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A report released last week on first-year spending of a tax to aid homeless people in the tri-county area showed Clackamas County had spent only 6.6% of its available funds.
On Friday, Metro Council President Lynn Peterson and Metro Councilor Christine Lewis said in a statement that the committee tasked with overseeing spending of the tax would “identify and daylight the impediments and barriers to spending that existed in Clackamas County in the first year of the program—both operational and political.”
That’s a not so thinly veiled rebuke of Clackamas County Chair Tootie Smith, a Republican whose relationship with more liberal jurisdictions is often strained.
In a statement to WW last week, Clackamas County said it didn’t have infrastructure in place to swiftly allocate the dollars. County spokeswoman Kimberly Webb added that the county “tends not to spend money before we have it.”
Multnomah County spent 38% of its available funds and Washington County spent 24%. Overall, the report said 1,639 homeless people were housed during the first year of the 10-year tax on high-income earners and businesses.
