Multnomah County will spend now, worry later

Officials use all of $52 million, leaving no reserves for the future

By Jacob Quinn Sanders

The Portland Tribune, Aug 4, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

For $52 million, Multnomah County commissioners hope they bought more than just a year.

Though that figure represents just 4.6 percent of the county’s $1.13 billion budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, it is believed to be an unprecedented amount of one time-only money in a single budget – made all the more notable by the fact that a large portion of it will be used to pay ongoing costs.

It is, in essence, the county government version of living paycheck to paycheck. The one-time money is there now – this past year largely because of unexpectedly high revenue from the county business income tax – but cannot be counted on to be there again next year or the year after.

And that revenue will pay for in, whole or in part, a range of things for which need won’t end next year. Maintenance costs for the empty Wapato jail: $315,929. The Children’s Assessment Center, which provides medical exams to kids in state custody: $155,027 of a total $405,022. And the serving of civil legal papers: $500,000 of the $4.34 million total cost.

“It’s true: $52 million is a very high number for us,” county Finance Director Carol Ford said. “I can’t tell you it’s the highest ever or anything like that, but it’s up there. It is definitely not an insignificant number, but the intent was to have this next year to figure out what to do.”

County budget policy states outright that “the County will fund ongoing programs with ongoing revenues.” But the loss of the expired county income tax, a cap on property-tax increases and existing projections for budget shortfalls created a reality that forced commissioners to abandon the policy in practice.

And with $52 million available but not renewable, the choice became whether to take a big hit this year and a smaller one next year, vice versa, or whether to spend it all and hope better solutions revealed themselves in the intervening year, county commissioners said.

Answers did not come easy.

“Those were the questions we asked ourselves a thousand different ways,” board of commissioners Chairwoman Diane Linn said.

County board will lose two

Linn and Commissioner Serena Cruz Walsh will leave the board at the end of the year – Linn after her primary-election loss to business consultant Ted Wheeler and Cruz Walsh because of term limits. The departures raised some concerns that the use of the full amount of one-time money available forced their successors to make the hard decisions.

“That simply is not the case,” Linn said. “We didn’t just pass this off for one year to provide cover for ourselves.”

Given the choice between offering programs for another year or cutting now to ease decision-making next year, she said, she realized that morality and a dedication to public service outweigh political convenience.

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