Murmurs: State to Demand More Accountability From Counties Over Mental Health Spending

STATE TO DEMAND MORE ACCOUNTABILITY FROM COUNTIES OVER MENTAL HEALTH SPENDING: The Oregon Health Authority is going to demand greater accountability for the millions of dollars it hands to counties to spend on behavioral health, according to a state official who presented the plan at a recent public meeting. The changes, OHA’s Christa Jones said, were aimed at “setting clear expectations and holding ourselves accountable—and holding the community mental health programs accountable.” They’ll be incorporated into the next version of what are known as “county financial assistance agreements,” which the state signs with counties to provide mental health services. Such contracts are hefty. Multnomah County’s grant is $36 million this year. But a 2021 legislative report found the agreements “are cumbersome, do not center outcomes for the people served, and lack accountability and outcome metrics.” The contract changes come as OHA begins a Legislature-mandated “cost study” to determine whether it gives the counties sufficient funding. The new agreements are scheduled to go into effect next summer, Jones told a meeting of the Oregon Health Policy Board last week. “It’s a big lift,” she said. “Hopefully, it’s going to be a new way of looking at this work.”

DONATION SWAPS PLACE PUBLIC FUNDING IN LIMBO: The city of Portland’s Small Donor Elections program is sorting through campaign contributions that City Council candidates made to other City Council candidates. Overseers of the public financing program are trying to determine which donations were made under explicit agreements of reciprocity, a matter the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office is investigating after WW exposed the swaps this month. Small Donor Elections director Susan Mottet says such contributions are not eligible to be matched with taxpayer dollars, but donations from one candidate to one another are viable for matching dollars if no one promised reciprocity. To figure out which is which, Mottet is hand-checking mutual donations if they were received after Aug. 7. “For now, the program is marking contributions from candidates starting on Aug. 7 on as unmatchable, until we have complete data and can determine which contributions we are required to match and which contributions we are required not to match,” Mottet said last week. That means candidates who are close to the 250 individual donors needed to receive matching funds, and whose donations from fellow candidates may have pushed them over that threshold, are now in limbo as to whether they qualify for matching funds.

DMV TO REVIEW MOTOR VOTER FOUL-UP: As WW first reported Sept. 13, Oregon Driver & Motor Vehicle Services, which licenses drivers in the state, has mistakenly placed more than 300 non-citizens on the voting rolls since 2021. That happened as a result of human error as DMV workers tried to balance two laws: the 2015 Motor Voter law, which automatically registers people to vote when they get a driver’s license if they are over 18 and legal residents of Oregon; and Driver’s Licenses for All, a 2019 law that allows people to obtain licenses who live in Oregon without legal documentation. The latter law does not allow licensees to vote—they must be citizens to do that. But DMV workers mistakenly transferred 306 names of non-citizens to the secretary of state’s Elections Division. Elections director Molly Woon says just two of those people later voted. Woon adds that DMV is now checking its data to see if any other voters were mistakenly added to voter rolls and hopes to have that information later this week. Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade noted that the error affects fewer than 0.01% of registered voters and was the agency’s mistake, not an attempt by undocumented people to vote illegally. “I’m confident the DMV is rectifying this error and improving their process so it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

AIDE BEHIND WATER TIGER UPROAR RESIGNS: Bobby Lee, longtime chief of staff to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, is resigning from his position as the mayor’s top adviser. Wheeler’s office says Lee is leaving the city to care for his elderly parents in South Korea. This summer, WW published a series of stories detailing how Lee had directed Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, to spend $60,000 on art depicting the Chinese water tiger for two different festivals in 2023 and 2024 (“Eye of the Tiger,” July 17). The water tiger art was designed by the niece of Lee’s ex-girlfriend, a former City Hall staffer. Records show Lee single-handedly directed the agency to approve $60,000 in funding for various water tiger pieces, one of which later ended up on display at one of the city’s office buildings downtown. When city staffers removed the water tiger mural this spring, Lee accused them of being culturally insensitive and disrespectful. He then requested that the city’s Arts & Culture Office give the teenage artist a $40,000 city grant for additional art. (The arts office did not fulfill the request.) Lee did not receive a severance package.