.a. 7.01 which is the drafting manual.
94 And this, this reflects the practice that has been in place for many years.
95 And I you know, I think the I think the charter gives the auditor's office broad authority to set administrative rules, to make it possible for city council to do business and transact orders of agenda. I guess my question would be, who? Is there any stipulation that the impact statement needs to be drafted by a specific office or or person?
96 No, not that I'm aware of.
97 Okay.
98 Thank you. And I only raised that for my colleagues because, you know, as we get into, as we're testing this new form of government, there may be an ordinance that proposes an action that a bureau may not prefer to do. And if we lean upon that bureau to do the drafting, then we get into or maybe it's prosper Portland, you know, then we get into a conflict of interest struggle. And I just wanted to sort of reaffirm that council has has this sort of prerogative. I mean, I understand that there's a practice in place and there's a habit, but I think at the end of the day, we have the right to draft our own impact statements.
99 May I may I also add, I believe it was last year that a resolution was passed which added some elements, specifically the economic and real estate development impact section of the impact statement that that was passed by resolution. And councilor Ryan may be familiar with that as well. He may remember when that happened and that that specifically called out the role of prosper to evaluate different pieces of legislation and the economic and real estate development impacts of that legislation. So that that was done by resolution, which we then incorporated into our administrative rule.
100 Okay. That's extremely useful and helpful context.
101 Sorry I didn't add that initially.
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102 No, I mean that just that makes my question richer. I mean, I think the point I was trying to get to was really understanding what is practice, what is policy and what what the boundaries are, what we need to take on if we want to change something. So thank you.
103 Councilor. I think as we navigate our relationship with the administrative side and have that what I described this way sometimes right. That inner linking but less interlinked than we used to be. It may be worth proposing that we have a longer conversation, maybe in the governance committee, about all of those impact statements and what the right place is for those to come from. I know in some forms of government that happens within the bureaus and some it happens within a team that supports council. I think it usually doesn't come from individual councilor Offices, but we could have a broader conversation about what we might want to see.
104 I think that's prudent, and I would I would welcome that. Thanks.
105 Councilor Dunphy.
106 Thank you, madam president. Keelan. During the transition from government from the previous form to the current form, was the was it did anyone ever call the question about whether it is most appropriate to have the council clerk continue to be in the auditor's office, as opposed to being in either the executive or legislative branch?
107 I mean, I, I don't think ever in a formal way. I think those conversations were taking place, but I don't I'm not aware of any kind of formal discussion that happened around that.
108 And you had said that Portland is relatively unique in that role. You know, I continue to have maybe I think I think that you do an amazing job. Your team did an amazing job. That is not what I'm saying in anything. But I do worry that in this new form, I think that in the previous form of government, it protected the institution in a way I'm not certain that it it serves us well still to have an arm's length, especially because there are future situations in which we may need something different than what your office is able to provide right now, and you have a different boss, so that that is something I'm thinking about just a little bit and not doing anything with it, but just the need for institutional responsiveness. Not that you aren't responsive, just saying that, you know, if a future council president were to direct you, you don't take direction necessarily. So I worry about that a little bit. And william, for the hearings office, how how many what percentage of the type three land use appeals that your office sees get appealed? Beyond that.
109 I'd be happy to follow up with you with an exact number. I'll send that to you after the meeting today.
110 That'd be great. I, I mentioned this because those tend to be the most controversial. They're the ones that often get the headlines, and I think it puts your office in an unfair position a lot of times, because there are if there were clear and objective answers, it wouldn't necessarily need a hearings officer to make those decisions. And a lot of these are controversial decisions with some externalities that your office then sort of gets yelled at about. And then we also get yelled at about. So I'm interested to know, I guess, how big, you know, if it's a rare thing, you know, the occasionally, I mean, live nation, the pge thing, the zenith, these things sort of percolate. And they set your office up for, for taking some heat that, I don't know, is necessarily structurally the right decision there. But I would be interested to know. Yeah. If you could follow up.
111 Yes, absolutely. And just to make sure I understand the scope of the question, you're interested in knowing the number of cases maybe per year over the last couple of years, that would have a right to appeal to city council, specifically in the land use arena.
112 Yeah, that would be great.
113 No problem. Thank you.
114 May follow up briefly on councilor Dunphy's reflections.
115 On.
116 On the clerk. Just a note that that authority does rest in charter. So a change would require a charter amendment. And I do not recall if the charter commission.
117 Had.
118 You know.
119 More formally.
120 Mused on, on its placement. I will say I think there's a counter balancing benefit to having the clerk outside of your all's branch to have some consistency and to maintain transparency as a priority and a value. So I would hope that you all consider that. I will also reinforce. I think we have a vested interest in being a collaborative partner with you all to make sure our services meet, meet your needs. I think our only reservation has been around resources and making sure we can do that well while supporting our staff, but I appreciate the reflections.
121 Councilor Novick.
122 Thank you, madam president. My question is for the chief hearings officer. I just have a gut reaction that it sounds like you have a ton of work to do with limited staff. And I just want to know, are you completely overwhelmed as you're staffing increased, when and if your workload increased, how does your staffing compared to similar offices around the around the country? Things like that.
123 Thank you for that question. The short answer no, I wouldn't say that. We are overwhelmed. I do think that one of the difficulties that the office faces is a lack of control over the number of cases that we receive. Let me give you an example. Excuse me, for example, when it comes to the COVID 19 pandemic, my understanding is that certain city divisions reduced their enforcement activities, and that had an impact on the number of folks that wanted to appeal. And so we saw a sharp decline in the number of cases. You could compare that to a program that the Portland bureau of transportation employs every fall in certain neighborhoods that they refer to as leaf sweeps. This is a towing operation where they remove cars in order to clean up the streets of the debris and the leaves. And because of the number of tows being increased, we see a corresponding increase in the number of appeals to our office. So not having any control over the number of cases that come in, or being able to pace those in any way while still needing to meet our obligations to schedule a hearing within required scheduling deadlines, and issue a decision within certain scheduling deadlines is certainly something that gives rise to the capacity issue. In order to meet that capacity issue, we have a couple of avenues available to us. The part time hearings officers have been a terrific resource in working additional hours as the budget allows, in order to meet that additional workload. I myself am capable of working above the minimum 40 hours a week at no additional charge to the city, and have done so on a regular occasion to meet those obligations. Additionally, we employ a on call land use hearings officer, and as budget allows, we might outsource a case or several cases during the course of the year to meet that workload. And my first year of legal research and writing, my professor said to me, a good writer is never finished. They simply run out of time. And so there is a expectation that you will put in the work to create a well-reasoned decision that can upstand withstand legal scrutiny. Because, as I mentioned earlier, these are often the final decision of the city and appealable only to a judge at the Multnomah courthouse or the land use board of appeals. With that one exception that councilor Dunphy emphasized the land use three application process. And so with all of those resources, we are able to and have consistently met our deadline obligations. I think what's really important to me is that the hearings office serve the public, and in order to do that, and what that means to me is that the public is getting a fair and efficient opportunity to hear their dispute between an impartial and neutral decision maker who's going to be free from the external pressures and influences, deciding the case solely on the facts in the record, the law as it's written to reach that legal conclusion. And so I hope that is a sufficient response that kind of responds to the capacity issue and how we handle it, and our firm commitment to meeting the deadlines that you all might impose in city code.
124 Thank you.
125 Councilor Kanal.
126 Thank you. Robin. It's good to see you. Got to talk about your previous role yesterday. I get to talk about your current role today and both are great. I wanted to ask, given that your role now and your team's role includes essentially internal support for other parts of the auditor's office, if one part of it you mentioned engagement and communications is helping other parts of the auditor's office to communicate effectively and with with the public.
127 Yes, absolutely. Yeah, they they do work with all of our divisions and actually they just are recently now reporting to me, they were reporting to chief deputy city auditor reed here. So I am starting to orient myself to their work right now. You might actually be able to speak more to the outreach and the work that they've been doing with the other divisions.
128 Yeah, I mean, any major publication that comes out of our office goes through that communications team to make sure it's.
129 Written to.
130 Plain language, to our writing standards, and has a variety of accessibility considerations.
131 Do you consider hearings, reports on type three land use hearings to fall under that major documents category that you just mentioned?
132 No.
133 We let the hearings. Office have.
134 Full control. The hearings officer.
135 Who's seeing that case have full control over their their product.
136 Yeah, I'm going to ask.
137 A I'm going to ask a question about a specific thing that is a type three. And I want to be clear before I ask it that I'm not asking related or making any comment as to the actual decision, but the communications by which that decision was conveyed. Just for the record, here, there was a recent hearings officer decision that was publicized in which the manner by which the communication was given was perceived by a pretty large number of people that have communicated with my office as insulting to the public. And it's the harberton decision, and it's the use of the phrase facts are not feelings. Feelings are not facts. Sorry, I'm going to just get you the exact quote here. For the record, this land use case, however, is about facts, not feelings is the quote. And I can tell you I've received a lot of communication about that particular line, and I wanted to ask if maybe that could be something that you consider is utilizing the resource which exists within your office to ensure that the communication comes across as not merely legal, which it obviously needs to be, but also courteous to the people that did weigh in on it, because I think that's something that we do hear feedback about as as my colleague mentioned, and we're obviously independent of the auditors. So this is a suggestion, but I think it does help make the city. More trusted and more collaborative with the public when things are conveyed in a way that that honors people's input, even if the decision is to disagree with some of that input. So I wanted to just put that out there as a suggestion. And again, this has nothing to do with the substance of that decision. Is that something that you don't have to comment if you don't want? But I'm just I wanted to put that out there.
138 Thank you for your observation and your comment. I would like to respond. I think any time an attorney is in a setting where they're talking about legal issues, ongoing litigation, it's always prudent to just say, I'm not your attorney and I can't give you legal advice, and I don't think you're asking for it. Of course, your city attorney is the best resource. Reflecting on the best practices that I instill as I put on my quasi judicial hat to decide cases, I tell division managers that have enforcement actions that come before the hearings office. I will always be available to talk to you about policies and procedures, and how we can improve on those policies and procedures to remove barriers to accessing your day in court, whatever that might mean. A simpler form, a simpler discovery mechanism. Remote hearings are a great example that we implemented during COVID 19, so folks don't have to pay for parking and fight traffic and arrange for childcare. As an example, I also tell every stakeholder that I am responsive as a manager to complaints against my employees when it comes to professionalism, courtesies, treating everyone with dignity and respect is a integral part of the core values and the mission that I set for my office as a chief hearings officer, and I'm going to hold everyone accountable to those. Then I go on to say I won't talk to anyone outside the official record about any case. I can't give legal advice, I can't comment on advisory opinions and tell you how some sort of hypothetical might be litigated and the outcome of that in the future. I like to refer people who don't like a law back to city council, since you are in charge of writing those laws. I like to refer folks that thought that the enforcement action was unfair to mayor wilson and city administrator jordan, who are in charge of executing the laws and enforcing those laws as they see fit when it comes to the actual decision. In any particular case, every single decision is going to be an exercise in transparency and accountability. And let me tell you what I mean by that. We are not investigators. We are adjudicators. We do not go outside of the record to figure out what is happening. We rely on the parties to develop the factual record. Every single piece of documentation is exhibited. The hearing is audio recorded. They are open to the public. The land use hearings that you referred to are also open to public participation. Should that matter, be appealed. It is very important that that record that the hearings officer relied on to make their decision is able to be forwarded to the appeal body in a type three. That would be you and after you, the land use board of appeals. Every single decision is going to analyze the facts in the record against the applicable laws and render a decision that includes an analysis of those facts to those laws. I have worked with hearings officer childs for five years, so most of the time that I've been a chief hearings officer, and I have the utmost confidence in her competence and her professionalism. The decision speaks for itself, and it would be unwise of me to try to interpret any part of that decision or to comment on it. I will say this. I don't believe I know how to do your job. I have never been an elected official. I have never been a city councilor. When you receive an appeal and you have to put on your quasi judicial decision making hat, I see councilor Ryan nodding, and I believe councilor Novick also has experience with this. In my practice. I cannot respond to the popularity or the unpopularity and allow that to influence my decision making. All testimony is directed to the applicable approval criteria, and that is the basis on which the decisions are made. And I think that's responsive to your inquiry. I think that if you're asking me to comment on facts, not feelings. There is a valid basis to say that we need to stick to what the factual record is, and you need to review that against the approval criteria, no matter how strongly you feel that the outcome is unpopular. We have to be free from those external pressures and sometimes make, as councilor Dunphy put it, and I'm not putting words in his mouth. But there are difficult, unpopular decisions, and we have to, in our capacity, uphold the law that has been written against the facts in the record and sometimes issue a decision that we know will be unpopular. It comes with the territory. And again, that doesn't mean that I'm not accountable to holding everyone to that standard of treating participants and stakeholders with dignity and respect. I, I disagree that facts, not feelings, is disrespectful. I think it was an orientation. And again, I can't speak for hearings, officer childs, but I think it was a direction to the facts in the record and not strong emotional reactions about the outcome of the case. And I think I should probably leave it there.
139 Yeah, thanks.
140 I guess the only response I'd give there is there's a nice way to say that, and I also want to thank, just to close this out, both your office and chief deputy bronson for clarifying why the information about that was released. At the same time to council as it was to the public. I appreciate that clarification, and I think it was helpful for me. And it makes sense. And I think that that that was also something where we did hear a lot of comment on that, and I feel prepared to be able to respond to constituent concerns about that based on your clarification. So thank you both for that. I'll pass it back to madam vice president.
141 Thank you so much. Thank you for your thoughtful response. This seems like it might be a good time to also share that. I know the council president and the auditor are having conversations right now to make sure that we know about hearing decisions before reading it in the press, and I think we all know we need to have a lot of patience as we're figuring out how to communicate and collaborate and make sure we know when to give each other a heads up. So we're I believe we're moving in the right direction with that councilor Ryan.
142 Oh, sure.
143 Thank you, madam vice president william, first of all, thank you for your courage to stay completely dispassionate and honest in that dialog. I just really respect the dialog that you and councilor Canal just had. So keelan you see how we all smile when the name keelan comes up? Yeah, and we did all notice, like, oh, we're not used to keelan sitting right there. Yeah, that was a moment. Hey, I really was taken with your the facts that you've gone from five, maybe six agendas. If there was for a few more Wednesday, one more Wednesday in the month. Five. And I recall those days, but now it's up to 18 per month with these committees. That's a big lift. That's over triple the amount of productivity and outcomes that is expected from your office. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. And I know that all of us are having a lot of reflection on how to manage the budget that will come from the mayor and city administrator, michael jordan soon. And I expect your area within the auditor's office should be fairly protected. And so I just kind of wanted to make a plug that I see you, I see your team and I really appreciate you, but now I want to really make sure I get the details. Did you add staff for this year?
144 So you might recall we submitted a decision package last year for the budget and we rerequested two additional administrative support specialists. That request was based on the recommendation that we received from the government transition advisory committee that recommended. That that spelled out that the city could afford for committees based on the budget allocations.
145 For not eight. Okay. So it's based on a four committee model.
146 That's right. And thank you for your question, councilor Ryan. We are in conversation with the council president's office and the budget office to put forward a new decision package to add additional staff to support the eight committee model and potentially additional meetings.
147 And I think on our side, we need to continue to have conversations if we need eight committees. So I think it's a two way street. We all have to be innovative and thoughtful about this journey we're on. So thank you for getting that all out. Since it is a season of budgets, elections. There you are. I brought there were so many candidates right in the last election. Were you able to staff up for that?
148 Thank you, councilor Ryan, for the question. We were able to prepare a little bit in advance, and we knew we were going to have a lot of candidate filings. We did not expect, by any means, 118 folks qualified. That's not the number of filings. That's the folks that were qualified. So we continue to, you know, work with the capacity that we have. We don't expect that to occur again, to be honest. And it was sort of an all hands on deck season. So we worked really closely together and kind of made it happen. But I don't think it's going to be a constant issue every election.
149 Well, thank you. And I didn't hear I think this topic is not a part of your team. That's the small donor office I think was where the service levels were challenged. But anyway, that said, the fact that I didn't hear any complaints about your office says a lot. So congratulations. And I just want to give you some due attention for managing the busiest election cycle the city has ever had. And it sounds like most people would assume that it won't be like that in two years, because there will be only two districts running that will help. But we'll we'll see. Anyway, so you didn't staff up, so there's no reason to staff down right now. It's more about collecting your breath and cleaning up from what was probably the busiest season ever.
150 Correct. A lot of evaluation and lessons learned and how we can continue to better, especially on the voter education side.
151 Thanks. And I think I wanted because we're in the budget season, it was really important for me just to tap in a little bit to that. I also want to acknowledge that the hearings officer and the ombudsman, they're not the same thing. I get that, but I have people ask me sometimes, and I don't know if I answer the question very well. So when would someone know to go to the ombudsman as opposed to the hearing officer?
152 Thank you for that question. I wouldn't want to speak for the ombudsman's office. I'll just answer for my office. The hearings office. You have a right to appeal. Only when city council gives you the right to appeal. And that can show up in a number of different ways. There's a code provision under three, I think, code three, something that says that whenever the city takes a certain type of determination, enforcement action that gives right to a appeal to the code hearings office, you must provide adequate notice. It includes who you appeal to, what your deadlines are, what's required. And so I, as part of my onboarding of different divisions around the city to our policies and procedures, I often make them aware of this requirement to make sure that they understand the information that they should be including that's relevant to accessing the services at the hearings office, so that when they, for example, tow a vehicle and the person goes down and gets their vehicle onto the tow lot, that vendor, that contractor tow company hands them or makes available to them that notice of appeal rights and that directs them directly to our office. It happens in a number of areas. Oftentimes an enforcement decision comes in way of a letter. And at the end of the letter there is a appeal notice. And we actually have in our administrative rules a template that folks can use, including a qr code. If you have that technology available that takes you right to the website. From there, it's a video on how to set up your user profile and submit your appeal using the online case management system. And we want to be barrier free. So if you don't have internet or even a mobile device, that's not a problem. We do have hard copy forms and we'll give you a full and fair opportunity despite that. And then for the ombudsman's office, they're more complaint driven versus a legal action that you have a right to. And again, you would get that notice of right in your enforcement action given by the city division at the appropriate time.
153 Do you ever intersect much the two of you? Are there any other people get confused? I think just based on some interaction.
154 So yes, I think so. I think that there are often times when a member of the public might have overlapping concerns. A recent example that I came up with was your vehicle gets towed and the tow truck driver allegedly damaged your fence or your vehicle, and you want to contest the reason that the tow occurred in the first place as as being invalid is the word that we use. And so you might have a complaint. Again, I don't want to speak on behalf of the ombudsman's office, but you might have a complaint ongoing at the ombudsman's office as well as an appeal at the hearings office, and they would be distinct processes that would unfold on their own timelines and their own trajectories.
155 That's really fair. Thank you for that distinction. It was helpful, and I think I finally just want to say, I am only can imagine how high the complaints were in 2020 through. In my experience, 2020 through 2023 was really, really, really high in complaints. And so I can only imagine how many did land in your office. So I think when I was speaking about all the candidates running, I can only imagine what an increase you were also dealing with in volume. So thank you for your service.
156 Well, thank you for that. And just to clarify, if you mean complaints for the ombudsman's office or the elections.
157 I can only speak for my experience. Complaints.
158 Complaints in general.
159 Number one complaint was I'm only getting in touch with you because no one at the city will answer the phone. So yeah. Anyway.
160 I appreciate your comments and your appreciation very much.
161 I'm great to see you.
162 Thanks. Nice to see you.
163 Councilor Novick.
164 Thank you, madam vice president, in response to councilor Kanal line of questioning, I just want to say that I do not want any city employees, including hearing officers, looking over their shoulder for the language police, whatever they say or write, anything. I we as elected officials have to be aware that probably every sentence we speak, we lose 20 votes because somebody is offended by what we said. But I don't want unelected city employees to have to think that way. Right now, the language police are being very vigorous in the federal government. The new york times printed a list of words that federal employees are not supposed to use, including, of course, diverse and injustice and cultural heritage. And curiously, they've said you're not supposed to refer to either sex or gender. And I want us as a government to steer us far away from that kind of thinking as possible.
165 Councilor Green.
166 Thank you, madam vice president. I'm actually going to ask a question that the council president asked me in case she ran out of time, and she did. So it is related to the budget. And her question is, can you educate us a little bit on your budget development process for the auditor's office as a whole? I know I understand that it's different. There's an independent process there. And so what should we expect as council on how to engage and be responsive to the kind of responsiveness? Yeah, I just use response twice in the same sentence. Thank you.
167 Can I can I can talk about it.
168 Yeah.
169 Yeah. Thanks for your question councilor Green. So you know we similar to other bureaus or offices, we go through the same process internally to decide what we need based on our resources and capacities. We then submit that directly to the mayor without going through the budget office or the office of equity, who apply their assessment before the mayor considers it. That said, the mayor or city administrator may ask those offices themselves to run that assessment. Otherwise, the budget consideration really is the same. You all will consider it alongside other service areas or bureaus, and it is ultimately your authority. Charter just demands that you consider the resources we need to do our do our job, do our duties.
170 Okay.
171 Thank you.
172 I have a couple questions. I'm interested in hearing a bit more from the hearings office about what hearings look like. Are they public? Where are they? I'm curious.
173 Absolutely. Thank you for your interest. And I love talking about the hearings office and really appreciate and invite all the questions that the councilors have as they orient themselves to basically the delegation of your charter authority under the quasi judicial decision making function of city government. And so learning more about it and giving me an opportunity to speak in high regard to the employees I supervise. And the work that we do is really a privilege. So thank you. As part of our commitment to transparency and accountability, we have a website accessible. It has a public calendar of all the hearings. It has access to the online case management system, including a guest user profile that you're not able to upload documents as that's restricted to the parties to the case exception, land use cases that are open to public participation, and you are able to navigate from our website to see what hearings are available. Again, most of them are available for remote participation via the zoom app. If you can't find the link, we'll send it to you. And if you want to look at the case file contents again, as I indicated, we don't do any investigating and we don't go outside the record. So everything that the hearings officer is going to rely on is going to be in that case file. It's going to have an exhibit label attached to it. And those are also public records. You don't even have to go through gov qa. It's as simple as logging in and taking a look at what's accessible online. Anyone, anyone at all is welcome to request a copy of the case file or the decision, because we did convert to an online case management system. Everything is a pdf nowadays. And if that's something that you're a format that you're able to receive documents in, that's the most convenient way for us to get you the information. After a case file is closed, the software uploads the case file to the city's. I'm just looking for the archivist, the retention program that the city utilizes, and you can access all of the old case files in there until the expiration of that retention period. So as far as knowing what's on the docket, so to speak, and as far as staying abreast of what hearings are taking place and what's been submitted in terms of public testimony, I would suggest that with a minimal amount of effort checking the website, you're asking an admin to check the case management system. You could get a pretty good sense of what cases are being heard on the docket today. The level of public participation. And I do believe that the deputy auditor was working on a way to keep council informed on land use decisions so that you can be added to that mailing list. And I think that's in the works right now.
174 Thank you. Also curious how many people do you all have in the auditor's office on your counsel team? The attorney type of counsel, counsel?
175 We currently have one. We particularly around the election cycle, we were in dire need of additional support. We did put out for a part time deputy general counsel and were not able to fill that recruitment. You know, it is pretty unusual for one attorney to cover this breadth of functional service areas, especially those like elections that have a high legal liability and risk. So it is an area definitely of need. We do we do collaborate with and ask for support from the city attorney's office at times. But it is an area of a place where we're over capacity right now. Yeah. Thanks for your question.
176 And to the clerks, it's okay if you can't answer this or you want to tell us later, thinking about your huge increase in workload. And I know that you've got the two more administrative and admin support specialists, it seems. I wonder if that's covering what you need and if you have thoughts about, in a perfect world, how many more positions do you feel like you need to be able to adequately staff our committee work and prepare all the agendas?
177 Yeah. Thank you, vice president Koyama Lane for that question and that consideration to the first question, the two additional admin specialist positions are are not adequate to support the work as it as it is now and how we expect it going forward. And then there there are conversations happening right now. I'm working with a chief deputy auditor. Reed and my team to identify the need, and we're hoping to be able to present something soon.
178 All right. Thank you. Well, what I heard a lot up here from my colleagues was a lot of recognition of all your hard work and appreciation. It's so important. And my experience has been I've been really impressed with the openness and the responsiveness. If I have questions, I get responses right away. And so as a counselor and as a constituent, I am very grateful and just encourage all my colleagues to send a message on teams or reach out if you have a question, because this whole team here is really eager to support this new form of government. So it looks like we got all of our questions answered. And so with that, it is time to close this work session. Do I need to say anything else to officially close it? Is that fine?
179 I think.
180 The.
181 Auditor might have one.
182 Last thing.
183 Okay. Thank you.
184 Just kidding. It's not closed.
185 I won't take up too much more of your time, but I just wanted to thank you for being here today, to hear about the ways that our various divisions support an open and accountable city government. We've really appreciated your questions and your your deep engagement with the various parts of our office. I guess to your point, vice president Koyama Lane, our lines of communication are open, so please feel free to reach out if you have more questions. Things that we weren't able to answer fully beyond this presentation. You can reach us via email or the phone, and you can find us on the web or here in city hall. So thank you.
186 Thank you so much. Now the work session is closed.
187 Yeah.