We've worried right from the start that the commission currently drafting changes to the City of Portland charter would allow itself to be beaten down by the many, many beneficiaries of the status quo. It appears that that is what's happening with the commission's pending proposal to have an independent (at least somewhat) utility board set the sewer and water rates charged by the city. As an alert reader explains:

The Charter Review Commission just sent out their revised Independent Utility Commission charter amendment proposal, and one important language change effectively guts it, removing the only mandate it really contained to push for cost savings in the two utility bureaus.

See the attached scan of the language handed out at the Feb. 13th CRC hearing in east Portland. You will see in the first section “General Policy” the following language:

"Utility principles of least-cost and least-risk should be evaluated in making capital investment decisions in water and sewer system maintenance and upgrades."

That was hardly an overwhelming mandate, with the word "evaluated" and all. But even that was too strong for the big spenders, and in the new version just sent out, that sentence was replaced with:

"Costs and benefits should be evaluated in making capital investments decisions in water and sewer system maintenance and upgrades."

This new sentence is of course meaningless. What's clear here, based on the language change and the aggressive lobbying from the vested interests in higher utility spending, that the CRC effort to curb utility spending has been successfully neutered, if not stopped, by those same vested interests.... I’m disappointed to see this reform idea gutted like this by the same people who have advocated the non-mission critical spending that has helped bring us to the unsustainable situation we’re in now.

The reader's got a valid point. "Utility principles of least-cost and least-risk" means something. "Costs and benefits" means nothing, and we've seen how attenuated the "beneits" of the Admiral's pipedreams can be.