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Metro President Lynn Peterson pulled no punches in criticizing Multnomah County for surprising her with a $104 million budget shortfall at the Joint Office for Homeless Services, the county-run partnership with the city that gets much of its funding from Metro’s supportive housing service tax.
At a Feb. 21 press conference, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson pleaded for more money from Metro and the state to fill the hole and keep county shelters open.
“I want you all to know that I was shocked by her request and by the depth of the budget hole that the Joint Office finds itself in,” Peterson replied at Feb. 24 Metro meeting that included Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Multnomah County Commissioners Julia Brim-Edwards and Shannon Singleton. “County staff and county commissioners have worked so hard to get to this point, only to be undermined by this admission of negligence.”
Peterson said Multnomah County must answer “so many questions” before Metro considers giving the county any more money from the SHS tax. Among them: If much of the money was for one-time uses, why was the county coming up short for future budgets?
Other elected officials piled on. “We’re surprised, we’re flat-footed, and we don’t believe that this is how partnership and collaboration should be forged,” Wilson said at the meeting.
Brim-Edwards said she and other commissioners got news of the shortfall just an hour before Friday’s news conference.
A county spokesperson fired back at Peterson on Feb. 25, writing in an email to WW: “How could President Peterson be surprised? We reported our SHS financial situation to Metro just over a week ago in our report, just like we do each quarter. In addition, the chair called President Peterson the day before we made this public. It was the Metro forecast that has so dramatically changed our financial outlook. We should not be playing politics and casting blame.”