This fall, the League is launching a new program called “Portland 101.”  Our goal is to make local government more relevant and accessible. Through this program, participants will get to know the specific people that run our government agencies on a daily basis. 

Why do we need Portland 101? Because, when people think of government, they think of partisanship in Augusta, or worse, Washington, DC.  Government has become nearly synonymous with politics—in a bad way.  People think of government as a mess.  People don't think of specific decision-makers and government officials, they think of it as a bureaucratic blob.  Government isn’t seen as a tool to solve our problems, it is the problem.  

We need to recognize that government isn’t some far off capital that they never visit, but that government is our laws, our highways, our health and safety agencies, our schools.   Government is our public institutions that protect us physically and financially: our fire departments, our police forces.  Government is the people that serve us, not only elected officials, but the commissioners, city managers, and department heads that run our government agencies on a day-to-day basis.

Portland 101 will bring together 20 active citizens and provide them with information about how our local and statewide government works in practice.  Participants will have the chance to meet and have a dialogue with the people that are responsible for specific pillars of our society. They will tour the facilities that protect our waterways and house our halls of justice.  This will allow conversation between two people whose choices affect the other (one is voting, responding to public officials with commentary; the other is making the day-to-day choices of how to make the services they're charged with work).  Participants will learn about the opportunities and challenges these agencies face—and how we can all work together to help these government entities run more effectively.  They will get to know their city and state better than they ever have before.  They will come to understand who makes decisions regarding issues they are concerned about and learn about issues they’ve never considered before.