Closed-door sessions on Multnomah County’s post-Measure 110 plans draw pointed pushback

Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson on Tuesday rebuffed a call from a fellow commissioner to allow the public to participate in meetings to plan for a post-Measure 110 response for recriminalizing small amounts of drugs.

Vega Pederson said the “leadership team” she convened has opted to work behind closed doors.

The group includes five elected officials, treatment experts, a defense lawyer and county staffers who are drafting the county’s plan to route people found with small amounts of drugs like fentanyl away from jail and toward treatment.

That plan includes opening a so-called deflection center on the east side of Portland and giving people a choice between arrest or going to the center, where they’re expected to undergo a substance abuse screening and potentially referred to treatment.

During Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards repeated her request that Vega Pederson open the team’s meetings to the public.

“Our community deserves to understand what is being set up, how our money is being spent and how we are going to make this community safer and more liveable and how we’re actually going to provide treatment,” Brim-Edwards said. “When all these conversations are happening privately there isn’t any transparency.”

Vega Pederson said she had taken Brim-Edwards’ request to the leadership team, where it found no support.

“No one spoke up in favor of having them in public and in fact there was at least one person who spoke up against having them in public,” Vega Pederson said. “I did take that to the leadership team and no one was interested in having that.”

Vega Pederson said she would consider making the meetings public; she noted no other county has developed their policies through public meetings.

“No other county has the mess and the livability issues that we have,” Brim-Edwards replied. “We are in a whole different league than all the other counties.”

Vega Pederson has led the county’s response to House Bill 4002, passed this year, making minor drug possession a misdemeanor crime.

The law gutted a central aspect of voter-approved Measure 110, the 2020 drug decriminalization law that lost favor with the public amid skyrocketing fentanyl overdoses and the blight of public drug use.

While HB 4002 did away with decriminalization, lawmakers stressed they wanted counties to emphasize substance abuse treatment over the justice system and jail, an approach known as deflection.

Multnomah County has not decided on the number of times a person can opt for deflection over arrest.

Vega Pederson has relied on a team to help craft the approach.

The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday emailed the elected officials on the team to ask their position on the question of transparency.

They are: District Attorney Mike Schmidt, District Attorney-elect Nathan Vasquez, Multnomah County Circuit Judges Judith Matarazzo and Michael Greenlick and Sheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell.

Schmidt said he told Vega Pederson that he “had no objection to making the meetings public.”

Vasquez joined the team last month and has so far attended three meetings.

He said the meetings should be public “due to the high level of public interest and the critical importance of creating an effective deflection program that the community can trust will deliver accountability and meaningful engagement in treatment programs.”

Matarazzo disagreed, saying the county faced “a very rushed timeframe” and that the team “felt able to be more candid and direct in that small group than we might be if we were concerned about comments in the discussions being reported in the media, potentially without important context.”

“I believe the initial meetings were much more productive as private meetings than they would have been had they been public,” Matarazzo said.

Morrisey O’Donnell’s spokesperson said the sheriff doesn’t “hold a strong position on the matter.”

Grant Hartley, Multnomah County director of Metropolitan Public Defenders, said it’s common to develop policy out of public view and that the public has a chance to provide feedback during county commission meetings.

“I have a lot of concerns about having these meetings in public,” he said. “We need to be able to have honest upfront conversations about the realities of our system and the realities of our community that are hard to have when everything is public.”

Gresham police Chief Travis Gullberg did not directly answer the question, saying only that “public participation in government is vital for successful outcomes and trust in our community.”

Portland police Chief Bob Day did not respond to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s questions.

Tuesday was the second briefing the Board of Commissioners has received on the status of HB 4002. Another briefing is scheduled for next Tuesday.

The Buckman Community Association will meet with county leaders beginning at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the county building on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.

-- Noelle Crombie is an enterprise reporter with a focus on criminal justice. Reach her at 503-276-7184; ncrombie@oregonian.

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