On a sunny day in Sweden in 2008, Portland politicians and business executives plucked smoked salmon from silver trays and took in the midday harbor view from Stockholm's regal City Hall.
Members of the group, on a tour for tips to reduce Portland's energy use, were mingling when Stockholm's Lord Mayor Bo Bladholm joined them. Wrapped in a formal black coat and a necklace of silver shields, he looked to greet the leader of Portland's delegation.
The problem: Mayor-elect Sam Adams couldn't be found. He missed the luncheon and a meeting afterward with the U.S. ambassador to Sweden, according to two people present.
"We had to cover for him," said David Bragdon, the former Metro president who now works for New York City. "We had to make a vague excuse because we didn't know the real reason."
Those weren't Adams' only absences. He also missed three high-profile speeches before 400-plus crowds at national bike conferences, including one last year in Portland.
Now, as he nears the midpoint of his term and potential rivals consider running for his job, people who work in and around City Hall say the mayor has a record of unreliability that's limiting his ability to lead. One key official said Adams misses so many appearances that staffers are asked ahead of time to prepare a backup plan. Four high-level officials said he's frequently late, keeping high-paid public employees cooling their heels.
For his part, Adams said he can't remember details of the visit to Sweden or the missed bike speeches. But he said any absences are simply part of being a busy big-city mayor. Officials with decades of political experience, however, said they can't recall another Portland mayor who was so routinely late or absent, especially for high-profile appearances.
Among Adams' absences:
•Adams missed speeches in 2006 and 2008 at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. In both cases, Portlanders scrambled to fill his time slot in the minutes before Adams was to take the stage.
•Last year, the mayor failed at the last minute to show up for a keynote speech at the city-sponsored National Safe Routes to School conference in Portland, leaving an aide to take his place.
•Adams has rescheduled a standing monthly meeting with Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen in five of the last six months, according to records from Cogen's office.
Bragdon and other high-level government officials said Adams' absences embarrass the city and complicate his relationships with other Oregon leaders. "Politics is a business where you need to rely on people to be where they say they're going to be and live up to their commitments," Bragdon said.
Of the dozens of people interviewed for this story, Bragdon was one of the few willing to be named. Most work for or with the city and didn't want to jeopardize jobs or contracts -- or risk angering a mayor they need to get along with for another two years.
Adams, in an interview last week, said he's not unreliable, just busy.
"I'm tightly scheduled and I make the vast, vast, vast majority of the meetings I'm scheduled for," Adams said in the interview, attended by chief of staff Tom Miller and spokesman Roy Kaufmann. "But sometimes events conspire where my schedule changes. Sometimes, of the thousands of meetings that I have, I get sick or the schedule runs late. I think that is part of the complex life of being a public official."
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