Portland Mercury78%
A Budget Fix, a Mayor’s Influence, and the Subtext of That Unsavory Banter Among Councilors 31%
By Courtney Vaughn41%
7/24/2026, 10:00:00 PM
Keywords: Portland City Council, Budget, Mayor Keith Wilson, Loretta Smith, Angelita Morillo, Candace Avalos, Jamie Dunphy, Olivia Clark, Elana Pirtle Guiney, Steve Novick, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane, Terrence Hayes, Public Safety, Police Bureau, Portland Fire And Rescue, Bureau Of Transportation, Office Of Community Based Police Accountability, Clean Energy Fund, City Charter, Voting Authority
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Self-Serving Bias, In-Group Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 14.9% saturation with 218 hits. Analysis detected 2,062 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,461 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 40.6% and a BS Rank of 31% (15,129 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 69.10% of the article peer group.
District 1 Portland City Councilors Candace Avalos, Jamie Dunphy, and Loretta Smith during an October 15, 2025 Council meeting.
Dunphy, the current council president, often finds himself mediating and intervening during tense moments on the dais.
A $12.2 million supplemental budget passed by Portland City Council will preserve 30 jobs that were slated to be cut in the city’s 2026-27 general fund budget.
It was one of two competing legislative packages voted on Wednesday, July 22, both of which sought to save positions for city workers using different funding sources.
The budget package, dubbed the “Risk Reduction” ordinance, was introduced by Councilors Olivia Clark, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Steve Novick, and Loretta Smith.
It relies on nearly $10 million in general fund contingency and another $2.25 million from unidentified “other funds” that are to be backfilled by anticipated leftover funds in a number of departments next spring.
It will prevent layoffs of eight non-police public safety support specialists in the Police Bureau and retain three desk clerks at local precincts, while adding $3 million for training and professional development for police.
The funds will also add resources to Portland Fire & Rescue, and save five positions at Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, among other things.
Mayor Keith Wilson first cut those jobs and dozens more in his proposed budget earlier this year, but city councilors grew concerned that the administration failed to adequately vet the importance of each role before putting them on the chopping block.
Initially, the Risk Reduction ordinance included language about tapping unspent funds in various general fund bureaus in the spring, including money set aside in the Office of Community-based Police Accountability.
That language garnered widespread disapproval from the public and half the Council, and was eventually scrapped from the ordinance.
“You all failed to properly fund police, parks, and fire, and I believe that you should go back to the drawing board to meet the needs of the community,” Terrence Hayes, a former City Council candidate and current member of the Community Board for Police Accountability said during a July 15 Council discussion on the competing supplemental budgets.
Hayes said while it’s unlikely the Police Accountability office will spend all its funding by next June, raiding its funds before the office can even present an annual budget is the wrong answer.
“Money set aside to hold police accountable and protect the community from police violence should not be used to fund the [police] because you all failed to properly fund our police office,” Hayes told the Council.
Councilors noted that all general funds, including any unspent money in the Police Accountability office, are still subject to be utilized for other purposes during the spring budget adjustment.
The legislation passed 10-2, with a majority of progressive councilors conceding and voting to approve the competing budget ordinance for the sake of preserving jobs and fire bureau resources.
Wednesday’s meeting marked the first time Mayor Keith Wilson was called upon to cast a tie-breaking vote after the Council was split on a Save Our Services supplemental budget brought forward by progressives.
Wilson opposed, killing the legislation that would have used $13 million in unspent, unbudgeted Clean Energy Fund interest, along with $5.5 million in other funding sources to preserve 55 jobs across multiple bureaus including transportation, parks, and the water bureau, as well as a dozen of the same public safety support specialists the competing ordinance seeks to retain.
Councilors Angelita Morillo, Mitch Green, Candace Avalos, Sameer Kanal, and Tiffany Koyama Lane, who sponsored the Save Our Services budget proposal, said they worked to amend their legislation to appease their colleagues who couldn’t get on board with it initially.
Frustrated, they chastised opposing councilors for ultimately voting against the legislation they said they compromised on.
“Over the last several weeks, we’ve all said that we wanted to save services and protect workers and find a path forward…” Avalos said.
“But I need to be honest that I do not understand how people are defining compromise, because to me compromise means that everyone moves.
It means that you don’t get everything you want, and neither do I.
I definitely did not in that last bill, and it means that we incorporate one another’s priorities because finding common ground matters more than winning every disagreement.”
Council Vice President Olivia Clark said both options were the result of compromises.
“We did compromise on this between our colleagues, and we also worked with labor unions to identify and restore the positions that are critical to the operation of the city,” Clark said.
She called her budget plan the more “fiscally responsible” option.
Palpable tension turned to snarky jabs.
“I think it’s really wild that we, as a council, couldn’t close the deal over five hundredths of a percent of our total budget, and that we have to call—I don’t know—the daddy of the city of Portland to come help break a tiebreaker for us because for some reason, the City Council can’t get together to get it done,” Morillo said, referring to Mayor Wilson.
Councilor Loretta Smith immediately interrupted, calling for a point of order.
Here’s how the exchange played out:
Smith: “Why are we impugning folks?
Who are you calling daddy?”
Morillo: “Well, he’s your daddy, not mine, because…”
Smith: “I got a daddy.”
Council President Jamie Dunphy interjected, reminding Smith that Morillo had the floor.
Lately, Dunphy has found himself interjecting and mediating frequently, sometimes even being the target of jabs from Smith.
With an often politically divided council, the last six months have been marked by deadlocked votes and declining decorum.
But Morillo’s “daddy” remark was rooted in subtext, not just snark.
For months, Smith has led the charge to boost the mayor’s voting power in City Hall.
Unlike in Portland’s former government structure, the current mayor isn’t part of City Council and doesn’t vote on legislation, unless the Council needs a tiebreaker.
After a messy council president vote in early 2025 prompted clarification from the city’s attorney about the circumstances for a mayoral vote, it was determined the mayor isn’t allowed to cast a tie-breaking vote on council president elections, or budget amendments.
Smith argues the charter language is broad and clear: The duties of the mayor include voting “on matters before the Council in case of a tie, when the Mayor casts the deciding vote.”
She says the mayor should be brought in to break all ties, including those relating to budgets that originate from his office.
To clear up disagreement on the issue, the councilor wants an independent legal judgement about what the city charter dictates regarding the mayor’s voting authority.
Just last week, she brought up the issue again.
“We need to start doing what the charter says.
Let the mayor break all matters before Council,” Smith said during a July 15 meeting where councilors first discussed both budget items.
“Every week, you give me one more reason why we need to have a declarative judgment.”
Because supplemental budgets are different from the annual budget adoption process, the mayor can serve as a tie breaker—a factor that heavily influenced Wednesday’s meeting.
Moderates and the mayor in alignment
Those who voted against the Save Our Services proposal from Morillo and other progressives likely didn’t support it because they didn’t need to.
Even without support from progressive councilors, Clark, Novick, Pirtle-Guiney, and Smith knew they could pull in the mayor to vote if they needed a win.
Mayor Wilson’s office confirmed to the Mercury Wednesday that he would’ve supported the legislation if called upon to cast a vote.
A spokesperson for Wilson said the mayor “believes this is the most fiscally responsible way to ensure Portland Police Bureau training, certifications, precinct access, fire rescue units, 311 customer service representatives, and other essential represented positions are maintained.”
The city press officer did not respond to follow-up questions about why Wilson found the budget ordinance was the more fiscally responsible of the two proposals.
But ultimately, the mayor’s vote wasn’t necessary.
Begrudgingly, most of the Council’s progressive bloc held their noses and voted to pass the alternative legislation, for the sake of preserving positions they said the mayor never should have cut in his proposed budget.
The supplemental budget passed 10-2, with Councilors Avalos and Koyama Lane opposing.
In addition to preserving public safety positions and training and professional development for police, the legislation will use nearly $516,000 to extend employment and benefits for staff being laid off, by placing them on administrative leave until September 1, with health benefits extended until September 30.
Additionally, the ordinance’s sponsors said a restoration of $1.75 million to the city’s business license tax fund would help stabilize the city’s credit rating.
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77%flagged-word coverageAngelita Morillo
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