Legal Challenge Filed Against Ballot Initiative Aimed at Rerouting Climate Tax Dollars to Police

A group of advocates from local progressive nonprofits has filed a legal challenge to a ballot initiative that would reroute 25% of the money from the Portland Clean Energy Fund tax to hiring 400 additional police officers.

The three plaintiffs—Jenny Lee of the Coalition of Communities of Color, Devin Ruiz of the Next Up Action Fund, and Jackie Yerby, a board member of the progressive political advocacy group Portland for All—filed the challenge in Multnomah County Circuit Court this week.

The ballot initiative being challenged is backed by the Portland Police Association and some of the city’s most powerful real estate developers. It seeks to divert 25% of PCEF tax revenues to swell the ranks of the Portland Police Bureau by an additional 400 officers. (Portland has 1.2 police officers per 1,000 residents, well below the national average of 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents.)

The petitioners argue that the ballot title submitted to the city for approval fails to meet all state requirements. More importantly, though, petitioners argue that the initiative is a “constitutionally impermissible attempt to delegate to the Portland City Council the power to unilaterally amend the city charter in the future, in violation [of the] Oregon Constitution.”

The lawsuit plaintiffs represent three of the city’s most politically active nonprofits, who are part of a network of advocates and nonprofits that helped pass the 2018 ballot measure approving PCEF. Since its inception, that fund has raked in hundreds of millions more in revenues than initially projected, providing a conduit of dollars to the city of Portland that can only be used for climate-related projects.

How those unexpected dollars should be used—especially as the city reckons with current and future budget shortfalls—has become a point of contention between more left-leaning elected officials and moderates.

The plaintiffs said in a Thursday statement that the measure would “permanently wrest power from the democratically elected leaders of the Portland City Council to set the budget, and place outsized authority to set the police budget and priorities into a new commission, a majority of whose members are unelected and unaccountable to voters.”

It does not appear a judge has been assigned to the case.