Here we go again. Just a decade after Portland convened a charter commission and altered our city’s government, we are poised to do it again. Last time the biggest outcome was a charter revision providing for direct election of the mayor by city voters rather than the city councilors. The new elected mayor, however, was not given executive authority, which remains with a city manager who is hired by and reports to the council. Now a new charter commission will revisit those changes put into effect in 2010.

A recent Portland Press Herald article discussed the “strong mayor concept.” The article quoted observers who believe that having a popularly elected mayor will make the city more progressive and more responsive to the city’s diverse constituents.

I am neither for nor against a shift in executive authority, but it does call to mind my own experience in a city with a strong mayor.

Coming from a small town, I went off to college in Philadelphia, America’s fourth-largest city at the time. It was a city of great diversity, where the arts and progressive views flourished. Yet the mayor from 1972 to 1980, who was a former cop and police commissioner, was a poster child for a right wing tyrannically strong mayor. His name was Frank Rizzo.

Rizzo was proud of being a tough guy. He scoffed at progressive notions like social justice and racial equity.

In Rizzo’s first term, his cops staged a raid on the Black Panthers and lined up their suspects naked on the city street. He fought against desegregation of his city’s schools and blocked construction of public housing in majority-white neighborhoods.

Wikipedia describes Mayor Rizzo’s reign as follows: “During his tenure as police commissioner and mayor, the Philadelphia police department engaged in patterns of police brutality, intimidation, coercion, and disregard for constitutional rights, in particular toward the African-American community.”

On one occasion, Rizzo showed up at a formal event with a police truncheon in his tuxedo cummerbund.

Rizzo bragged that his police force was “equipped to fight wars” and “could invade Cuba – and win.” He trafficked in racist and homophobic slurs. What I read and heard about our mayor then so often struck me as horrifying.

In 1979, the U.S. Justice Department brought a lawsuit against Rizzo and his administration that included 271 pages listing thousands of people shot or beaten by Rizzo’s police. A Philadelphia Bar Association study concluded that 299 killings by Philadelphia cops between 1970 and 1978 were clearly illegal.

One late night in Rizzo’s Philadelphia, I was wrongly swept up by police targeting a car full of mixed-race joyriders. When the drunk and apologetic driver tried to tell the cops that I was not with his group, an arresting officer shouted, “Shut the hell up” and started pistol whipping him. I quietly told this victim of police violence that I would be a witness for him and against the officer. He told me he would not dare press charges. He was cowed, as was much of the city.

After two terms in office, Rizzo tried to change the local election ordinance so he could run for a third term. During that campaign he urged supporters to “Vote White.” Fortunately, he failed and was forced to leave office.

Lest we convince ourselves that a guy like Rizzo could never succeed here in Portland, let us recall that one Mike Chitwood emerged from Rizzo’s Philadelphia police force to become police chief in Portland for more than a decade. ‘Media Mike’ was as popular as he was hard-nosed while protecting and serving Portland.

Not long ago, Chitwood said of his former now deceased boss: “When Frank Rizzo walked into a neighborhood, people felt safe … If he told you to go through a door, you wouldn’t hesitate.”

I do not offer these recollections of events remote in time and distance to say that strong mayors make for bad government. Some of the best run cities have strong mayors and others have strong city managers. Poorly run cities also are of both types.

The moral of the Frank Rizzo story is that changing the form of government in Portland is not likely by itself to achieve the positive reforms and changes Portlanders might envision. Becoming a strong-mayor city might move us in the right direction. Then again, maybe not.