About Jon
Jonathan Walker is a 40 year-old dad who lives in Southeast with his amazing wife and their two young boys. At his core, Jon is a very boring nerd. When he isn't making dinner or playing with his adorable sons, Jon spends an almost concerning amount of time thinking about how to make government programs just a little bit better for regular people. Jon was raised in New Jersey, but his family has a long history in Portland. He loves all that Portland has to offer and wants it to improve.
Jon got his Master in Public Policy here at Portland State University and now works as the policy analyst for the Oregon Health Authority’s Office of Actuarial and Financial Analytics. In this role Jon serves as a financial regulator of Oregon’s Medicaid program. He has worked to improve transparency and proactively put in place systems to protect the most vulnerable Oregonians. He also spearheaded change which will in the future cause excess earnings in our Medicaid managed care system to be reinvested in communities.
Before working for OHA Jon was a journalist and progressive policy analyst. He worked on a broad range of issues including pushing for expanding health care, student loan reform, advocating for ending ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ marijuana legalization, and political reform. Most of Jon’s adult life has been spent reading legislation, government reports, audits, court rulings, and policy papers all to find new ways to make things better for regular people. As a big policy nerd, he loves it.
Jon believes the best way to keep Portland weird and vibrant is to make Portland’s new government as boring as possible. He wants a city government that runs so well that no one else ever has to think about it. Voters should be at their kids' soccer games, happy hour, or wherever else they want to spend their time -- not a city council meeting to try to get a basic service fixed. Jon believes he is the boring policy nerd who can help make that happen.
Jon’s mantra is “implementation, implementation, implementation.” Portland’s governments have long supported great lofty ideals but fallen short because no one thinks about the nuts and bolts of how to actually implement them. Jon wants to be that person on the new city council -- always asking how we implement an idea and auditing what we have to improve it..
The Most Boring Man in Portland?
For starters, Jon Walker is as remarkably unremarkable as you get. He is exactly average height at 5.9, almost exactly average age at 40, and has the most average sized family, with two adults with two adorable kids. He has the most boring haircut: a short crop with a receding hairline. His only vices are his addiction to his morning pot of tea and an IPA with dinner on the weekend. What he likes to do for fun is mostly read, bake, and hike with his kids.
But what really makes Jon boring is how much he loves policy. During the day as a policy analyst for the Oregon Health Authority’s Office of Actuarial and Financial Analytics he is reviewing Medicaid financial statements, updating government rules, carefully studying federal regulations to find ways to improve access for Oregonians, and finding ways to streamline oversight of billions of dollars. At night after he puts his sons to bed, Jon then spends his time reading about policies, like the impact of street design on traffic fatalities, or talking with other experts about how to design state-based health insurance subsidies to increase insurance coverage by 10%. To most people it is incredibly, boring but Jon loves it.
What Jon wants to do is make Portland city government as boring as he is. It should be a government most people almost never think about because it is delivering services on time, as expected, with minimum hassle, and on budget. No one talks much about things when they work as they are supposed to.
Currently, Portland is often used as a punching bag to make progressive policy look bad. Jon wants to change that. The best way to do that is to make Portland city government so well run it becomes too boring for any national news. America will not embrace progressive policies and progressive goals unless we can make them as boring as Jon.