A pair of initiatives sponsored by Portland Police Association (PPA) to hire more patrol officers and overhaul the city’s new police oversight board won’t be on the ballot this November.
The union filed the two initiatives in February. The first would have required the city to increase the ranks of patrol officers and open a 24-hour drug and alcohol detoxification facility. The ACLU of Oregon filed suit, arguing that the initiative was unconstitutional because it involved administrative changes to policing, not changes to city law. On May 9, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Katharine von Ter Stegge agreed, and blocked the measure.
The second initiative would have rewritten city code passed by voters in 2020 to set up an independent police oversight board. Portland City Council referred Ballot Measure 26-217 to voters in a 5-0 vote after months of protests and riots following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Approved by 82% of voters, the city charter amendment sets up a Community Police Oversight Board with the power to subpoena witnesses, investigate complaints, impose discipline on police officers and supervisors, and recommend policing policy changes. Police officers and their family members are barred from serving on it. The measure sets the board’s funding at 5% of the overall police bureau budget.
After it passed, PPA filed a grievance with the Portland Police Bureau saying the oversight plan violated its collective bargaining agreement because it replaced an agreed-upon process for investigating and disciplining officers without the union’s agreement.
But in 2021, Oregon legislators passed a law — opposed by police unions — that said community oversight boards approved by voters after July 2020 (like Portland’s) wouldn’t be subject to bargaining. The new law made the grievance moot and allowed Portland’s community oversight board to move forward.
PPA President Aaron Schmautz told the Labor Press the law removed a guarantee that officers accused of misconduct would receive due process, per the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the Portland Police Bureau. That’s a “critical labor issue” that should be of concern to other labor unions, he added.
PPA’s second ballot measure, filed Feb. 17, proposed numerous changes to the city code setting up the Community Police Oversight Board. Its measure sought to remove:
- The board’s power to discipline and terminate officers;
- The exclusion on law enforcement officers and immediate family from serving on the board;
- The requirement that the board’s funding be at least 5% of the annual police budget;
- Language saying the board’s office can’t be in a Portland police facility; and
- Language saying the board would include members from “diverse communities and with diverse lived experiences, particularly those who have experienced systemic racism and those who have experienced mental illness, addiction or alcoholism” and replacing that with “various professional backgrounds and from different geographic areas of the City”
On March 1, the City Attorney’s office issued a caption and summary describing the measure to voters, as it’s legally mandated to do. Both opponents and supporters of the initiative filed legal objections to the wording, and Judge von Ter Stegge heard their arguments April 26. In a May 23 decision, she ruled that while the City’s title was factual, neutral, and drafted in good faith, it does not sufficiently capture the major effects of the measure.
“The Court is persuaded … that the City’s ballot title does not effectively convey the complete repeal of the Board’s independence as well as the elimination of its watershed authority to impose discipline, up to and including termination,” von Ter Stegge wrote. Von Ter Stegge revised the ballot title and summary accordingly.
Her ruling was a curveball for the union, Schmautz told the Labor Press. PPA disagreed with the new title, Schmautz said. And the ruling “just didn’t allow us time to collect the signatures.” To get the measure on the ballot, the PPA would have had to submit more than 40,000 signatures to city election officials by July 5.
Portland City Council will pick members of what it’s now calling the Community Board for Police Accountability in the coming months, said Mayor Ted Wheeler spokesperson Cody Bowman. Then the new board will hire staff and begin investigating cases in 2025 while the city’s current civilian oversight system — the Independent Police Review — phases out.
