Editorial endorsement November 2024: Elect Vadim Mozyrsky, Sam Adams to energize Multnomah County commission

Multnomah County voters in Districts 1 and 2 should answer a single question before casting their ballots this November for county commissioner: Are they satisfied with the direction, urgency and results that the county has shown in addressing homelessness, drug addiction and public safety?

Or are they, like many across the county, frustrated by what they see: greater numbers of people living and dying on the streets ; an ambulance response crisis that inexplicably took more than a year to resolve; the secretive work behind a new center to help drug users get treatment in lieu of jail – and the resulting delay in opening due to half-baked plans.

November's election is not just about the individuals running for office; it's also about the dynamic on the board and whether the next District 1 and 2 commissioners will rubberstamp Chair Jessica Vega Pederson's policies or offer the healthy pushback that leads to better outcomes. Voters should choose Vadim Mozyrsky in District 1 and Sam Adams in District 2 as the candidates who will best ensure the five-member county commission keeps moving forward with purpose and accountability.

District 1 – West Portland

District 1 voters are losing a stalwart advocate with Commissioner Sharon Meieran's departure due to term limits. Particularly in the past few years, Meieran has sounded the alarm over the county's inadequate response to homelessness and behavioral health needs. She also relentlessly pressured Vega Pederson until the chair finally agreed to shift ambulance staffing requirements to reduce long response times. That it took more than a year to accept a staffing formula common in cities across the country is an egregious failure on the part of the chair and the two other commissioners, Jesse Beason and Lori Stegmann, who allowed it to persist . It also shows why the commission dynamic matters .

While Mozyrsky, 51, does not bring Meieran's expertise as an emergency and street medicine doctor, he is well-steeped in the issues from multiple vantage points. His childhood experience as a refugee and professional experience as an administrative law judge for the Social Security Administration give him a personal understanding of the importance of reliable government services. His volunteer work for neighborhood, public safety and civic committees has introduced him to the variety of perspectives that must be incorporated into decisions to fairly and broadly serve the public. And he recognizes the need to show real value for the tax dollars that residents provide, saying he would push for an audit of programs within the Joint Office of Homeless Services, to determine which are effective and identify those that are not.

He emphasizes the need for more collaboration – particularly with Portland officials, whose priorities are only recently getting more consideration from the county. That willingness to commit to shared objectives will be key to keeping this critical intergovernmental partnership together.

Mozyrsky champions what should be a commonsense viewpoint: The county must serve those who are homeless and in need of behavioral health care with compassion and competence. But it must also adopt policies that protect the public's fair and reasonable desire for improved safety and access to public spaces.

Opponent Meghan Moyer , public policy director for Disability Rights Oregon, is a strong candidate in her own right. She similarly brings a commitment to accountability, lists specific priorities to speed the county's slow rollout of free preschool and development of behavioral health services and shows that she would not automatically back Vega Pederson. Like Mozyrsky, Moyer, 44, would vote to change the chair's practice of blocking other elected officials from placing an issue on the agenda.

Our main concern is that her support for enforcing the city's camping ban – which prohibits camping in public spaces when someone is offered reasonable housing – is limited to sweeping an area of campers and forcing them to move along. While city officials should be judicious and limited in sending someone to jail for violating the ban – and so far, they have been with only one arrest and five citations since July – jail must be an option for those who repeatedly refuse offers of help. Similarly, she does not support a proposal at the state level to broaden the "civil commitment" criteria allowing judges to order someone with mental illness who is a danger to themselves or others into mental health treatment. While she's right that the state lacks sufficient resources currently, that does not justify keeping highly restrictive conditions that practically require someone to commit a crime before the state steps in.

District 2 – North and Northeast Portland

Adams, 61, is no stranger to local politics, though most of his career has been at the city of Portland – as a mayoral staffer, city commissioner, one-term mayor and adviser to Mayor Ted Wheeler. He also is no stranger to controversy, from lying during his mayoral campaign about a previous sexual relationship with an 18-year-old to allegations that he belittled or bullied female staffers while working for Wheeler in 2021 and 2022. Those allegations were not investigated, unfortunately. Adams left Wheeler's office in January 2023, although the circumstances remain under dispute.

There will likely be many voters who won't consider his candidacy for those reasons. But as his long career and loyal base of support show, Adams is one of the two candidates in this runoff because he consistently brings the big ideas that can cut overwhelming problems down to size. In our view, his vision, focus on holding county government accountable and record of effectiveness make him the right choice in this moment, despite personal failures.

Part of that comes from his deep understanding of how government works – the levers to pull, the funding sources to tap and how to scale up to meet a problem. That experience is reflected in his multi-pronged proposal to address homelessness, including appointing a homelessness czar and bringing the $700 million that goes to the county, city, Home Forward and other agencies for homelessness into a unified budget. The county, he argues, needs a full, clear picture of the resources, services, gaps and redundancies that exist in the system if it wants to strategically provide the continuum of services needed to move people out of crisis.

He also has led the charge against the county's practice of giving the chair unparalleled authority to set the agenda, barring other elected commissioners from doing so unless they can round up a majority to agree. He secured a legal analysis from Stoel Rives that concludes the practice violates the county charter – not to mention principles of good government – and makes clear the pressing need to end such unilateral control.

And Adams' thick skin is a plus when offering ideas that challenge the status quo. His proposal to develop mass outdoor camping sites, derided by some as concentration camps, evolved into the city's pod shelter model that has proven to be among the most effective ways to move people from homelessness into permanent housing. The city's Clinton Triangle pod site has moved at least 190 people between July 2023 and August 2024 into permanent housing – a far better showing that traditional dorm-style shelters.

His opponent, Shannon Singleton, is a longtime social worker who served as former Gov. Kate Brown's housing policy adviser and ran the Joint Office of Homeless Services as interim director in 2022. But Singleton, 47, suggested she would acquiesce to Vega Pederson's continuing control, saying she did not understand why Meieran had trouble getting items on the agenda and that her approach would be to work with commissioners to add items for discussion. She also has opposed the city's efforts to ban camping, submitting a statement in support of a lawsuit challenging the city's first attempt and continuing to oversimplify the issue by saying that criminalization does not solve homelessness.

That purposefully glosses over the reasons for the ban. Someone only violates the camping ban if they have been offered reasonable accommodations and refuse to accept them. Homelessness advocates commonly recognize that getting someone into shelter where they can access services is a first step in helping them transition to more permanent housing.

The central issue is that Singleton, as she confirmed in the endorsement interview, believes that no one should ever be required to accept shelter. This is a fundamental difference between the two candidates and portends a continuing break with the city over what the region's common goals should be. Endorsing a voluntary-only approach means that the rest of the public must accept camping wherever and whenever.

Multnomah County residents have already seen how that no-limits approach has failed to stem the tide of homelessness, even with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue. If residents want to see a change in direction, they should cast their vote for Adams and Mozyrsky to join Commissioners Julia Brim-Edwards and Vince Jones-Dixon as district representatives on the board.