Holding Portland back

The crack between the governments of the City of Portland and Multnomah County is wide and deep. Sadly, the livability of the city has fallen into that crack and can't get out. 

For years now, two of the city's biggest problems, and they are related, have been drug addiction and street camping. On both fronts, the city is trying to make some progress, and on both fronts, the county is gumming up the works.

The lack of headway on drugs, and the bleak outlook for improvement, are especially maddening. We're now a month away from the sort-of-recriminalization of hard street drugs after the repeal of failed Measure 110 (although the state just hired a new Measure 110 director, don't ask). Rather than face arrest, drug users who are not committing some other crime will be offered "deflection," which is the latest bobblehead term for diversion. Under a new state law, if you opt for treatment, you won't go to jail just for using hard drugs.

But exacly how "deflection" is supposed to work is left to the individual counties, and Multnomah County, as usual, hasn't quite figured out what it's going to do, except that it's going to be so lenient as to be ludicrous. The county has a "deflection" site that it secretly leased on Sandy Boulevard in inner southeast Portland, but what's going to go on in there isn't really clear.

One thing we know: It will not include a sobering tank. If the cops drop you off there, no matter what shape you're in, my guess is you'll have some forms filled out, you'll talk to a "peer" counselor, and then you'll be free to wander out into the surrounding neighborhood (past the very nearby preschool). You'll have 30 days to meet up with your social worker, and in the meantime, as a practical matter, stay high all you want.

That, friends, is going to do more harm than good, and I doubt that the cops will be playing that game too much. 

The adults in the room, including the city police chief, are demanding that a sobering facility be set up quickly, but the county's eternally clueless yet impeccably groomed chair, Jessica Chevy Vega, is continuing in her stubborn ways and refusing to acknowledge that it's a necessary component of "deflection."

On Monday, Chief Day sent a letter to the chair’s office in a plea to end the city’s public safety crisis. He said the county needs to begin picking up the pace to set up a 24/7 drop-off sobering center where drug users can seek treatment.

Day expressed his support for the sobering center plan presented months ago by Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards, featuring up to 50 beds where police can bring someone with drug or alcohol intoxication. Rather than offering a treatment plan, the center would serve as a place to literally “sober up” and then seek treatment.

So far, Chair Vega Pederson has not agreed to move forward with a sobering center until mid-2025. 

And her version would not have 50 beds open in 2025. More like 10. 

They just hired a contractor to run the drop-off. They're from Baltimore, Maryland and as far as I can tell, have no experience here. Will this be a rerun of the fentanyl day spa fiasco that the county inflicted on downtown last year? We'll see, starting in 31 days.

Then there's the street camping. This week we learned that if you refuse to move your gear out of public spaces when ordered to do so – thus violating Portland city ordinance – you won't be booked into a jail because the county sheriff refuses to do that. The sheriff, Nicole Morrisey O'Donnell, says she'll only jail people who break state law, not city law. And she made a nice little Portlandian speech about it.

“As the elected official charged with managing the jail, I believe we need to utilize the corrections system as a place for people who pose a genuine danger to the public, and that does not include individuals whose only offense is living unsheltered,” wrote Morrisey O’Donnell. 

“Arresting and booking our way out of the housing crisis is not a constructive solution,” she added in her statement. “Incarceration is a costly, short-term measure that fails to address the complex underlying issues. We need to continue to focus on creating pathways out of homelessness through evidence-based, sustainable solutions that enhance public safety for all residents.” 

Just when we voted to get rid of a county district attorney who used to spout the same kind of line, we get a county sheriff who won't perform basic law enforcement functions, on ideological grounds. O'Donnell took office a year and a half ago, for a four-year term. She won't get my vote for another four if she keeps this up.

So there you have it, complete gridlock. What's the answer? Regular readers here know what I'd do. Merge the city and the county, like the big boys do in California. Have one governing board for both. One chief of police. One set of criminal laws. The current situation with the constant sixth-grade slap-fighting is for birds.