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This week, three members of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners are on a trip to Sacramento, Calif., to see how that city is trying to tackle homelessness.
The trip is sponsored by the Portland Metro Chamber. Going along are County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Commissioners Julia Brim-Edwards and Lori Stegmann. Staying behind are interim Commissioner Jesse Beason, who is working just 10 hours a week, and Commissioner Sharon Meieran.
Meieran says she was invited on the trip but decided against going because of laws preventing a quorum of the board from meeting beforehand to discuss business that may come before the board.
“I was invited,” Meieran said in an interview. “This isn’t sour grapes. I really wanted to go and talk to smart people in Sacramento. I was about the register, but I thought, ‘This isn’t right. We can’t have a quorum of the board on this trip.’”
Oregon’s public meeting law offers some underpinnings for Meieran’s concerns.
“Even if a meeting is for the sole purpose of gathering information to serve as the basis for a subsequent decision or recommendation by the governing body, the meetings law will apply,” state code says. “This requirement serves the legislative policy that an informed public must be aware not only of the decisions of government, but also of ‘the information upon which such decisions were made.’”
The four-day trip began yesterday and will last through Oct. 2, according to a website describing the visit, which preempts a regular county board meeting set for Tuesday. The registration fee is $900, including a $100 contribution to defray costs for some nonprofit participants. Topics covered include “navigating the livability challenges endemic in West Coast cities” and “re-envisioning downtown and the central city.”
The trip is being led by Randy Miller, president of Produce Row Property Management Co., who has been leading visits to other cities to learn best practices for more than 30 years.
“Sacramento aligns nicely with Portland,” a description of the trip says. “Both are mid-sized, West Coast cities with comparable populations, per capita income, and growth patterns. Both cities also share the same challenges: endemic housing shortages, rising cost of living, high tax burden, and waning population growth.”
County spokeswoman Julie Sullivan-Springhetti said the three commissioners on the trip are not breaking public meeting rules.
“Public officials aren’t prohibited from traveling to the same event by Oregon public meetings law,” Sullivan-Springhetti said in an email. “Board members will routinely be together at events, including the opening of library branches, press conferences, galas, and training sessions like this best practices event. Our board members understand that deliberations of a quorum of the board on any matter of official county business should occur in board meetings.”
Notification of a quorum and details of the trip were posted on the board clerk’s website and on the board agenda and sent to members of the media and interested parties, including WW, on Sept. 27, Sullivan-Springhetti said in the email.
“The post was set to repeat on the Board calendar on the following days, but although the title and dates were visible, our online platform automatically did not reprint the details,” Sullivan-Springhetti wrote. “That was fixed Sunday, Sept. 29 when it was brought to the Board Clerk’s attention.”
Eric Zimmerman, chief of staff to Brim-Edwards, reiterated the county’s position.
“As a course of regular practice, this trip was publicly noticed, and commissioners regularly attend events, tours, and informational events in full respect of public meeting laws,” Zimmerman wrote in a text message. “Among the many local and regional leaders on this trip from a variety of industries, there is no itinerary event for the commissioners to hold any decision making or county policy discussions as a body.”
Andrew Hoan, president of the Portland Metro Chamber, who often supports Meieran’s vociferous critiques of Vega Pederson’s policies, said Meieran’s complaints about the Sacramento trip were unwarranted.
“With all due respect to Commissioner Meieran, who I admire and usually agree with, her comments are disappointing and not appropriate,” Hoan said in a statement to WW. “Over 100 of our region’s private, public, and non-profit leaders have traveled to Sacramento to learn how our counterparts are trying to solve many of the same problems we face in Portland. For nearly 40 years the goal of the Best Practices trip has been to learn from our peer regions, build cross sector relationships, and put the lessons learned to work back home. Chair Vega Pederson and her fellow commissioners’ participation is exactly the type of collaboration that county voters want to see from their elected leaders.”
Meieran, who finishes her board tenure in December along with Stegmann and Beason, said the county’s explanation didn’t sway her.
“The chair’s job is to put the public’s interest above her own personal interest,” Meieran said in an email. “This is the very reason we have public meetings laws. Sometimes there are judgment calls in politics. This is not one of those times. This decision shows a complete lack of judgment on the part of the Chair. This is not the appearance of impropriety, it’s acquiescence to impropriety.”