A Blissful Portland Summer

Forget all those nasty stories in the national media

Looking for some good news about Portland, Oregon?

Come to Beaverton.

On the last Sunday of August, in the waning days of summer, state Reps. Dacia Grayber (SW Portland/East Beaverton) Ken Helm (D-Beaverton/Cedar Hills) and state Sen. Kate Lieber (D-Beaverton/SW Portland) gathered for a Town Hall.

Two of them — Lieber and Grayber — serve districts that include Portland, where the national media this summer examined the social decay in Oregon’s largest city.

This Town Hall was held in Beaverton at the Municipal Courthouse across from Griffith Park, where a family picnic was under way. Not a tent in sight.

For those who hope the state legislature will help overturn or reform Ballot Measure 110 legalizing drugs, these legislators were indecisive.

“We are in a real hole…,” said Leiber. “Nobody wanted to make an open-air drug market in the center of Portland. It doesn’t mean we have to recriminalize (drug) possession. … Public use? Maybe, maybe.”

Grayber, who is a firefighter, praised Narcan and said it had helped a family member.

“Fentanyl is unlike anything we have seen. … We all want an easy solution … decriminalizing won’t fix it,” she said.

She urged taking the road to compassion and humanity.

Helm called Ballot Measure 110 one of his biggest disappointments.

“When we as a population voted on 110, we didn’t understand where the money was going to come from,” he said.

The intent was to "do nice things for folks,” but there was little discussion on how the state would use cannabis revenue to pay for drug treatment.

The issue of Ballot Measure 110 might not have come up at all had the roughly 45 citizens who attended the Town Hall not asked.

It’s hard to say how many in the audience were actually constituents. Several of the attendees included elected officials from a local water board and school board, plus some of their staff. State Treasurer Tobias Read, who is running for Secretary of State also sat in the audience.

In usual Town Hall format, the legislators started off listing their accomplishments in the 2023 legislative session. They included such things as a House Resolution recognizing India’s anniversary of becoming a democracy and legislation that pays for memorial signs to honor veterans who die in conflicts. (Previously the families paid for these.)

There was talk about the Purple Pipe Program, which Helm called “something for the whole city to be proud of. All over the west we are in a long-term drought. It is not going to go away soon.”

The Purple Pipe Program reclaims “gray water” that is used for such things as washing dishes. It can be recycled to use to water gardens. The pipes carrying the water are purple. Because of cost overruns, the state legislature gave Beaverton $2.5 million.

The legislators touted an array of other achievements — banning ghost guns, funding more criminal defense lawyers, providing more classes for police recruits at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, budgeting $200 million to prevent homelessness and almost $2 billion to invest in housing construction.

Finally, Mayor Lacey Beaty, who was the moderator, said there were “tons of questions” submitted by the audience on cards. She rifled through them.

“I’ll kick it off with one that simply says ‘child care.’”

There was some laughter. A woman in the audience, who was earlier nursing her baby, waved.

“I assume you want more child care,” Beaty said.

There was a question about electric vehicles. Would the legislature be willing to put EV stations in public parking spaces? Someone else wanted to know, do we have to worry about Greater Idaho?

“Most of the spam calls come from advocates for Greater Idaho movement…,” Helm said. “I studiously block them. … It is a hard, arduous process to secede. … I think we’re safe.”

Beaty read a question that sounded like it was written by a legislative staffer: “With the minority party walkout, what did not get accomplished?”

While Grayber and Helm Beaty contemplated that question, Beaty worked her way through the cards.

Finally, as if she couldn’t avoid it any longer, she said “There are lots of questions about Measure 110.”

Beaty has talked privately in the past about a family member who served time in prison on a drug offense. In 2022, she endorsed Brian Decker, a progressive candidate for Washington County District Attorney, calling him a change-maker. (He lost.)

She summed up all the Measure 110 questions into basically: Will the legislature do some reform or send it back to the ballot? None of the legislators offered a firm “yes.”

Lieber said drugs have changed since she went to work as a prosecutor in 1995.

“It’s very difficult to treat addicts. … What we were doing before 110 wasn’t working either.”

Lieber suggested that even with Measure 110, drug dealing is still a felony. Technically, she is correct. But it is difficult for police to do criminal enforcement since it is now so complicated whether a drug is Oxycodone or Fentanyl. Oxycodone is permitted. Fentanyl is not.

With Measure 110, drug addiction was supposed to be treated as a public health crisis and not a crime. But even before Measure 110, mere drug users rarely went to prison in the past two decades.

After an hour and a half, the Town Hall ended promptly as scheduled.

Beaty told the audience that if their questions didn’t get answered to visit the legislators’ websites and contact them online.

But she allowed herself one final question to end on the right note: “What does Oregon have to be hopeful about?”

Grayber replied, “The fact that we are having these conversations, that we are being authentic.”

Lieber said that Oregon is willing to be the first state to do something, and she conceded sometimes “we are a first state that doesn’t work.”

Helm’s final thought was “I’ll join the optimists.”

People milled about when it was over.

Lieber was happy to share the name of the dress brand she was wearing (Lafayette 184). She was not as direct on questions about a possible run for Attorney General, and what her interpretation would be of the Boise decision. Are cities and counties using it as an excuse to act helpless in dealing with homelessness? As AG, what would she do about that?

Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Gov. Tina Kotek recently demanded that Portland and Multnomah County address homelessness. Can state legislators do anything to nudge Multnomah County Commission Chair Jessica Vega Pederson to get some money out the door.

Lieber is aware that Bybee Lake Hope Center is on the verge of closing. It is one of the few homeless shelters away from the downtown drug scene, and it assists those who want to get off drugs by regularly drug testing them. It is home to families with children.

“I have a lot of conversations with Jessica,” Lieber said. “She is wary.”