PORTLAND PLANNING COMMISSIONER Chris Smith has a term for this part of the city’s budget season: the “black box.”
Around this time every year, the mayor unveils his budget—this time, it’s a $3.7 billion monster, packing $49 million more than last year—to the public and colleagues. Then the thing goes underground to be tinkered with via private confabs in closed conference rooms. It emerges, changed, a couple of weeks later, nearly ready for a vote.
This year, things are different.
At the combined urgings of Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish, city council sat down at a big table ringed by budget wonks, bureau directors, and advisers on Tuesday, May 19, to bring those typically closed-door discussions into full view.
“We’re actually daylighting some of the conversations we’d be having privately,” Fish said at the two-hour meeting. “It’s good for the public to see how we manage the endgame.”
It was actually only sort of good.
Sure, next year’s budget is the sunniest Portland’s had in a while. It’s probably one of the sunniest in Portland history, according to City Budget Director Andrew Scott.
But it’s also a finite pool of money, with competing ideas for how to spend it. I sat down in council chambers on Tuesday rubbing my palms together and waiting for the inevitable throwdown, my mind dancing with potential areas of conflict.
How would Fish seek to cleave money from Hales’ spending priorities for housing, as he’d signaled he might? Where would Fritz scrounge for cash to pay destitute city parks workers—one of her top priorities? Commissioner Steve Novick thinks horse cops are useless, and that it’s dumb Portland dumps millions into a war on drugs that’s proven ineffective and unwinnable. Would Hales bristle if his police spending were questioned?
This is a council used to testy exchanges—the least cohesive in years, by some people’s reckoning—and there seemed to be endless opportunities for budget spats.
Nope.
Fish called Hales’ proposal “one of the most thoughtful and intentional budgets we’ve had.” He did pursue an extra $2.5 million in housing money, which would bring a city fund with comparatively few restrictions up to a solid $10 million. Hales said he made a “good case.”
Novick, whose Portland Bureau of Transportation stands to gain nearly $20 million from the budget, talked of how “incredibly grateful” he’d be for its passage, and made special note that he wouldn’t be coming after police money this year (though he still doesn’t much like the drug war).
Fritz had some interesting tweaks—it turns out she’s not a fan of paying $500,000 for a new, privately run emergency psychiatric “drop-off” center—but also pulled back some requests while she strategized parks funding.
Commissioner Dan Saltzman left early.
Even Hales’ proposal to spend $2 million subsidizing an indoor track and field championship slated for Portland next year brought only minor concerns and looks like it will proceed mostly untouched.
I was slouched in my chair by the end of it.
Sure, it’s great this all happened in a public meeting, but Smith’s black box, it turns out, doesn’t contain all that much.
Then again, it’s possible the real conversations happened after the meeting.
They can talk all they want, in public or in private, but none of the City’s elected officials have a clue as to how to create wealth.
Dirk,
Listening to Hales gloat and stroke his ego on OPB radio yesterday while trying to take credit for this budget surplus I couldn’t help feel that this anticipated spending had more to do with his angling for reelection than anything else. Given it was only two short years ago that the city was said to be suffering from one of the largest budget deficits in history, I’ve long felt this boom/bust merry-go-round is mostly just smoke and mirrors.
Just last month the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that much of the PERS cuts our former Governor and Legislature tried to ram-jam upon retirees is illegal. This is anticipated to reinstate an estimated $4-billion statewide in obligations for the near future. My understanding is that many public agencies have prematurely factored in the savings they expected from these cuts into their projected budgets before this was able to work its way through the courts. Therefore, it would seem this forecasted “surplus” Hales is trumpeting is at least in part based on savings that will never materialize. Do you have any idea how much of this projected surplus is based on this counting your chickens before they hatch scenario?
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.s…
Zipitup: We wrote about Mayor Hales budgeting for the PERS reforms before they were a done deal in 2013.
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/sa…
My understanding, from talks with the city’s budgeteers, is that there will be increased costs as a result of that dice rolling, but that it won’t much eat into the new “ongoing” money the city has found from surging business taxes and other sources. In fact, that ongoing money could even go up if the office finds more than expected, they say. That said, I had the same question you did: How much of our current plush situation is from an economic upswing, and how much is due to the “prudent management” (I don’t recall the actual verbiage the mayor used) he touted? I’m guessing the vast majority is favorable tax receipts.
Thanks for the reply and the link. I guess we’ll have to wait and see come July when they have to start paying it back. I’m still skeptical that Portland’s chunk of that $4-billion will be as easily swept under the “plush” rug as they predict.