On Monday July 1st, Portland City Commissioner Mingus Mapps will no longer be in charge of the transportation bureau. Mayor Ted Wheeler will retake the bureaus and pass them onto administrators ahead of an historic reform to our city government, making Mapps the last ever commissioner-in-charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT).
It was perhaps a fitting end to the dysfunctional and outdated commissioner-in-charge system that Mapps, who hopes to be Portland’s next mayor, spent part of his final week in that position answering questions about a bike lane controversy he was solely responsible for. Mapps was asked about his role in the Southwest Broadway bike lane scandal in a podcast interview published by City Cast Portland yesterday.
Interviewer Claudia Meza pressed Mapps on a number of topics throughout the interview. When the conversation turned to the importance of clear communication from the city’s top politician, Meza told Mapps his stance on important issues was often misunderstood not just by Portlanders, but by his own bureau leadership.
When Meza used the Broadway bike lane “scandal” (her word) as an example — a story we covered closely back in September after Mapps told PBOT to rip out a protected bike lane because several downtown hotel owners didn’t like it, only to have his plans thwarted by swift pushback from the community — he didn’t take responsibility.
Instead, Mapps blamed my reporting.
“It doesn’t matter what’s right, what’s wrong, it’s the confusion,” Meza said. “People aren’t clear about where you stand, where you want things to go, including your bureau.”
To which Mapps replied:
“Well, Claudia, I think what you might be pointing to is the quality of reporting that happens in this space… Frankly, I did not recognize the reporting on this. It did not jive up with my experience… You know… I have no influence over what blogs publish.”
When Mapps first took over the PBOT commissioner job, he told me in an interview that he was, “the guy where the buck stops on transportation.” But when things got messy on Broadway, he has repeatedly run away from chances to take responsibility and clarify his role. It was the PBOT director — not Mingus “Where the Buck Stops” Mapps — that apologized for what happened. And Mapps continued to share an inaccurate version of events when asked about it in public.
I’ve given Mapps every opportunity to set the record straight, including an interview just one day after I broke the story and several emailed requests for comment that remain unanswered. We still don’t have a the full picture of who did what and why.
While many Portlanders remain confused about where Mapps stands, he shows no self-reflection or humility about what happened. The only thing he’s clear about is who to blame. That’s not the type of leader Portland needs.