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NOVEMBER 2008: FEATURE, POLITICS
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THE ADAMS DOCTRINE
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Download Sam Adams' draft economic plan |
But when times got tough, as was the case last summer, the
previous mayor basically got into a public pissing match with
the most visible leader in the business community, the
president of the Portland Business Alliance. One was saying
that Portland is a bad place to do business and the other
saying no, the fundamentals of Portland’s economy are
strong. But neither could point to any sort of standard to back
up their definitions of success. My approach may be boring, but
it’s incredibly important to define business success and
individual and family prosperity and then work backward from
that to figure out what it will take to get us there.
How long
does it take to develop something like that? How long will it
take to see the fruits of that planning?
I’d like to see an agreement on those definitions within
the first 180 days of my term. It’s wonky, it’s
boring and it is absolutely positively what we’ve been
missing. If you don’t get the accountability you
can’t make meaningful strategies, you can’t judge
what’s going on, and you get an economic development
agency like PDC [Portland Development Commission] that sort of
lurches from one idea to the next depending on who’s got
their hands on the reins.
What else
will happen in that time frame?
A lot. We’re working on an export strategy, which the
city has never had. We’re going to get out our initial
targeted-industries strategies. We’re going to open the
interim Portland Oregon Sustainability Institute within the
first 180 days. We are going to find out what local businesses
need to know to succeed around the world. A lot of the work
contained in these draft strategies we’re going to
finalize. We’ll be able to implement some of them within
the first 180 days.
There are
a lot of possibilities in your plan. But there are a lot of
different voices that will be involved. How will you get a
consensus on even the most basic elements?
Well, we’re going to get agreement on the facts. And you
know, my job is to push, cajole, inspire and charm people into
seeing where we’re really at and where we need to go. If
they’ve got a more clear definition of where we are, if
they’ve got a better idea of where we need to go, then I
want to hear from them. I’m going to lay out ideas for
moving forward and invite other people to come up with even
better ideas, but we are going to hold ourselves accountable
with a plan.
Did you
work in conjunction with any business, community or labor
groups when you were developing this initial plan?
Absolutely. It’s definitely been formed by the work
I’ve done with Sheila Martin [director of the Institute
of Portland Metropolitan Studies] at PSU. We pulled together
economists to help us work on this definition of success.
It’s definitely been formed by Andrew McGough [executive
director of Worksource Inc.], and by the folks at the PDC who
I’ve known and worked with when I was with [former mayor
Vera Katz]. It’s definitely been formed by labor people
like Judy O’Connor [executive secretary-treasurer of
Northwest Oregon Labor Council]. It’s a starting point, a
beginning place.
Critics
have tried to cast you and the Portland business community as
being at odds with each other. Is that an image you’ll
try to change?
I would question the sanity of anyone who agrees with me on
every issue all the time. I have disagreements with folks
across the spectrum on a variety of issues and that’s
true with the business community as well. Comparatively
speaking, I think Portland’s business community is very
progressive on a lot of issues. Whether we agree or disagree I
think it’s a good partner with us on most issues. My job
is to figure out what I think is the right thing to do. There
are lots of people trying to figure that out, but my job is to
get stuff done, and you only do that by having strong and
diverse partnerships.
You’ve said
you’re going to wait to take your transportation plan to
voters until the economy gets better. You’ve also talked
about trying to convince the Legislature to help fund it with
an increase in vehicle registration fees. But Gov. Ted
Kulongoski and the Columbia River Project are also after that
money. If the economy continues at the pace it’s going,
what’s next for the plan?
The challenge is rising fuel costs and the fact that American
households are spending more of their household budgets on
transportation. Businesses are spending more of their budgets
on transportation. And then you’ve got public
transportation providers where the costs of maintaining the
system are more expensive than ever. I consider this a delay
until economic times get better. But I’m not giving
up.
We have to be honest with folks. We’re not going to
climb out of that maintenance and safety backlog without more
resources. I’m going to be asking both the businesses and
local citizens to step up and really invest in the basic
fundamental component of our economy. We’re the
third-most street-dependent region in the United States so
inoperable bridges and congestion are not just an inconvenience
or an issue of safety. It’s a fundamental threat to our
basic economy. I’m not going to let this issue slip
away.
Besides
what’s outlined in your plan, what other specific
economic strategies are you in the process of
developing?
Tax fairness. The fact of the matter is that too high of a
portion of the tax burden has been on smaller, locally owned,
locally focused businesses. And that’s not just me
talking — that was first identified 13 years ago in a
review of the city’s business licenses. It’s only
in the past two years that something has been done about it. At
the same time, though, there are a thousand businesses in the
city of Portland that gross more than $20 million and that pay
a whopping $100 business tax. And that’s not fair. I
intend to raise that minimum.
Also, in the past two weeks I’ve angered the realtors of
this city by removing a loophole that allowed them to pay no
business-license fees since the ’80s. Why? Because in the
’80s they had a very good lobbyist that got them exempt
under state law. Well, bully for them, but it isn’t fair
that they don’t pay for basic city services. So in the
process of creating tax fairness I’m sure I will be loved
by some and hated by others, but I’m sticking with some
tried and true principles: The more you make, the more you pay;
the more you use, the more you pay.
When you
talk about defining economic success, are there other cities in
the nation that you think have done that successfully and then
been able to act on it?
It’s actually cities like Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne does a much more admirable job than we do in term
of figuring out the data they need to watch, and then
watching it. They understand where they’re at, what their
competitive opportunities and challenges are, and they use that
to develop a baseline and actually monitor their progress. We
don’t have that here. I can’t underscore enough
that you get what you plan for. Our work has been ad hoc at
best. We have some really good project work but what has been
missing is that overall understanding of where we’re
at.
You’ve talked
about families and working wages and other broad ideas. Get
down to specifics. How will you prioritize some very specific
things?
There will be a lot of individual opportunities but developing
our relationship with China and developing our design apparel
sector are the greatest opportunities for improving our traded
sector. I will tell you having spent almost two weeks in China
that the place is an environmental disaster. And they need what
we have in terms of sustainable design, in terms of urban
planning, in terms of green and sustainable architecture and
land-use planning. I mean, it’s a huge market —
they’re going to build 40 brand-new cities of one million
people or more in the next two decades. I sat next to a major
developer at lunch and he’s like, “We can’t
hire enough building designers.” And this particular
developer has embraced the LEED concept out of the United
States. A: He believes in it; and B: he knows that if he does
that he’s going to get a higher percentage of foreign
buyers in his projects. So there’s an opportunity for
little old Portland, little bitty Portland.
At the same time we have Adidas, Nike, Columbia Sportswear; we
have [footwear maker] Keen. These are four or five of some of
the biggest apparel firms and they’re importing their
design talent. They can be partners with us to make sure we
have a national-class design school. I’m interested in
partnering up with the best European or Asian design schools to
have an outpost here in Portland. The global economy plays a
very big role in my mind because — whether I like it or
not is not the question — my job is to make sure Portland
and the Portland region and the state succeed in it. I intend
to do whatever I can from the public side to provide leadership
or to use this office as a bully pulpit and get the players to
work together. If we’re building those partnerships then
I think we can move quickly in terms of being best in our class
in some areas. You know, if we’re not best in our class
in the green and sustainable industries then shame on us
— it was ours to lose.
What
scares you when you look at the next few years?
Are you trying to make me cry? Is that a Barbara Walters
question? [Laughs.] My greatest anxiety is that Portlanders
won’t recognize the importance of business success, that
businesses won’t recognize the importance of individual
and family prosperity, and that we as a city won’t come
together to recognize and to act on the importance of both.
There’s a hangover from the way economies used to work.
It used to be that when a business was profitable, you really
didn’t have to worry that much about people in this city.
But now business can be incredibly profitable and not have a
lot of jobs at home.
So it’s not enough anymore to have
successful businesses, although that is very important, and I
embrace that. But as a leader in a community that’s in
the global economy, I have to worry that somehow, someway I
have to have living-wage jobs in Portland. I somehow have to
convince the economic justice people, the affordable housing
people, unions — I have to convince them of the need to
have successful businesses. And I have to convince business
owners and business advocacy groups and investors of the
importance of having a population that has living-wage jobs and
economic security. That is the crux, the leadership crux, that
I face.
Have an opinion? E-mail feedback@oregonbusiness.com
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