Clackamas County commissioners are misusing voter allocated funds in an attempt to raise money to pay for a new county courthouse, according to Sheriff Angela Brandenburg.
“The County has created its own budget for my office that diverts its General Fund obligation to provide law enforcement services,” Brandenburg wrote in a letter to Clackamas County residents that she posted online. “This is a misuse of your tax dollars.”
The sheriff’s office faces $5 million in cuts from the county’s general fund. Commissioners have proposed backfilling that cut with money from a voter levy to fund jail beds and deputies. Brandenburg argues that’s not how the levy money is meant to be used.
“The levy dollars are for specific services,” Brandenburg said. “And the ballot title, the ballot measure, and the explanatory statement is what purposes it can be used for. It’s very specific.”
Clackamas County commissioners are imposing budget cuts across all agencies. Brandenburg and other budget experts say the cuts are to help come up with an additional $15 million this budget cycle to cover costs associated with the new county courthouse.
Before ground had been broken in February, construction costs had already ballooned from $189 million to $313 million due largely to inflation.
County leaders say the budget changes are a routine part of how the county runs its budget.
For her department’s $5 million share of the cuts, Brandenburg proposed eliminating 34 positions, most of which are currently unfilled. The cuts would include some senior leadership and jail deputy slots, parole and probation officers, and a handful of non-law enforcement professional staff. Brandenburg’s suggested cuts would have required nine layoffs.
Commissioners rejected her proposal, Brandenburg said. Instead, the county administrator took over the budget process for her agency. His proposal would use funds from the voter approved Sheriff’s Public Safety Levy to make up the $5 million cut. Brandenburg said it was the first time in history the county had sidelined the sheriff in drafting the agency’s budget.
Funding the new Clackamas County courthouse has been raising alarms since 2018 when it was first announced. Under a public-private partnership approved last year, the county will own the building but a private firm will finance and maintain it for 30 years. During that time, Clackamas County will pay an annual operations and maintenance fee pegged to inflation, estimated to be roughly $15 million per year.
The state and county are each paying $94 million for the construction. It’s still unclear where the remaining $124 million will come from. The fate of an additional $61 million from the state is still uncertain after county Chair Tootie Smith changed her vote and doomed a state-backed low-income housing project.
County leaders have insisted they will not raise taxes to pay for the courthouse. After the groundbreaking in February, Smith said the county has steadily added services over the years that commissioners may consider scaling back or outsourcing to the private sector.
In a budget meeting Wednesday to discuss funding for the Enhanced Law Enforcement District, a section of Clackamas County where residents pay to fund additional deputies, county officials denied that proposed budget cuts had anything to do with the need to pay for the new courthouse. Instead, they said the cuts were part of an increase in administrative costs such as payroll, human resources and technology services which all county agencies help pay for. Clackamas County Administrator Gary Schmidt said this was a long anticipated change to how the county charges for those services and was the product of an outside consultant’s recommendations.
“Everyone knew almost a year ago the model would be changed,” Schmidt told attendees at the budget meeting. “The cost allocation model is about 30 years old. It’s almost not meeting federal guidelines. It needed to be revised. It had to be. It was not a choice.”
County commissioners were adamant that sheriff positions not be cut. Schmidt, who took over drafting the sheriff’s budget when Brandenburg’s proposal was rejected, said he thought it was possible to preserve the positions she proposed eliminating by paying for the new budget cuts through “existing revenue streams,” such as the sheriff’s levy.
“I asked the sheriff … to distribute the costs of all allocated and overhead costs to all funding sources, including the levy, which in my opinion meets the voter intent of the levy,” Schmidt said.
The levy was passed in 2021 and raises more than $20 million per year to supplement the sheriff’s office budget.
The measure said the additional funds would pay for 84 beds in the Clackamas County Jail, 30 jail deputies, 18 patrol deputies and the agency’s drug enforcement team.
“The only difference this year is that the county is looking for $15 million and they see these as revenue sources,” Brandenburg said.
Brandenburg said similar moves have faced legal challenges elsewhere in the state.
In an April opinion piece for Oregon City News, two longtime budget experts in Clackamas County said expenditures must match revenue.
“If you’re going to add millions of dollars in debt payments over 30 years for a courthouse, you’re going to have to cut a similar amount or find new revenue sources to balance,” Tom Feely and Shaun Coldwell wrote. “Sadly, the county refused to go to the voters for a general obligation bond to fund the new courthouse, requiring the annual costs to come out of an already tight General Fund.”
Tootie Smith called Brandenburg’s letter “very damaging and untruthful.” Along with the four other commissioners, she voted not to hear Brandenburg’s proposed budget and instead heard the version drafted by the county administrator’s staff.
Brandenburg said she will again ask the budget committee to consider her proposed version at a Tuesday county commission meeting when they will receive the county administrator’s proposed sheriff’s office budget.
