RECLAIMING FISCAL SANITY AND OPERATIONAL INTEGRITY IN CLACKAMAS COUNTY

The resounding rejection of Public Safety Levy Measure 3-633 during the May primary was a watershed moment. Clackamas County voters sent an unmistakable message to the County Red Soils Campus: working families and retirees on fixed incomes cannot bear the weight of endless tax hikes. Government does not produce wealth; hard-working citizens do. Every dollar taken from a taxpayer's pocket must be justified by absolute, urgent public necessity.

Unfortunately, instead of examining internal waste, county leadership has descended into bureaucratic infighting. A dangerous, counterproductive friction has emerged between County Administration, the Board of County Commissioners (BCC), and the Sheriff’s Office. As a budget hawk, my duty is to protect the interests of our citizens, hold down costs, and ensure efficient governance. To secure a prosperous Clackamas County, we must establish a clear separation of powers.

Our current gridlock stems from a fundamental violation of roles. The framework of our county government is clear. The Sheriff is an independently elected constitutional officer, directly answerable to the people, not to unelected bureaucrats, not even in an operational sense, to the BCC. The Sheriff maintains absolute statutory autonomy over jail operations, law enforcement deployment, and public safety tactics.

Conversely, the BCC holds legislative and budgetary authority. The BCC’s job is to determine total budget funding caps, manage general fund allocations, and act as watchdogs over public money. The executive branch if you will, the County Administration, is meant to enforce these broad fiscal parameters.

Tension arises when County Administration overextends its authority by micromanaging the internal operations of the law enforcement branch. Utilizing rigid administrative mandates, hiring freezes, and redundant oversight to restrict the Sheriff's core law enforcement functions is an abuse of administrative power. When administration oversteps, it threatens community safety, and the smooth functions of government begin to stumble.

Worse yet is the historic trend of using voter-approved public safety levies to offset cuts to the Sheriff's General Fund allocation. This is a shell game. Levies are meant to fund supplemental public safety, not to bail out a general county budget under fiscal stress. When the county starves core law enforcement of its proper General Fund base, it forces the Sheriff to rely on volatile, temporary property tax measures. This is an inefficient, broken strategy.

To eliminate this animosity and restore a smoothly operating county government, we must deploy common-sense structural corrections:

• Establish an Explicit Operational MOU: The BCC, Administration, and the Sheriff must sign a binding Memorandum of Understanding. This document must explicitly state that the BCC sets the total dollar cap, but the Sheriff retains total line-item autonomy to distribute those resources without administrative interference.

• Enforce Strict Fiscal Discipline via Independent Audit: We must bypass internal administrative staff and hire a third-party auditor to track every single tax dollar. The public deserves to see exactly how much General Fund revenue goes to core safety versus administrative overhead.

• Reprioritize Core General Fund Dollars: Public safety is the fundamental baseline of civil order. We must stop funding experimental social programs, like Housing First, that enable underlying crises and then we must redirect those existing General Fund tax dollars back to mandatory law enforcement infrastructure.

By defining clear boundaries, we protect the operational independence of our Sheriff while maintaining strict fiscal discipline within the BCC, ensuring every dollar from the people is wisely utilized. We do not need new taxes, new fees, or more regulations to keep our neighborhoods safe. We need structural alignment, absolute transparency, and mutual respect for the separation of powers.

Clackamas County can be a safe, affordable, and prosperous place to live and build a life. To get there, we must stop the bureaucratic overreach, respect the taxpayer, and run an efficient, accountable county government.