Angelita Morillo, an incumbent, was formerly a staffer in the office of Portland City Commissioner JoAnn Hardesty and a policy advocate at the nonprofit group Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon. On City Council, she led passage of a ban on algorithmic rent price fixing by landlords. As a candidate, she’s a signer of the ‘no police union money’ pledge.
The Labor Press spoke with her via Zoom Oct. 9.
Labor organization endorsers: AAUP/PSU, AFSCME 189, AFT/PCCFFAP, LIUNA 483, OEA/PAT, SEIU Oregon, UBC
More: angelitaforportland.com
DON McINTOSH, NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS: Looking back over the last two years, what have you heard from local unions, labor councils? What are they asking from you?
ANGELITA MORILLO: I think we hear a lot more from the city unions and what they’re going through in the budget crisis.
But the biggest one that comes to mind right now is the Teamsters have been in contact with many of us because of Waymo expanding in Portland. The mayor made an executive decision to give them the green light for that. That hasn’t really been formally approved by council, and there are many of us on council who are highly critical and concerned about Waymo. I really hate AI, and I am also very concerned about how Waymo is going to be specifically taking immigrant jobs at a time when people are in so much danger that they really need these positions in order to survive. So I just hate it on many levels. I think Councilor (Olivia) Clark is going to be doing something. I’m so sad I’m not on this committee anymore, but it’s the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. We’re trying to figure out what to do and not be preempted by the state.
We’ve also had some of the trades unions really interested in the big infrastructure projects, Moda (Center), the Bull Run water treatment project. They’ve been advocating for those things. I’ve been critical of those projects, you know, just to be transparent. I have concerns about public dollars being used there.
Why don’t we talk about Moda Center. You voted against the term sheet (the council-amended opening proposal in negotiations with the new owners of the Portland Trailblazers). Why did you vote the way you did?
The Moda term sheet was pitched to us as both a starting point and as something that can be improved later on down the line, and I just don’t believe that’s how negotiations work. The first thing that you start with always gets negotiated down, and I don’t think that we secured enough public benefits to justify giving away public dollars for this renovation. The other thing that really concerned me is that we have no idea what construction upgrades or architectural changes they (the Blazers) want to make to the Moda. We haven’t even seen what I would describe as a watercolor sketch of what they want to do. So we have no idea what we are paying for, and if the question was about making earthquake safety upgrades or accessibility upgrades or anything that actually benefits the public, I’m here for that. But we have no proof of that right now. And from what I have heard, it sounds like Tom Dundon (the lead investor in the new owner group) wants luxury box seat upgrades for his other billionaire friends because the average Portlander or even you and I are not going to be able to afford that. So we did not secure enough public benefits to justify giving away public dollars.
Any idea when we’re going to find out what this money is going to be for?
We were supposed to have a vote sometime in December, but it sounds like we probably won’t hear back ’til early January.
You mentioned hearing from unions on the budget. It’s said that a budget is a moral document. It states what your priorities are. That’s got to have been the most wrenching and unpleasant thing for you the last two years. Not just one but two seasons where you’re looking at not enough funds to do everything you want to do. What would be your summary of the budget discussion and your place in it?
The city budget was absolutely brutal. We had to find cuts for $160 million. We laid off nearly 200 employees. All of our employees understand that we’re in a very difficult budget time. What they don’t understand is the disrespect that they got from the administrative side for not even consulting them, talking with them, or making sure that they had any input in the decisions that were made. I talked to so many lower-level managers and frontline staff who said, “the administration never even consulted us before making these decisions on these so-called efficiencies.” They would look at something and just say, “Okay, there are three engineers. We can probably take out two,” with no idea what those people actually did. I just talked with someone at CHAT for the Fire Bureau because I passed an amendment that gave CHAT ongoing funding. (CHAT stands for Community Health Assess and Treat program, an emergency response initiative launched in late 2021 to handle non-emergency 9-1-1 calls and lower the strain on traditional fire engines and ambulances.) He told me his job was on the chopping block, and no one talked to them about it. He found out a few days before, and luckily my amendment passed, so his job was saved, but this man has worked at the bureau for 30 years, had profound knowledge about the grant system. He was getting a bunch of money for CHAT. So if they had fired him and gotten rid of that institutional knowledge, it would have been a net loss of funding because he was securing all of the funding for the bureau. So there are a lot of situations like that that I think were really brutal. We had employees coming and talking to our office often, and honestly, we were sitting there crying with them. It was a very difficult time. So I had a lot of emotion and anger during the budget crisis. Frankly, you know, as we were having these negotiations, policy is not this removed, distant thing for me. It’s very personal and emotional, and I think that we were doing the best with what we had. But me, councilors Green and Avalos, we tried to bring forward an amendment that would have saved a bunch of core services jobs and employees, and that didn’t end up passing.
How would it have worked?
It was to use PCEF (Portland Clean Energy Fund) interest that already automatically goes into the general fund, but we actually allocated it specifically to save certain core services.
What do you think is the biggest thing that City Council can do for working people in Portland?
I think that we need to raise taxes on mega corporations. We cannot continue to bring austerity budgets to working class Portlanders and to our employees. And I think there’s a lot of propaganda that has come down from the federal government that there’s just this excess bloat in government all the time, and that these employees are not needed. I haven’t talked to a single employee who’s not absolutely essential, who’s not doing work to keep the city moving. We have a lot of grand ideas as candidates. People are saying lovely things. They want to repair the roads. They want to improve bus and bike infrastructure. They want to save all the parks, etc. You can’t do that without money, and there are very few people who have money right now. We keep balancing the city budget on the backs of working class people. We keep increasing their water rates, their electricity rates, and just fee after fee after fee. People really can’t afford it anymore. Small businesses can’t afford it anymore. So the “fair share tax” that me and a few others have proposed would be a surcharge increase on mega corporations. It’s about 405 of them that operate and sell their products in Portland. So they can’t just leave to avoid this fee. They would have to completely take their products out of the market, and most corporations are not going to do that, especially since it’ll be a very nominal loss for them, but a huge benefit for the city. It’s estimated to bring around $72 million of revenue, and it would be tax relief for 18,000 small businesses that make under $500,000 a year. We know that they are surviving on the margin, so every little fee that they get is making it hard for them.
Is the $72 million offset by the tax relief, or is that net after the tax relief?
That’s net.
So $72 million would have made somewhat of a chunk in the budget pain that you guys were going through.
Yeah, it would have been a huge difference. And these mega corporations, we’re trying to target corporations where the CEO makes a bajillion times more than their median paid employee. The example that I keep giving is like the Starbucks CEO making $36 million. Their median paid employee makes $17,000 a year. That guy has some money to give. He will be fine.
Well, I guess it would be Starbucks that would pay, not him. You know, bargaining is going on right now, I’m sure you’re well aware. It looks like Protec17 (a city union representing professional and technical employees) has a tentative agreement for now, but a couple other big unions do not. Is it appropriate for city council members to get involved, intervene in any way? What’s been your record about that?
I have joined some of the practice picket lines last year, I think it was last year, maybe the first year. Time is a blur now.
I was on the AFSCME practice picket line. We were told the city attorney’s finger wagged us a little bit, and they were like, “You can’t do that because you’re management technically and you’re making decisions on the budget, so there’s both the propriety aspect of it and the legal aspect of it. So we actually just had a meeting yesterday where there was some debate amongst councilors and the legal team about what we are allowed to do. I think that the best support that we can offer is to actually be meeting with the unions, hearing out their concerns, because you know, oftentimes while I respect the city team, you hear very different things when you’re talking to the people directly experiencing that moment. So I think that’s the biggest place that we can help and advocate for the things that they need. I also think some of the unions are asking for things that are really reasonable. Like some of them are just asking for, “can we continue to work from home?” which we know is a huge benefit, especially for women in the workforce, which is also a huge deal when you consider that under the Trump administration, hundreds of thousands of Black women are no longer working. These are targeted attacks against women in the workforce, and I feel very strongly about giving that flexibility to work from home because I know what it means for women in the workforce, and that doesn’t cost the city anything, and yet we have an executive that is so resistant to just giving these people basic dignity back that they are asking for that costs us nothing.
One of the big deal breakers that I’ve been hearing about is basically the city negotiators were offering a contract that really didn’t include a cost of living increase. They would not really keep people up with inflation, so workers would lose purchasing power over the course of the contract.
I have heard that complaint. I was actually going to follow up with HR today to get more exact details because we had a meeting on it yesterday, but it’s all in executive session, so we don’t get the notes. But by some calculation that they did, these workers allegedly got benefits in other areas that sort of rounded it all out. But COLA seems to be a very standard practice, and it’s profoundly demoralizing to not get that. Also just everything is costing more every single day.
I’ve noticed. You’ve been there now two years. There’s 12 of you, I realize, but you’ve had some success in sponsoring resolutions that passed, and probably played a big role in others. What are some of the initiatives or resolutions that you can properly take credit for?
I’ve actually passed more ordinances than any other councilor in my first two years. I immediately passed the algorithmic price fixing ban to ban corporate landlords from using AI to price fix people’s rent. I’m one of three renters on council, so that really matters, and we haven’t had that representation before. I passed the first-of-its-kind detention facility impact fee. There is no fee like this in the country, and so other jurisdictions are now trying to look at it. It doesn’t completely resolve the issue of ICE violence in our communities, but what it does do is allow us to use the levers of power that we have at the local level for when a detention facility opens up. Because a private landlord leased their building or their land to a detention facility like ICE, we can charge them a fee for what’s called negative externalities. So, if they are aggressively tear gassing a neighborhood and that’s seeping into people’s homes, we can charge them a fee for poisoning the air and for the costs that it takes those families to get air purifiers to seal their homes, et cetera.
I was down there when they tear gassed peaceful labor union families.
That’s horrible. I’m glad you’re okay. It was a horrible day. But anyways those fees will end up going into a pool of funds for people who are directly impacted by these detention facilities. So it’ll go back to the community, which I’m grateful for.
I also created the first data privacy office in the city of Portland. Other cities already have this, and data governance is a very unique issue, especially in this time with the expansion of Flock cameras, with the expansion of the surveillance state under the Trump administration. So we need to make sure that any data collection we do at the city or procurement of technology is actually processed by an expert in data governance, and I’m really excited for that to be implemented as well.
Data privacy protections: What is that? Is that like the city has data, and they just want to make sure it doesn’t get into the wrong hands or something?
Right. So, let’s say the city, like the police bureau, will procure different surveillance cameras, but then how that data is stored, how long it’s stored, who has access to that data — all of that is a data governance question, and we don’t really have a process for digging into that in the ways that we should right now. So, if you have leakages where police are working with ICE, which happens sometimes, then you don’t have data privacy, or if the city is contracting with a new technology like like Waymo, how long does Waymo store information? How are they doing all the pattern making of your city streets? All of that is technology that’s stored, and you can create a pattern of life on someone. You can find out all the places they visit, who they talk to, who they’re organizing with.
I think the last two I’ll say is the “Inner Eastside for All” policy, I’m really excited about. It’s to address zoning in the Inner East Side, which will help us build more housing. We have a housing shortage in Oregon and in Portland, and that’s part of what’s driving the affordability issue. And the Inner East Side for All policy was done with Portland Neighbors Welcome and other housing experts who focused on this issue for many years, so we’re excited about that. Even the Metro Chamber (business group) didn’t hate that, so that was a big change for us relationship-wise.
And then the last one is I also passed the first social housing and revolving loan fund so that the city can purchase an existing apartment building and permanently stabilize the rent. That’s going to be a good experiment for us to see what it looks like to have permanently stabilized rent for working class people.
Is there a funding source for that, or does it just give authorization when funding becomes available?
You may have heard that a few months back, we discovered as a council millions of undisclosed funds in the Housing Bureau that nobody told us about. And so when we found those funds, we were trying to decide what to do with it, and that’s what I helped push for. I also led the first oversight hearing on those millions of undisclosed housing dollars because it was absolutely bonkers that that can happen in the city.
