CORRECTION APPENDED
Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly said Tuesday that she was “very unhappy” with the police bureau for spending money from a voter-approved cannabis tax to fill its own budget shortfall instead of increasing traffic enforcement.
Eudaly, who oversees the transportation department, aired her grievances Tuesday during a council budget work session. The first half of the meeting centered on a recent audit of the 3% cannabis tax approved by voters in 2016.
“Once again I see in this budget,” Eudaly said at a council work session, “no increase in traffic enforcement despite these dollars. I’m very unhappy with this,” she said of the police bureau’s spending of cannabis tax revenue, “I do not support it, and it’s just unacceptable going forward.”
The remarks come following a spate of high-profile traffic deaths and incidents shocked the city last month, the latest being a hit and run crash in broad daylight on Southeast Division Street that left a 6-year-old girl injured. Portland is hoping to eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2025, part of the global effort known as Vision Zero.
Portland’s cannabis tax was pitched to voters as a way to support women and minority-owned small businesses trying to enter the industry, help rehabilitate those plagued by drug convictions with job readiness tools or treatment programs while also beefing up public safety efforts through DUII enforcement or traffic projects.
But according to a city audit released earlier this month, Portland isn’t doing enough to show how those monies are being spent; 79 percent of weed revenue thus far has gone to public safety causes. The state’s cannabis sales tax already sends money to local police as well. “While the uses are allowed under the ballot measure, community members, cannabis businesses, or others affected by past cannabis policies have not been involved in the overall budget decisions, and the City has not reported on how it’s used the tax revenues,” auditors wrote.
Eudaly said she was frustrated that the lack of transparency extended to the City Council as well as the general public.
She directly questioned a police representative Tuesday who confirmed that the bureau created no new positions with the more than $2.1 million it spent to supplant existing general fund dollars.
“I want to see an actual increase in enforcement and I’m disappointed that these dollars didn’t deliver that,” she said.
Traffic enforcement is intended to be a key pillar in helping to stem the tide of traffic fatalities. More traffic cops help slow drivers down, one key factor in traffic crashes. But Portland’s police bureau continues to struggle to fill nearly 120 vacancies, and the traffic division has been hard hit.
Captain Stephanie Lourenco, who heads the traffic division, said in a recent interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive that the bureau had 18 motorcycle officers and 2 vehicles dedicated to the team in 2019. In 2014, the agency had 27 motorcycle cops and 6 cars.
“People have a sense that there are not enough consequences for their driving,” she said. “Because we cannot get out there and do as much as we should be doing.”
According to the agency’s traffic data posted online, the unit conducted 4,276 “enforcement actions” in the first four months of this year, nearly half as much as during the same four-month period in 2016. Those traffic stops could result in multiple enforcement actions for a single driver – say for speeding and not having a valid license.
Lourenco said her officers are spending 25 percent of their time at work filling in for other jobs in their precincts, and finding people who want to be police officers is challenging. “This isn’t about money, really, as far as I can tell," Lourenco said. "This is about finding human beings that we can hire.”
In later council discussions Tuesday about the upcoming budget year, Eudaly reiterated that she has “grave concerns” about what she called and underinvestment in traffic enforcement. Thirty-four people died in 2018 in traffic crashes citywide, down from 44 the previous year.
Portland hopes to have $4.8 million in cannabis tax revenue to spend in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
The city also has no plan to spend roughly $759,000 in unallocated cannabis tax revenue.
The council is expected to come back with a plan for how to spend that money in the next week.
Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty has pushed to spend more money on programs to expunge criminal records for those convicted of marijuana possession.
The council will also in the future decide what to do with the cannabis tax program overall. Eudaly and the Office of Community & Civic Life, which manages the cannabis program, have suggested creating a new five-member oversight committee to look after city spending.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Commissioner Amanda Fritz supports creating a new five-member oversight committee to oversee cannabis tax revenue. The policy proposal was introduced by Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and the Office of Community & Civic Life.
-- Andrew Theen
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
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