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Multnomah County passed a $4 billion budget for the coming fiscal year after a final session that featured fights—some of them personal—over fentanyl, ambulances and leaf blowers.
The final session of negotiations often bogs down in long discussions over small amounts of money as commissioners juggle late amendments to arrive at a balanced budget. Today was no different, as Commissioner Sharon Meieran used her last budget session on the board to lambast Chair Jessica Vega Pederson for not shifting more money to Meieran’s priorities: homelessness, drugs and ambulance staffing.
“If this budget is not a prism from which we can see progress, it should at least be a mirror through which we see our failure,” Meieran said in her closing remarks. “After eight years, in the end I can only say this: I regret only that I have but one NO vote to give to my county.”
Raising an issue that has bedeviled the county all year, Meieran, a doctor, proposed a three-month pilot program to test putting a paramedic and a less-trained emergency medical technician on ambulances, instead of two paramedics, to see if that would solve staffing issues that have hurt response times. The board considered the motion before rejecting it, along with all of Meieran’s other amendments.
Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards supported Meieran’s ambulance proposal, saying that it would give the county a “good backup” as it tries to fix the program through mediation with ambulance company American Medical Response. Vega Pederson said mediation was ongoing and that she would have an update soon.
“We all want to see a change in what is happening,” Vega Pederson said.
The ambulance debate became heated when Meieran questioned Vega Pederson’s commitment to fixing the system. “If you wanted to see a change, then I don’t know what you’ve been doing for the past year and half when people have been suffering,” Meieran said. “There is urgency that is missing from this board, and I find it unconscionable.”
Vega Pederson admonished Meieran. “I’ve had to talk to you before about impugning motives of people and basically calling me a liar,” she said. “Calling into question the words I’m saying here is not acceptable.”
Another smallish issue that took lots of time: $750,000 for the demolition of the Hansen Building, a dilapidated county structure at 122nd Avenue and Glisan Street. County officials have been trying to deal with the asbestos-laden, 4-acre complex for two decades. Once a county health clinic, it was used as a sheriff’s headquarters and then as a muster point for search and rescue teams.
Hansen sits in Brim-Edwards’ district and, until this morning, she thought the money was available, but when she arrived for today’s meeting it was gone, leaving an eyesore to stand for another year.
“It’s a blight on the neighborhood,” Brim-Edwards said.
Brim-Edwards suggested eliminating several other budget items to pay for Hansen. Among them: $150,000 in team-building funds for senior staff at the county. After much wrangling, and the elimination of other expenditures, the board agreed to restore $650,000 for the deconstruction of Hansen.
Much of today’s session concerned leaf blowers. In March, Portland passed an ordinance to ban gas-powered leaf blowers by 2028. Included in her proposed budget, released in April, Vega Pederson proposed spending $385,609 to educate lawn care professionals on the ban and enforce it.
Brim-Edwards objected to the spending, questioning whether the county should be responsible for enforcing city ordinances. Vega Pederson summoned an expert to explain that the city and county often strike agreements to support and enforce one another’s laws. Brim-Edwards kept at it, concerned about setting a precedent, and got the board to cut the funding to $210,000. Brim-Edwards also got a commitment that the county would seek reimbursement from the city.
Meieran and Brim-Edwards criticized the budget process throughout today’s meeting. The jumping-off point for today’s negotiations was a “staff package” that would get the budget into balance if all the amendments in it—from the four commissioners and the chair—were accepted.
Vice Chair Jesse Beason said at the outset that he planned to vote no on every amendment beyond that because “the staff did the job they wanted them to do.”
“I understand that we are in the business of compromise, and people spent a lot of time to do that,” Beason said. “I’m just explaining where I stand.”
Brim-Edwards said she was “disappointed” because the staff’s work took place out of the public eye, then appeared this morning at around 8 am.
Meieran was irked, too. “This is not a process that is in keeping with the spirit of transparency that is in our budget laws. Actual commissioner interaction in public is valuable, and we don’t have that very often.”
Beason shot back that they had 20 budget work sessions, and that his staff was in touch with him throughout. “We’ve had more than six weeks to talk about, and present, amendments.”
After the budget passed, the chair and commissioners took time for remarks. Meieran, in her budget swan song, didn’t hold back.
“This is the final budget in my eight years of service,” Meieran said. “I’m leaving with a degree of sadness and outrage I never would have thought possible when I first ran for office. Because when I started, I naively thought failure would be a matter of not having enough funding to reach our goals and help those most vulnerable. I’ve realized that we’re swimming—or more accurately, drowning—in money. We have more money In Multnomah County than we can effectively waste.”
The excuses people hear for not solving problems are, she said, “all bullshit.”