Good ol' Charlie "Put a fee on it!" Hales.

Ohh no merc has gone facebook too? What's next, civil comments?

"The market has created financial incentives for demolition, so we need to balance that out a bit with some disincentives,"

Predictable this guy would balance the market by controlling it rather than simply putting something on the market which could restore leverage against it. You cannot stop progress with petty fees, but you can affect the very meaning of progress, what it looks like, and what affect it has on people. But that would require actual ingenuity and thinking- not his thing.
Local laborers do thank you though as it means more minimum wage work for us. Still, we will be glad when your gone.

I wonder how much capacity there is around Portland to store all this stuff. Seems to me that the Rebuilding Center and the Habitat Restore will be on the receiving end and they will run out of room at some point. Are there other places that will accept these materials? Also, do city codes allow for used building materials for structural applications?