 Good evening. I'm Harold Pacius. We're on again with another edition of Pacius on the News where we try to keep up with public events, both national and local. And tonight I'm very happy to say we have an old friend of mine, Ethan Strimling, a former mayor of Portland, former state senator, has been involved in many political campaigns. And he is, I suppose, fair to say, a political observer. I don't want to hear him on the radio because I'm not around listening to the radio at the hours he's on, but I understand that a lot of people are also familiar with Ethan as a media personality. Ethan, welcome. Glad to see you. Good to be here, Harold. Good to see you. It's been a while. I haven't seen you in a long while. Tell me, what are you up to these days? Tell us what Ethan Strimling is doing. Well, I had back surgery about five weeks ago. I know you can relate to that because you've been through a few of those kind of intrusive procedures, but I'm doing pretty well in terms of that piece. But politically, you've been very active. Actually, it's been a very good year, as I'm sure you saw, and we'll talk about it quite a bit. We passed four very substantial referenda last fall to sort of transform Portland's economy and really protect some of the folks who are struggling at the edges. We reopened the charter and we're now about to have the charter commission elections. So I've been very involved in a group called People First Portland. And that's been tremendous work. Honestly, as I look back on my first term as mayor, I'd say in the last year, we got as much done as you could well imagine to get done in an entire term. So feeling very good about the progress that Portland was making. Are you, it's called People First, that's the Democratic Socialists, right? Yeah, it's a project of the Democratic Socialists. It is a coalition. People First Portland was a coalition, labor groups, all kinds of different worker groups, DSA started it and sort of led the charge on the referendum that we put on the ballot. The five referendum on the ballot. And we can get into these, the five referendum were pretty much all things that the council had rejected. Unfortunately, despite a lot of us saying to the council, these are clearly things that the people in the city want us to do. And so we decided to go directly to the ballot. And it obviously, when we had to kind of turn out, we had, it proved the point that the status quo just is not okay. And our city government needs to be much more responsive. So yeah, it's a broad coalition of all kinds of different groups across the city, but progressives through and through, which is what the city of Portland reflects. So are you a Democratic Socialist? I've been a member, I'm a lot of things for sure, but I think that the issues to me are what matter the most. I'm a member of the Democratic Party have been my entire life. And there's a lot of things the Democratic Party does that I support, there's some times that they don't. And that's like membership in a lot of organizations, I suppose we know a lot of people, for instance, in the city of Portland, we're members of the chamber of commerce, but don't necessarily appreciate what the chamber of commerce does all the time. But I think the DSA has been doing really good work in the city of Portland, the main people's alliance, the main building trades, et cetera, have been very effective. And I think the people of Portland responded. These initiatives passed with 60% for the vote. You're an old political hat, you know how this stuff works. When you win at 60% plus on average, you are reflective of the populace, especially when the other side spent a million bucks to try to defeat you. I think what's really important in these issues, and we should go into them is, these were all things that the council basically looked at and rejected and said, people don't want us to do. And we kept saying that's just simply not true. Two bought and sold by special interests. You know, when I first ran for mayor, I remember sitting in your office and you're saying to me, Ethan, you gotta have a vision. You gotta drive a vision. You gotta wanna go somewhere and you gotta try to get these people to follow you. And that's what I had. And we're bringing that vision to fruition piece by piece. That work doesn't stop, that's for sure. You talked about the 60% on the referenda questions. But Ethan, there are other measures of the political temperature in Portland and which way it's leaning. I mean, you're the most progressive politician around in Portland, at least the one running for public office and you were turned out of office. You know, I try to understand that and I look at the vote in the districts and so forth. And a lot of these neighborhood districts where there's homes and people struggling to send their kids to college and pay their property taxes and so forth, they're not, I don't think they're as liberal as you or the Portland first people, but you would know better because I'm not an expert. You think they are. Yeah, I mean, I have no doubt about it. You know, we passed rent control with 60%. We passed a minimum wage hike at almost over 60%. We passed a ban on facial surveillance. These were all things that the council rejected and these were all things that the people of this city, the Green New Deal were making sure that workers are able to get paid the wages they should be paid. You know, doubling the requirements in terms of how much affordable housing needs to be built, making sure that the building in Portland is environmentally sound, meeting the challenge of climate change. There's no doubt in my mind that people of Portland are progressive. You know, this was the biggest turnout ever. And look, I think politicians, it's your job when you're running for office, you got to figure out how to win them. So make no excuses, but we have the kind of turnout in which the most people ever, right? So you'll have to offer what your evidence is. My evidence is we had the highest turnout in the city of Portland that we have seen in certainly in 40 years. And with that level turnout, these very progressive, you would agree, referenda passed at 60%. And I'm not the most progressive politician. I appreciate you're saying that. There's lots of the members of our house delegation who are very progressive. We have a couple of progressive members of the city council now as well. So there's plenty of it. I think our problem is, you know, there's too much within our city government that's trying to protect the status quo. That's where we really see the problems. And, you know, what's your evidence that the people of this city, you know, don't support these policies? Well, I would say somebody, Ethan, I'm trying to take you on, but I was surprised that you didn't get more than 25 or 26% of the vote. Where were the liberals? Why did the liberals and the Portland progressives desert you in that election? Well, Harold, you know, as well, and you contributed to one of the facts, of course, that attacked me incessantly. I was disappointed by that. I'll be honest about that upfront that you were supporting them after your past support in terms of pushing me to have a vision. But you know, as well as I do, when you push for change, it creates division and city hall didn't like it. And the chamber of commerce didn't like it either. And when you put together all the spending of my opponents, you know, you're talking about a quarter million dollars being spent to get back to the status quo in city hall. And, but regardless, you know, personalities and policies, those things don't always connect, right? People can look at me and say, that, hey, that's not the personality, but the policies I support. And I believe that wholeheartedly. But, you know, again, Harold, you participated in supporting a pact that, you know, first ever pact that of course, violated all kinds of ethics and got fined, et cetera, because of their violations run by a Republican that did real damage. You know, it's very difficult in an environment like that. But again, the policies passed in the end. So that's what matters most. Do you think the money in politics makes a difference, the big difference? Yes, sure, of course. Do you? You don't think so? Because the Democrats certainly, now I did not vote for Susan Collins, but the Democrats certainly raised a lot of money, including some from me to defeat Susan Collins, didn't work, money didn't work. Yeah, but you, come on. I mean, that would be a simplistic analysis to say, if you look at one race and make a determination, I mean, you're right, in our five referenda, we spent, our side spent about $55,000 in total, their side spent almost a million bucks and we won. So did they spend their money badly? Yeah, but more importantly, they simply couldn't overcome the fact that these policies were so popular with the people of this city. So you can't take one race and make a determination. Susan Collins spent gazillions of dollars. And in the end, when you look at all the spending on all the outside groups, it's relatively even, and you get to a certain saturation point. But boy, money in politics is just incessant. If you look across the country, candidates with the most money, most often win. And that's pretty much indisputable. One of the things we're trying to fight for now, of course, is clean elections in municipal races. Let's take the money out of politics, make sure the candidates have the opportunity to get public financing so they don't have to be bought and sold by special interests. It's a real problem at City Hall. What do you think about the opposition? How could a guy like Donald Trump, a man with the worst character of any political candidate in American history and had been some bad ones, get so many votes? What's going on? Well, there's a certain level of divide in the country you know that exists. There is divide, but what I wanna know is why are so many people favoring a guy like Trump? Yeah, look, I mean, I can't give you any better analysis than other folks. He taps into a certain vein, a certain level of anger, taps into some emotional strains of racism, tries to find ways to get people motivated to turn out. But he was resoundly defeated, right? It wasn't even close. And he never got a majority of the vote in either one of his elections. And he was resoundly thrown out of the polls and resoundly thrown out of office. And I think that was somewhat maybe around character, I don't know, some of it, but I think it also was around the policies. And his policies and Republican policies just have not been putting people first. And that's what we're doing in Portland. And I think that's why we won those elections last fall. You know, it's very difficult. Remember, rent control had been on the ballot a couple of years before and it lost, right? And that was a very low turnout. And that's the problem. We look at our elections and we say these low turnouts and we determined that somehow that is what the people of the city want. But then when rent control was on the ballot and we had the largest turnout ever, well, then we actually had, I think, the kind of reflection of the electorate that you need. You know, as a little side note, you're talking about the mayor's races as we're getting into the charter commission and we should talk about it. You know, the charter's been reopened. You know, 72% of the people of the city said, reopen the charter. Said that the charter commission that put together this elected mayor system failed in 2009 and it's time for us to open it up again and finally create an elected mayor, which I think you support as well. You've long been an advocate that our mayor ought to actually have the executive powers they have. They should have. And hopefully we're on the verge of that and my conversations with almost all the candidates that are running, not all of them, but I'd say 75 to 80% all recognize the mayor needs additional tools, needs to be anywhere from a full executive mayor to a much stronger mayor to be able to really implement the policies that need to be implemented in the city. I think that will finally get us to a place where we have a system and the old system was terrible. But one of the things that was wrong with it is we held elections in off years. You know, it was this weird idea that let's go out. And so, you know, an interesting note is that no mayor has received 20% of the vote of the city of Portland, not a single mayor we have had, not me, not Mike Brennan, not Kate Snyder. And that's not reflective of what our values are. It should be much closer to 50% of the electorate. I mean, we have that problem across the races and across the states prior to this prior election, which fired everybody up because of Donald Trump. So the democratic socialists have a vision and Portland first is a democratic socialist organization. So I wanna ask you about some of the things and I'm sure there's some of the things there for you or not, some you are, but maybe you're for all of them. I don't know. But I went on their website to try to figure out where they stand on things. And I found out, this is where I do differ with you. I mean, I'm a Democrat and I agree with some things, but like, I know Republicans who don't agree with Trump and don't agree with the far right wing crazies. And there are some Democrats that are closer to the center than the democratic socialists who are socialists. So is there room in the nearer the middle for people in this country or do you have to be on either extreme in order to count? I mean, come on, Harold. Of course there's, I mean, they're the democratic party. I mean, I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying that Chuck Schumer, the democratic party somehow reflects the democratic socialists somehow or another or a friend? No, I'm talking about Portland Progressive's Portland First and I'm saying, okay, for a moderate Democrat, somebody who's not into that, is there a place for them too? Of course. Okay. All right. I mean, that's where the democratic party is in terms of leadership, right? The democratic party is in, the Republican party has gone very conservative and pulled everything to the right. And while you say there are Republicans out there that don't support Donald Trump, they are very, very few. Donald Trump got 94% of the Republicans. That is higher than George Bush ever got. That's higher than Ronald Reagan ever got. He got more Republicans than anybody. So that's where the Republican party is. The democratic party has been pulled to the middle, which would make sense as to why there are a lot of progressives out there who are saying the democratic party needs to get back to its roots. People like LBJ who actually fought for and made clear that we need to make sure that working people in this country get a fair shake, right? The guy you worked for, that one of your heroes in politics was so much more progressive than the democratic party of today than President Obama was, who I love and I think did a great job. And I think Joe Biden is actually doing a very good job. He's kind of reflecting the core values of what the democratic party believes in. So there's no doubt. Of course, the democratic party has tons of room for moderate Democrats, moderate Democrats are part of the leadership of the democratic party, much more so than Republicans. I agree with everything you just said. I agree with that. So I went online because I didn't know that I didn't know that the referendum, the people first charter people were democratic socialists. I didn't make the connection between the two. But you know, one thing about the internet, you do find out a lot. And if you have a TV show and you got to prepare for it, it's helpful. So, but I was all over the papers, Harold. So I'm not sure what you missed. You had just shows you how dumb I am. Didn't get it. I get you to read the papers still. Yeah, I didn't get it, but they have a website which lists the issues that they're interested in. And I don't know whether you're for all of them or probably not, but one of them is to create a Portland department of labor, a new department in city government. Yeah. Are you for that? I mean, Absolutely. Okay. I mean, let's talk about it. So people first charter is what you're talking about. People first charter is a coalition. I know you want to keep talking about DSA and that's great, happy to do that as well. But these are policies that reaching out to different groups throughout the city to say, hey, because I'm involved with people first charter for sure. Reaching out to different groups around the city and saying, what are some of the priorities? And right now in the city of Portland, there is no way for a local worker to go to city government to say, I'm not getting the wages I deserve or my employer is making me work more hours than is legal. And what people who are pushing for a department of labor in the city of Portland are saying is you shouldn't have to go to Augusta to try to figure out how to make sure that you get to go to Augusta. Why shouldn't you go to Augusta? People been going to Augusta for years to straighten these things. I've been a lawyer for 55 years. I've had these cases. What's wrong with going to Augusta? It's not that far away. It's only 50 minutes. How many workers have you represented in one? Ethan. No, that's what I mean because that's the important question. Because when I talk to workers, what they say is it's very cumbersome, right? You're at your employer and they're short changing you a couple of bucks an hour. They're 1099 in you and they should be giving you the benefits that you deserve or they're making you work in an unsafe environment. You know, it's small stuff that can have a big impact. Ethan, does the main department of labor have an office in Portland to serve these people in Portland? I guess I don't get what your resistance is. What we're trying to do is make sure. I'm just saying, I'm just testing what you're saying. Okay, so let me ask this. Wait a minute. You're saying they shouldn't have to go to Augusta and I'm saying, what's he talking about? There's a department of labor, a couple of offices here in Portland that serve these people. I don't get that. And all I would suggest is that you talk to some of the workers and see if that system is working for them. I think, look, if the Department of Labor in Augusta was as robust as it could be, but I don't know, Harold, do you think that we should not have a Department of Public Health in Portland, which we have because Lord knows Augusta's got a Department of Public Health. Ethan, that isn't the question. And let's not distract. No, no, no, no, let's move on. Let's move on. No, no, no, this is an important question. You want an office. Suppose the office is next to the Portland labor office is next door to the main labor office. Why should you have a Portland office if you've got a main office next door? So let me ask you this, Harold. What's the minimum wage in Portland? My predecessor, Mike Brennan, raised the minimum wage to 10, 10 an hour and it's gone up. And now we're about to go up to 15 an hour, right? Do you think that the state of Augusta is going to enforce our minimum wage of 15 bucks an hour? I think that you should pass a minimum wage in federally. And I think it should be $15. And I think you should have... Now you're distracting. I just asked you a question. The city of Portland, look, the city of Portland has its own fire department because we have our own fire regulations. We also have our own worker protections. And the state of Maine does not enforce our worker protections. I'm not gonna pursue this. I'm not gonna pursue this because you can go right down the line. Should the city of Portland replicate everything that the state does and everything that the federal government does? Maybe I'm not gonna go through that, let me. I understand your position. Your position is your forward. Okay, that's good enough. And we should hire union labor. Yeah, you want the city of Portland to establish a publicly owned bank. Is that true? No, publicly owned utility. No, this says, this is a people first charter found a publicly owned bank of Portland. Yeah, I don't think that that's people first charter. I think that's somebody who put that in the portal themselves to let people vote on it. You're in the portal, I think, which is people first charter, which is great. But if you look at it, you'll see which things come from people first charter and which just come from people in the public who have said it. So look at the logo. If the logo says people first charter, that is not a proposal of people first charter. I haven't looked at that, but one proposal of people first charter is a public utility that I support 100%. And eliminate the downtown improvement district. Yeah, that's not, again, that's not a proposal of people first charter. So what you're looking at, which I think is probably good for people to know is this is a portal that anybody in the community can go into and put an idea in and let people vote on and comment on. It's a vehicle that we created for the public to be able to have ideas that charter commissioners can take a look at. There are, if you look at it, there are basically 10 proposals. There are about 22 that are people first charter. Number one is eliminate the city manager and create an elected mayor. Second is expand the city council, pay them adequately. Third is provide clean elections for municipal races. Next one is to have resident voting for all adults in the city of Portland to be able to vote municipal elections. And then we go through a number of principles such as do we want to make sure that the charter provides and ensures adequate housing and healthcare and transportation and good environment. We want to have a publicly elected city attorney and city clerk and a publicly elected public advocate for the city of Portland. We want a public utility. That's another one that's one of our values. We want to look at shifting funds from the police department. That's another one of our values and create a citizen review board. These are the ones that are the values of people first Portland, people first charter that you can see in that portal. And I think that what we're finding is that there's tremendous support for those ideas that people really do want us to transform our city. And the biggest thing, and this is probably the one that's gonna be debated the most is around creating a truly executive elected mayor. I think this is a place where you and I have agreed in the past. I don't know if we're still there or not, but I think that the people of the city are very clear at this point that having an unelected leader who's unaccountable directly to the voters in two ways doesn't work. Number one, that means that that leader is not necessarily reflective of our values. And number two, there's no real way to replace that person if you feel like they're not doing the job that they want to do. Just like you can replace the mayor just like they replaced me, Mike Brennan. However, that gives people the opportunity to vote. I fully support that. Well, I fully support it too. So, yeah, I mean, I think I support it because of the need for accountability. There needs to be somebody at the top where the buck stops and if the economy of Portland falters because of whatever reason, if people stop investing money, if property tax levels begin to level off and decrease, somebody has to be accountable. And so while we're on that subject, and the full disclosure, I have two sons who are very active in the real estate business in Portland. And they are, quote, developers, although they don't build many buildings, they buy them and they raise capital and invest it in Portland. But I sense, and I've talked to others, not you, I don't pin this on you, Ethan, but there is a real feeling among the group that you identify with of anti-development, anti-investment in Portland, and which is fine. You know, I understand what their views are. Why should these people come and invest money and make money in Portland? So where should the city get its revenue? Because right now comes from property tax mostly and from federal grants, et cetera. But to do all of these things, to have all of these initiatives that these folks want, they gotta get some money and they've got to, I guess they are for raising property taxes on the wealthy, but when you raise property taxes, you have to raise them for everybody because we have equal taxation, okay? So it's all based on value. So if a poor person has a $250,000 house and a rich person has $250,000 house, they both pay the same tax. So where's the money gonna come from? Well, there's a lot packed in that. Let me just get to the property tax question first and then let's move backwards. It's not quite true that you can't actually create a progressive taxation. In the state of Maine, you are allowed to create a property tax relief program, which one of the things I'm very proud of as mayor that we created, which gets targeted property tax relief to our lowest middle income families. And so a much better way of doing taxation is not to reduce the tax rate. It's to make sure that you take whatever revenue you have and target it towards those low and middle income families. You know, the state program used to be called the circuit breaker goes to a lot of families. Janet Mills did a very good job of enhancing it a little bit. Paula Page actually did a good thing in terms of he made it based on income and got it on the income tax. And the city of Portland has this program. And so we could actually do a much better job of making sure that our property tax relief goes to the families who need it most. Because I agree with you. And across the board tax cut, I mean, right now there's a budget being proposed that has a 4% decrease on the city side tax levy. That means that Jeff Bezos is gonna get an almost $8,000 tax cut. Well, you and I both know that Jeff Bezos doesn't need an $8,000 tax cut. He's gonna get an $8,000 tax cut and the average family who has a $250,000 home is probably gonna get 250 bucks. So instead of doing that, let's put the money into a targeted property tax relief program, that's more progressive. So that's a much better way of doing it. In terms of the issues around development, I think that all people are trying to do is balance the scales, right? When I was mayor, we every day, I'm exaggerating, but every week, we would hear from the planning department saying, there is more development going on in the city of Portland since the Great Fire. We have not seen this number of permits coming through our office, which is why we had to do so much work to try to figure out how to streamline them as best as possible. We weren't as successful as we should have been, but the city of Portland has been developing. I mean, you walk down commercial street, right? You can see it. It is just wall to wall hotels, development, luxury condos. And I think the response this past fall was basically look, we have got to rebalance the scales. You can build housing, but you got to make sure that people can afford to live in that housing, right? You can build whatever you want to build, but you better make sure that workers get paid a little better so that we can make sure that all the profits aren't simply going to the top. You can make sure that you're gonna open your business, but we don't want you having workers in there working for the amount of money that they can't afford to live in our city. So it's not saying stop development. It's not saying that at all. I don't think anybody sees that happening even, right? Development is still going just as strong. What it is is trying to balance the scales. And again, I'd go back to your hero, LBJ, who you've taught me a lot about, and I've read every one of those books that you've told me to read and more. And he understood you got to rebalance it. You have to find a way to make sure that, well, yeah, okay, we're gonna have to put extra taxes on businesses in order to make sure that our elderly don't live in poverty, but that's okay because they should have healthcare, right? Our elderly should have healthcare, even if it means raise taxes on businesses to make them pay for it. That's what we have to be looking at as a community to say we want Portland to work for everybody. I don't see any slowdown in development, right? I mean, you just can't see more creams going up in any city in the state of Maine. More permits being, more permits being issued in any state of Maine, in any city in Maine, it's a rebalancing. That's what last fall was. So I'm not gonna, when I do agree with you, which I do frequently, I'm not gonna say I agree with you, I agree with you, I agree with you. Although I feel it necessary, you know, sometimes because there are people watching this show who will agree with you, who will say, Harold Pacis, and one of them said to me in a Portland meeting, you're a segregationist and you know, they'll call you a racist or whatever if they don't like what you're saying. And I don't like that's what the right, the far right does the same thing. Far left and the far right behave often in the same way. Name, call. I don't accept that, I don't accept that. No, you don't, they do, and they do. I'm not a victim, but I've been called names because I express an opinion. And the far right does that all the time. So, except the difference Harold is, and I hear you, of course, there are knuckleheads out there everywhere, right? There are people who say things they shouldn't say everywhere, but the far right pretty much runs the Republican Party, right? And for us to create false equivalences like the far right is some extreme minor peace when they stormed the Capitol, when the president of the United States sends dog whistles, it's not even close. There's a couple of people over on the left. Of course it's not close, okay? That, the Republican Party has gone as a party, far to the right. The Democratic Party as a party has not gone far to the left. No question about it. I agree with that. But about the cranes, you know, I started living here in 1939 and I've been around here a long time. And until the 1960s, nothing happened here. Between the Civil War and the 1960s, almost a hundred years, there wasn't, there are no new buildings, none, zero. And it can happen again. And it's happening in other cities. And so I know, I understand the view of socialists, I read a lot of history, I'm familiar with. It's the view, you keep saying that, but it's the view of Democrats. 60% of the city voted for this. I understand your argument, 60% of the city. 60%, I mean, how do we walk away from that? How do we say that's not mainstream? It's not like it was 50.0. You know something? I remember when people voted to restrict the main turnpike to two lanes. Yeah. Okay? So there's been a lot of referendum. I remember when the Democrats passed a budget that made some sense, the Republicans said we're gonna have a referendum and repeal it and it won. So I think these things happen in referenda and it's probably one of the reasons why the founding fathers decided to have a representative government rather than one read simply run by referenda. But in any event, we don't need to count that right. Look, no, it's a good debate. Because I don't think governing by referendum is the first choice. But when your government, in Portland in particular, continues to stymie things that the people know they need, what do you do? Right? You say that to me is what you, when we passed gay marriage, we had to do it through referenda and we did. And when we passed a statewide $12 minimum wage, we did it through referendum because we had no choice. Has the referendum been used for bad purposes? Of course. But when you're in politics, I always say to people, be very cautious about trying to reject what democracy tells you they want. Whether you are a politician who lost an election, right? Or whether you are somebody who didn't like the outcome of a referendum, you have to accept it and you have to reflect. In the city of Portland with the largest turnout ever, said raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour and pay people hazard pay. Is that gonna somehow or another be the end of the world? I understand your point and you've made it a couple of times over and there are plenty of people that will agree that you've pushed that point and I understand it. And I was saying that, again, they said that the main term pike should not be expanded to three lanes on each side. And so I'm a little bit probably a little bit more dubious about referenda results than you are, but we have different views. Haven't elected officials done things too that you think are done? Constantly. Of course, right? That doesn't mean that you throw out the elected system. No, I don't go around, yeah, exactly. But even though they do it, I don't necessarily defend it all the time because they did it, so. But you do defend the representative government, even though the representative government fails sometimes and not only fails, does the wrong thing. And that's all I mean about citizen initiatives. I don't think we should govern by citizen initiative. That shouldn't be our first recourse, but when your representative government fails you over and over again, I think that's where you have to say, okay, and interestingly, let me bring one point out about this. There were five referenda last fall, right? And one of them failed. Which one failed, the Airbnb? And I actually think part of the reason Airbnb failed is because the council had actually done work on Airbnb. It didn't go as far as people wanted, but it had done work, and so there was already a compromise in place and it didn't have as much momentum. Whereas minimum wage, nothing, rent control, nothing, facial surveillance band week, and green new deal, nothing. I think the people said, they're not doing anything. We need to bring these forward. When our government did do some work, they actually stepped back. I was looking for a, you know, Nicholas Christoff is, he raised, he's a, I bet he's a guy, I bet a columnist for the New York Times. Yeah, pretty liberal guy. And he's from Oregon. And he wrote a piece about be careful. Don't go too far about Portland, Oregon. And all the reasons why Portland, Oregon is not quite as an attractive place for people to move to as it used to be. So I think that you might get a little pushback on some of this stuff. You know, I don't understand some of it. Eliminate downtown improvement district. Well, for my sons, that probably, I'll save them some money. What's wrong with the downtown improvement district? Yeah, I don't take that. That's not a position I've had. That's just a position that somebody in Portland has had. I think, you know, some of what the issue is, is that downtown gets more services than other areas. And some people see that from the outside and say, maybe we ought to be doing that a little differently or use that money a little differently. But, you know, one time I did try to say, let's take some of the Portland downtown district money and use it for other purposes, which I thought were more important than what the purposes were, like the cadets and that kind of stuff. But I don't take a position to get rid of the Portland downtown district. I think we could expand it actually to other areas and do some more good work. It's an important tool. And interestingly, it's actually a tool that allows more progressive taxation because you put extra money, there's mostly businesses downtown, so they pay an extra portion in it. So, but I remember you being frustrated sometimes with Portland downtown district. I remember we were talking about that because you've got some buildings downtown and you're like, you got to pay all this extra money and what's it going to? I think that's the question. Oh, sure. What's it going to? So here's one, turn the entire old Port and Congress Street from Longfellow Square to Lincoln Park into a pedestrian only zone. Yeah, that's again, that's just an idea that somebody brought up. But I've actually, I kind of like the idea. I've often thought that we ought to turn Congress Street. I'd be curious your thoughts on this. From Monument Square to Congress Square Park. You know how we had those art walks and we'd close that street and it just would become this boulevard that people could walk on. I think it, instead of doing it downtown where the tourism industry is already really strong, we need to get people who come on those cruise ships to get up into the middle of Portland. And if we created a little walkway there, I think it'd be fun. I think it'd be an interesting idea to try one summer and see how it goes. But that's not a policy of people first charter. It's not something that I've been pushing when I was mayor for four years, I don't think I ever pushed it but I did think it was a good idea to play with. The, back to downtown for a minute, about 16%, 17%, 18% fluctuates depending on the building of each building's income. And when there's, and when you have a lot of vacant space, it can be 25% goes to property tax. So the city and the property owners are partners Yeah. If the property owner increases the value of the building, that's good for the city of Portland because they're partners. So it's in the city's interest to have it flourish and to have the downtown district flourish and to have the buildings maintain their value. Do you agree with that? Absolutely, yeah. And I think having a vital downtown is really key. And I think part of having a vital downtown, certainly walkability is a very important part. You know, you have to balance that with the retail and sort of how does all of that work? But I think a vital downtown is really key to the entire city of Portland, very, very important. Well, I can tell you that Congress streets are pretty dead street. Not as dead as it used to be. I will say that it was more abundant for decades but after they built them all. But if you go out in Congress street right now, you can count on two hands the number of people walking on the sidewalks. So I don't think the problem is is no place for pedestrians to walk. They got plenty of room to walk. It's just not there. They just don't have that. I don't think it's an issue of a place. I think it's like, you know, Burlington did this and a number of cities, Santa Monica did it, you know, took a big boulevard and just turned it into a walking area. And a lot of retail came there and it became a real community space and people were able to perform and do all kinds of stuff. And it made kind of this nice little downtown thing. I think that's what people think about when they talk about having Congress street become just pedestrian only or something like that or just buses. I mean, look, I mean, who in their right mind that's a manor, a Portlander actually drives on Congress street anymore unless you absolutely have to, right? It's just tedious. So you take side streets anyway because it's just jammed and there's not a lot of parking. So it's not like retail shops, you know people come and park right in front of the retail shop to go under renties. There's only three spots there. So they don't need the drive up traffic. So I think that's some of the conversation making our downtown more walkable, more livable. I want more housing downtown. I think that's the huge key. How do we get more affordable housing right downtown would be huge retail first floor housing above? How do you get more affordable housing downtown? It's a good question. What are you focused on that? Yeah, you've got to incentivize it. You certainly have to do it through zoning. We did some of that with the referenda last fall as people build housing now, they've got to have 25% of it be affordable before it was only one out of 10 units. So it didn't have much impact. But now if somebody wants to build housing downtown they've got to build much more. It's actually affordable for people to live in. That will certainly help doing zoning around first floor retail. All that kind of work is very important. But look, there's a lot of, as you know there's a lot of class B office space in the city of Portland that's not full, right? That's always been 10% vacancy, 15, 20 I think you were saying. If we could find a way to incentivize folks to turn that into some kind of housing I think that'd be great because you get people then. Well, the only way to incentivize people if because it's still as a capitalist country. So if people not going to go to the bank and borrow a million dollars and take those because the bank will want it back. The bank wants it back. So unless they can make an investment in which there was a return. And so you can say, okay, it's gonna build it's gonna cost $5 million to build this building. We got to put a lot of affordable apartments in it, just fine. But if they don't produce enough cash enough rental income to pay the mortgage to pay the bank, then the person who makes the investment goes bankrupt. So that's what you got to figure out is how can you get them incentivize them to do it? And one of the ways to incentivize them to do it is to make sure that they can pay off the bank loan. Yeah, I mean, we do it through tax credits, right? I mean, there's a lot of tax credit properties in Portland we haven't got as many downtown maybe with the new 25% requirements there'll be more opportunity for tax credit properties to develop. You can also do it through zoning. You can incentivize like on India Street they incentivize if you go an extra floor with housing or if you put a green roof you can do an extra floor there, go a story higher. You know, down in Bayside one of the biggest failures of my time as mayor we sold 4.1 acres of property that literally could have built over a thousand units of housing and we got about a hundred because we just sold it to who would give us the price. You know this story because you were involved in it, right? And we didn't say to developers we want you to come in and show us the best you can propose for housing for this area 10 stories up, first floor retail let's create the kind of housing that this city needs we'll give you the property for free if you build what we need in the community as opposed to coming forward and saying you wanna build what you wanna build versus what we think and I think that was a mistake. What do you mean by first floor retail? I just, this is not important, but... Well, just oftentimes, you know planners will say it's important to have retail and businesses on the first floor and housing above. If you go to a place like New York, for instance you'll see that almost everywhere, right? Lots of housing, so the people live in the community they come down, they use the shops but the shops are all on the first floor. All right, I agree with that. The problem here is they do it and you should do it but there's a lot of empty first floor space. I mean, there's a condo building at the corner of four and high street where you turn left to go up high street. And I think the building is full the building was completed two or three years ago first floor retail space for rent there if you wanna go down there, rent is still available. I know. And so it look, the market, I've lived a long time and I've been in and out of government and I am not a socialist. I do believe not like the right wing Republicans but I do believe that the market has a role to play. But the Chinese communists figured that out. Communist party runs the country but capitalism runs the economy and... It's just a balance though. I mean, I don't believe, I believe in the same thing. I think you and I only differ maybe and I don't even know how much we really do because when you and I really talk about it I think we're a lot closer than perhaps we come across in some of these shows but it's just a balance, right? I think that developers should be able to build housing but I wanna make sure if there's some affordability to that housing and I want more affordability than perhaps you do because I think you also want affordability. I'm not somebody who says just let the free market run wild. I don't think you are either, right? I'm not either. Right, neither of us are. It's just where that balance comes in. And I think in a city like this where we've seen rents go up 40, 50% over five years you need some kind of balance that says, okay, we gotta put rent control in place. You still get to make your profit. You still get to increase rents but what you can't do is be gouging tenants so that nobody can afford to live in the city anymore. I agree with that. Yeah, I agree with that. The only thing I would add is let's make sure we have the... And no doubt there are people around landlords who will gouge tenants. And then there are also people around landlords who will not gouge tenants but need to get a fair return. And that's where government and people with ideas like you and me have a big responsibility because it's fine-tuning the economy saying, okay, we're gonna decide how to fine-tune this economy. It's a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility and oftentimes it hasn't worked. And look, world history is full of it. I believe in regulation. I believe in regulating capitalists. I believe that they shouldn't be able to just do whatever they want and squeeze people. I believe all of that. But you know, Pablo Casals, the great cellist was on television one time and it was a PBS program and he was conducting a youth orchestra in Puerto Rico. And they were doing the rehearsal and he tapped his baton and he stopped them. And he said, wait, wait, you have to understand making good music is like making good government. Freedom, but with order. And knowing where that is on the spectrum is quite a trick. It's not easy, but because it's a trick and it's not easy public policy makers should be careful. They should say to themselves, hey, this ain't easy. This ain't simple. And that's all I'm saying. I'm with you, but you as somebody who's been on both the government policy side and on the capitalist side, we'll just put it that way, the developer side. I think it's important that folks like you say to developers, hey folks, stop lighting your hair on fire every time somebody wants to make sure you don't pollute a river, right? The Chamber of Commerce in the city of Portland lights their hair on fire every time any kind of policy gets proposed. You and I know that a $15 minimum wage in the city of Portland isn't gonna destroy our economy. And you and I know that putting some environmental regulations on a building is not gonna destroy our economy or a facial surveillance ban is not gonna destroy our economy, right? But the Chamber of Commerce and developers will go around and continually say and spend a million bucks saying this is gonna destroy our economy. So I'll make a pledge to you that on my side, I will do my best with the politicians and the political advocates to not go too far. But you gotta do a little bit on your side to say that folks, hey, stop lighting your hair on fire because you know what, if you engage more and actually have a conversation, we could actually create policy in which it's not simply yes or no, but it's something we both can live with. Well, that's a very good point. I'm glad I got us into that conversation because you make a very good point, Ethan. You know, it's engagement is important. Now here's the problem. We do things we have kind of symbols that drive us apart and the right does that all the time, you know? It just drives us apart. A lot of it's racial for them to no question about it. But I think people say you wonder how the Democrats after this big win by Biden running against Trump lost seats in Congress, lost seats in Congress. Now I have my own pet explanation for that. People, voters do look for simple phrases, simple things that motivate their vote, defund the police. Those words, the words chosen for that movement, defund the police turned a lot of people off that I know are moderates who are scared to death about this effort to defund the police. To them, that means you don't want order. You don't want the police. To you, it means something entirely different. You don't want to eliminate police. You want to have police keep order in communities. I know that, but the phrase defund the police. So it makes people suspicious. They say, these guys want to destroy things. Right. Well, and certainly you and I both understand words are very important. What I would say is gay marriage scared people, right? I ran a campaign in 1996 in which Dale McCormick was running for Congress and out lesbian. And it was very difficult to talk about things like gay marriage or even just gay rights. And it took us a while to make it not so scary. And part of making it not so scary is you keep talking about it. And whether it's desegregating schools which sounded really terrifying to a lot of people but you know what, over time, you have to try to find a way to make it different. Black lives matter was really threatening to people when it first started coming out. It's become less threatening to people. It's become more accepted. People understand it better. So I'm with you. I understand and politicians have to be careful. But I don't think that advocates, I think advocates who are out there should be pushing the envelope. Advocates should be saying, you know what? 15 bucks an hour, which was scary to people when they first proposed it because it was 10 years ago, remember? 15 bucks an hour. Now Joe Biden supports 15 bucks an hour, right? Hillary didn't support 15 bucks an hour in 2016 but it takes time. So I don't get as angry at folks who are trying to push the envelope. If what they are trying to do is to push the envelope in the right direction. I do think politicians have to be careful about what language they incorporate. Yeah, but I don't think that- Ethan, I just think they'd have been better off. In my view, my personal view, probably saved a few democratic seats if they'd said reform the police. Maybe, but I don't know because you know that the other side will pay in however they want. And I think defund the police has actually gotten the kind of traction that's actually changed the conversation. Reform the police is something that I think people could anybody could say. And defund the police challenged people to think a little bit differently and to say what we are actually talking about is redirecting some funds. Did we lose some seats over it? We might have, I don't know. I haven't really done the analysis that deeply in terms of who we won and who we lost. But I will say, it was, I was very sad to see that we lost those seats. I think we lost those seats because Donald Trump has a real grip and he also had much higher turnout. And we got higher turnout because democratic districts really turned out in a way that they had not turned out before. And we have to find a way that have our party appeal to folks all the way down the line. Ethan, we've got only two or three minutes left. Yeah. So I think Portland is a very desirable place to live. I think a lot of people around the country come here who visit here, say, dude, this is a pretty nice, desirable place to live. So you're saying it's not. You're saying- No, no, that's not fair. That is not what I said. Oh, yo, you know what I'm saying, yo. That's like saying before we want to stop development. That's like, you're just, you create this either or. Oh, your thing, Portland is an awesome city. Oh, you do. Well, look at it. I just think that, wait a minute. Wait, I'll stop now. You think that's awesome city. Well, the Portland City Council, which has all the power under our charter, the Portland City Council has been running it for since 1923 or whatever. They've been in charge. I don't think they've done a good job all the time, but the city, city's doing okay despite it. So the council form of government, everybody says, well, it's the Klan that did it. No, it was all across the country. The Klan was in Maine, was upset because the Irish politicians in Portland, the Irish immigrants were getting power. It wasn't about black people. There were no black people here then to speak of, just a handful. And that's why the Klan was so active here in those days. But across the country for reformers, reformers across the country were saying, there's too much corruption in city government and we need to have it more professional. Like you have a board of directors elected by the public and a professional running it so that it's not corrupted. That's why it happened. Well, except there was not corruption in Portland. You know that. There's no evidence of that. And they tried to pass the same charter reform twice before and it failed. And then the KKK came in and said, we support it and it passed. So you can't minimize the Chamber of Commerce and the KKK's collaboration because they've been trying to create this form of government before. And the most important part you said is that the reason they wanted to do it is not because there was corruption because there is no evidence that there was corruption was because Irish Catholics and Jews and African-Americans in the community were getting too much voice. And so they wiped out district seats in 36 council seats. I just want to correct one thing. You're saying in 1920s, African-Americans in the Portland community were getting too much power? I put them all together. African-Americans, Catholics, Jews, immigrant voices. How many African-Americans do you think were in power, Portland made? I think there were about 500 at that time. In how many African-Americans do you think were in power in Portland, Maine? Oh, no, no, I'm talking about voting power. Oh, voting power, okay. Voting power, not on the council. We're gonna end, but you would agree, wouldn't you, that the council manager form of government, which I'm not defending, you know I'm not, the council manager form of government spread all over the country, all over the country, not Portland, Maine, not just Portland, Maine. Everywhere, from coast to coast. Well, and now if you look at the major cities of all across the country, right? You look at the biggest city in every state, 43 of them have an elected mayor with executive power. Seven have that system. And of the lowest 16 of which we are apart, only one has a council manager from a government anymore and that's us. So clearly people have said to themselves, okay, maybe that wasn't appropriate government at that time, I don't think so. I think it was done for xenophobic reasons, but okay, it sure is not needed anymore. We have other checks and balances. We have to, we could go on for another hour here. We could, we could, we'll do it next month. We'll have to do part two for Jim. I have to put an end to this one. Thank you very much for coming and being on the show is very interesting. You and I agree on many things and we disagree on many things. So that makes for an interesting conversation.