‘Embarrassed for our city’: Prosper Portland board’s fissure with City Hall widens amid leader’s controversial exit

The fault line between Prosper Portland’s board of commissioners and City Hall widened Friday, as commissioners for the economic development agency apologized to a departing leader who had upset a crop of newly elected City Council members.

Shea Flaherty Betin, Prosper’s interim executive director since September,

last month blasted a proposal

by Councilors Mitch Green and Jamie Dunphy to cut all $11 million of Prosper’s general fund dollars from the upcoming fiscal year budget. He also rallied local business owners to lobby against the Dunphy-Green proposal, which ultimately failed.

But in the aftermath of the combative budget fight, Mayor Keith Wilson told Prosper Board Chair Gustavo Cruz that Flaherty Betin

needed to step down as Prosper’s leader

but should remain with Prosper in some other role. Flaherty Betin said he was also given the option to leave the agency altogether, which he took.

All that led to a virtual Prosper board meeting Friday where several business leaders and the five commissioners alike shed tears and voiced their disappointment over what they viewed as the forced ouster of Flaherty Betin, the first Latino to lead the agency.

Commissioners voted to replace Flaherty Betin with Lisa Abuaf, deputy interim executive director, as interim leader until a permanent executive director starts in the summer.

Flaherty Betin’s last day with the agency is June 13.

“I am so sorry that this is happening. I feel really embarrassed, frankly,” commissioner Felisa Hagins said through tears Friday. “I’m very embarrassed for our city. I think that there are the right ways and the wrong ways to do things. I think that this was not the right way.”

Commissioner Michi Slick thanked Flaherty Betin for all the “sacrifices” he made for the agency and also apologized for “how it all went down.”

“I don’t like at all why you’re leaving,” Slick said, “but know that you’re going out in a blaze of glory.”

The fight over the general fund dollars morphed into a broader debate over Prosper’s semi-independent governance.

Unlike city bureaus, Prosper operates under the supervision of its five commissioners, who are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. But some council members said they’d like to see economic development work more directly under the council’s oversight.

Commissioner Marcelino Alvarez said that in other industries, Flaherty Betin’s actions to advocate for the survival of his organization would be cause for celebration — “not with the actions that we’re contemplating today.”

“I hope that we learn from this,” Alvarez said, “because I don’t want to have a conversation like this again the next time the agency makes a hard decision or fights for its staff or its ability to operate.”

Stephen Green, executive director of the small business advocate Better Portland, also heaped praises on Flaherty Betin.

Green said the “community knows what happened in this moment.”

Stories by

Jonathan Bach

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