Breach Urges Portland Charter Commission To Strengthen Environmental Proposals
In early November, the Portland Charter Commission released a Phase II Progress Report that contained proposals for environmental amendments in the city charter. These proposals emerged out of significant community pressure from Sunrise PDX, 350 PDX, and other advocacy organizations. The Charter Commission’s proposal included sections for “Environmental Justice”, “Climate Commitments”, and “Environmental Right”. Although we support these concepts, the proposed language is inadequate. In response, we suggested changes.
Our suggested language is intended to create duties, policy trajectories, and accountability measures for the City of Portland that are meaningful, enforceable, and legally defensible. By contrast, the currently proposed environmental amendments that were included in the Commission’s Phase II Progress Report proposals are non-binding, without legal meaning, and, at best, aspirational. Unfortunately, we believe that they were purposefully designed by the City Attorney to avoid creating enforceable rights and obligations that could create legal liability for the City. However, this overabundance of caution completely drains the spirit from the amendments.
We believe that the City should commit itself to paradigms that create enforceable rights and obligations so that the community has a means to ensure policy commitments are upheld. The Charter Commission is perfectly positioned to make this a reality by creating a paradigm to redress past environmental harms and protect Portlanders from future environmental harms.
For the full letter, click here.
The Charter Commission will be accepting written comments throughout the fall, but comments need to be submitted by 8 AM two business days before each commission meeting to be considered in time. The next deadline is:
7 PM, Monday, November 28th.