The Judgement of Solomon Part I

Dollars in black and white, or slicing the baby in half.

Portland City Council made its “most reckless decision yet,” in remanding funding decisions for the Portland Children’s Levy. Then, they fixed their mistake. Local media covered it, but in the professional, typically dispassionate manner of journalists.¹

I am not one of those and that’s not what you come here for. You come here for the Hot Goss. The winners, losers, faces, and heels. The Judgement of Max Steele.

There are a few big questions we need to be able to answer here:

1. What was the fuckup?

2. Who caused it?

3. What does the whole situation say about Portland’s relationship with *gasp* DEI?

4. Did they actually correct it?

Local media answered some of them, but I thought things deserved the kind of deranged over-analysis you pay me for.² This story has a happy ending, but we won’t get there today.

5/21 - The First Reading

This was at the beginning of Budgetmania! and we were all distracted talking about other things, but I did mention it.

The first part of the meeting (before the budget was opened for discussion) involved a fight over the Portland Children’s Levy Allocation Committee, money, and identity politics. The whole thing was gross and sort of shockingly racist. I’ll be digging into it later, because I refuse to be distracted until the budget is discussed. We are going to need to have a very difficult conversation about “equity” in this city, and what we even mean when we say that word.

Look at me finally following up!

Agenda Item Five -  Approve funding recommendations of Children's Levy Allocation Committee for July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2028. The discussion begins at 42min 35sec.

They previously discussed the levy in a work group but some of the council didn’t attend so there’s a snag. Councilor Dan Ryan was tasked with trying to present this first reading to council while President Elana Pirtle-Guiney was pushing for speed. There was a whole budget process to get to and this was fairly routine stuff. It’s just a first reading. Or at least it should have been.

Ryan was the chair of the allocation committee (along with County Commissioner Meghan Moyer) and he was in a strong position to understand and defend it. He referred to the process as “thorough, transparent, data-driven.”

You can go read about the program on their website. It really is a squishy progressive thing that seems so on-brand for Portland. It was surprising that things turned out so riddled with controversy, but then again, there were millions of dollars on the line.

This quote from the PCL representatives stands out:

 The current annual budgets for large grants is $27.2 million. The projected average annual budget for large grants over the next three years is $21.56 million per year. That means on an annual basis, total funds available for large grants will decline by approximately 21% next year. This decline is the result of PCL spending down a fund balance plus a decrease in property tax revenue over the past two years, which is projected to continue for the next three years.³

 At the same time that PCL has declining funds, we saw an increase demand. PCL received 168 total applications, which is a 45% increase over the last funding round. In 2019/20 more than $3 was requested for every $1 that was available. The number of applications from organizations without current PCL grants tripled compared to 2019.

Councilor Loretta Smith started on a suspicious footing. Just out of the gate “asking questions” in a manner that put the data into doubt. It was odd.

Then, at the 52 minute mark, public testimony took place. Dr Carmen Thompson, local black historian,⁴ fired the first shot.

 I ask the city council to remand the Portland Children's Levy Award decision back to PCL to redirect awards granted to large white-led organizations under the Hunger Relief Program that do not prioritize serving black people and award funds to black-led black-serving organizations that prioritize serving black people.

She then dunked on Meals on Wheels while pretending she wasn’t, and circled back around to this accusation of a sort of racial fraud/manipulation.

 I only use them as an example to show how PCL awards to so-called BIPOC-serving organizations are subject to manipulation by white-led organizations that use BIPOC as an inroad to access equity dollars. In effect, large white-led organizations like Meals on Wheels are able to double dip to access both equity and non-equity pots of money simply by claiming BIPOC.

Never mind that Meals on Wheels is consistently rated among the top non-profits for efficacy, top places to work, and given great marks for transparency. Their board of directors is only 16.6% black⁵ so… I guess the white-led accusation stands? I really loathe this stuff.

 While black-led and black-serving organizations, whether because of scale or other institutional biases do not have the same access to non-equity or white dollars. This is not equity or equitable.

So… when it’s a program focused on feeding black kids, it’s equity dollars. When it’s a program focused on feeding the elderly, regardless of race, it’s white dollars. Never mind that the elderly residents fed by those white dollars are themselves disproportionately not white.

It’s almost like this style of equity argument doesn’t make much sense.

Thompson then called out the Equitable Giving Circle (EGC) as a specific example of an org that should have received those equity dollars. 1,300 people signed a petition in support of them. And there we have it, this isn’t about “black” or “white” dollars. It isn’t about Meals on Wheels. This is about some groups not being chosen for funding over others. Groups run by friends of the people complaining.

The next speaker alleges something fishy about the anonymous grant portfolios and attacks Oregon Food Bank (OFB) and Sunshine Division alongside Meals on Wheels. White-led organizations, ya’ll. Take a scroll through the Oregon Food Bank’s staff page and tell me that’s a white-led organization. OFB’s Policy Leadership Council is like 6% white. In Oregon. What are we doing? None of this survives scrutiny.

Then the ringleader stepped up: AJ McCreary, former City Council Candidate, as well as co-founder and Executive Director of EGC, who did not receive funds. She accused the grant process of being “ racist, anti-black and inequitable.”

This is egregious and unacceptable. Council should intervene. Reality is the bulk of the funds that the Portland Children's Levy is investing is into orgs that are white-led and white-serving, specifically the Oregon Food Bank, Meals for Wheels and the Sunshine Division, which is a division of the Portland Police.

She went 10 seconds over time, got cut off, yelled about the process being racist again, and left.

I do not care for McCreary. Her run in Portland politics has been littered with controversy and bad ideas.⁶ She and the organizations she runs benefitted greatly from The Dark Days of 2017-2024. That financial ride may be coming to an end and she is clearly not happy about it.

Her EGC was born from the Mxm Bloc and Portland Public School Board Member-elect Rashelle Chase-Miller is on the board. See why I didn’t want you voting for her? Too many troubling connections. Too much drama.

EGC started as a plant distribution network for black and brown community members. House plants. That’s a lot of growth into feeding people, and it would be impressive if things seemed to be working. The org has also referred to paperwork as a “gatekeeping tool of white supremacy.”

However, they were recipients of Arts Tax funds, so clearly AJ can write a damn grant.

From WW:

Councilor Sameer Kanal brought up one nonprofit not recommended for funding, Equitable Giving Circle. PCL staff noted in the memo that EGC, which is Black-led, had scored last—23rd out of 23—in organizations applying for a hunger relief grant. “No application that scored last in any program area was approved for funding,” staff wrote. They noted that four other Black-led hunger relief organizations were approved for funding.

But somehow, according to AJ McCreary, the process was racist and deeply flawed. Now the Food Bank is somehow the beneficiary of white-supremacy. Ironically, I wrote something back in 2017 about how the moment you start calling food banks “white supremacist” you have lost your argument. Is it any wonder I got cancelled?

McCreary is connected to Gregory McKelvey, Cameron Whitten, Jo Ann Hardesty, Sarah Iannarone, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and seemingly every bad actor emerging from that particularly nasty period of Portland politics. Her org wasn’t chosen for funding while groups who have been working in Portland for much longer were. Almost like the city is healing and we’re figuring out that pre-2017 Portland wasn’t so bad?

If you’ve been in Portland for long, that list of names should be pretty triggering. There’s a horrible book in all of this, for the person insane enough to write it. There are a handful of us who could: Aaron Mesh. Nancy Rommelman. Myself. G-d help whichever one of us eventually does the deed.

Later Sahaan McKelvey from Self Enhancement, Inc (SEI) gave his public comment.

 There are 94 programs recommended for funding. Of these 94 programs, 69 specifically serve African American youth, but only 20 of these are with African American agencies. This sends a clear and loud message to our community that the city does not believe that we can empower ourselves and the city does not value the leadership ingenuity and brilliance of our black organizations.

So, again… in a city that is less than 6% black, over 20% of the groups recommended were black-led and 73.4% specifically serve black youth.⁷ That’s not equitable?

McKelvey used very different language than McCreary. He was respectful of the fantastic work these orgs do, even while arguing that the PCL made a bad call, but he still dipped into this weird rhetoric that sounds almost like a call for segregation.

 This means that there are nine examples of the allocation committee telling the black community in Portland that we must look to white agencies to save us, white agencies to teach us white agencies to mentor us and white agencies to help us raise our children.

I actually think the Oregon Food Bank is too politicized and needs to stick to their lane of feeding people but I reject the notion that it is a “white agency” or “white-serving.” It’s a food bank. Run disproportionately by Latina women. This is 2025 Portland folks.

Eric Knox from Holla had his say (his group was chosen for funding). He was happy with the decision. His group is black-led and black-serving. The Ethiopian and Eritrean Cultural Center was also happy with their funding. You won’t be shocked to learn they are black-led and black-serving.

Then the Sunshine Division came up. Kanal started questioning the funding. This guy cannot miss an opportunity to perform for his base and poke at the police. The response he got:

 70% of that grant budget is used to purchase food that is delivered weekly to the Community Transition School, which is a school in Northeast Portland and the Culley neighborhood that serves homeless children.

Turns out it’s not a secret police slush fund. It feeds homeless kids. I’m shocked.

When Kanal asked about SEI being passed over for mentoring and the “white” groups being chosen, here was the answer:

 We did fund other 18 to 24-year-old programs that provided a wide range of services and that served African Americans as well as other cultural groups in that age group. The ones that received the most was one that could provide GEDs on site or high school diplomas on site or BOLI certified pre-apprenticeship programs on site that were accepted directly into the vocational schools as well as college and career. So those were it that gave the youth who participated in that program a wider range of options to be able to go into getting living wage jobs after the high school age is over.

Councilor Angelita Morillo finally chimed in with whatever this is:

I find it deeply concerning that so many organizations of color that are doing work for our black, indigenous, Latino, Asian American communities are not getting grants. And I've heard a lot of concerns that the majority of the people reviewing the grants tend to be white.

There's just not a lot of diversity as far as perspective for the people that are reviewing the grants...

...We know that outreach works best when it's people within your own community doing outreach to you because you understand each other. You have bonds already. And so I will say that I don't feel comfortable with moving this forward.

She based this on nothing. Just vibes and experiences.

Every single DSA councilor queued up to argue for a remand. They couldn’t compliment each other enough — just a circle-jerk of nonsense. Nothing they said was facts-based and the two PCL representatives did a great job correcting them, not that it mattered.

Smith spoke up about SEI and she had a lot of numbers on hand — almost as if she was prepped by SEI to cast doubt on the process.

The DSA showed up for AJ McCreary and Loretta Smith showed up for SEI. The rest of these fantastic orgs be damned. Kids be damned. Our friends didn’t get checks (or got smaller checks than they wanted), so let’s pump the brakes.

Councilor Eric Zimmerman was a voice of calm and reason until Dan Ryan stepped up as the first to actually defend the PCL. They weren’t allowed to give their full presentation so Ryan asked leading questions to walk them through the process:

• The process was 3 years in development.

• There were 4 readers per application.

• The Community Council didn’t know who the orgs were and voted blind.

• That council was created based on community feedback.

• 77% of members have “ professional or lived experience” in the service areas.

• 69% are BIPOC

• 92% have experience working in “advancing racial equity.”

• 15% are LGBT

• 46% have experience working with the “queer community.”

• 8% have a disability.

• 23% are caretakers of someone with a disability.

• 31% have experience working with disability communities.

That looks pretty damn equitable. I’ll remind you what Morillo said/pulled from her ass:

I've heard a lot of concerns that the majority of the people reviewing the grants tend to be white. There's just not a lot of diversity as far as perspective for the people that are reviewing the grants.

Dan Fucking Ryan, again:

 My point is this was so thoroughly vetted in a very transparent process over the last few years that I experienced when I had been on this allocation committee.

And I just want to remind my colleagues about how much work has gone into this. And I know it's not easy when you just get the information at the work session, which I hope that you were able to engage with and then repeat that here. I've also found all of the staff to be very helpful in terms of honestly answering questions.

I found watching the testimony from the applicants to also be successful in terms of forming an opinion. So I just urge my colleagues to go through some of that step if you want to challenge these very difficult decisions at a time where there's just not enough resources. Thank you so much, staff, for your professionalism today.

I’ll give Loretta Smith one compliment here. She acknowledged that remanding the funding recommendations could have many unforeseen consequences for small organizations. It’s a risky thing to do. This isn’t an annual process. It’s funding for three years.

President EPG tabled the discussion until the Second Reading. Things weren’t looking good.

June 4th - Second Reading

Starts at 50 min 48 sec.

Councilor Mitch Green got a “volume of emails” asking him to remand the package. His DSA colleagues echoed that.

Loretta Smith read a prepared statement. It was… wooden. Smith is normally a very natural and compelling speaker. It felt like she was making someone else’s argument. She didn’t seem to have the facts straight but wouldn’t back down.

Ryan also read a prepared statement but he tends to do that and it sounded like him. He sold the PCL and called out EGC’s bid for favoritism. He also stated the obvious: a remand will cause a gap in funding for children who need it.

Then Smith came to the plate to defend SEI again and casts aspersions on the PSU report that kicked off this whole equity quest years ago. You can watch the interaction here (1 hr 3 min) She was rude to the PCL rep and traded in that same “white organization” nonsense. Loretta Smith lost my support on this issue. I’m done with her. If you think I’m being too harsh, keep reading or go watch her.

The whole process was so wrong-headed. Any org that isn’t black-led is white-led, by default? Those are the only two types of people? None of it made sense. It was just an identity politics soup.

Finally, Morillo moved to set the world on fire remand the entire package. Smith and Green raced to second it. Jackals.

Zimmerman asked Director Lisa Pelligrino what this would mean and she claimed “we would start all over. The process would take about a year.” She looked like someone just shot her dog. I also looked that way. Zimmerman saw that this was going to pass and started moving for damage control, talking about amendments to fund at least something.

Pellegrino was phenomenal throughout the process. She stood up to Morillo in a respectful manner (something I would have failed at) and kept a calm and level head while watching years of her work picked apart and devalued. That’s a boss.

Ladies and Gents, your City Council

Kanal was perhaps the most careful in his deliberation, attempting to focus on process over outcomes — and there’s the rub. The City Council is not supposed to be looking at outcomes. They are supposed to be deciding if the process was followed, and possibly if the process was sufficiently equitable.

That’s what Pelligrino was getting at with having to redo the whole thing. If there is a substantial flaw with the process itself, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. If not, there is no point in simply redoing it expecting different results.

A remand would reject the process and reset the whole thing. An emergency ordinance could continue the current funding for another year. Clark and Ryan argued against the remand while Novick and Zimmerman scrambled to compromise.

Smith was uniquely foolish. Here is her arguing (1 hr 55 min), again, that they didn’t do a good enough job selecting people for the committee with lived experience. See the above bulleted list. This is bullshit.

Councilor Jamie Dunphy finally spoke up, revealing in true Wife Guy⁸ fashion, that his spouse sits on the PCL council. He tries, meekly to defend the work while still remanding the funding decisions. It’s weak sauce. There was either something going on behind the scenes or they were all just afraid of Loretta Smith and whatever political machine was pushing for this remand.

The councilors yapped forever, with a motion on the table. Novick and Zimmerman were solid, pushing back on the worst bits.

So how did it go?

Motion to Remand

Votes: ✅ Passed 7/5 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy, Smith → Nay: Ryan, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Pirtle-Guiney

No one who voted ‘aye’ should be re-elected. I said what I said.

The fallout was immense, which is fitting because the entire process was ugly and stupid and I’m proud of Portlanders for standing up to our City Council.

City Council Strikes Down Portland Children’s Levy Grants - WW

‘A betrayal’: Portland nonprofits reel after councilors upend city’s celebrated children’s initiative - Oregonian

Editorial: Portland City Council’s most reckless decision yet - The Oregonian

Go read that Oregonian editorial. It’s savage.

Several councilors seemed to channel [SEI and EGC’s] complaints in their questions to Children’s Levy Director Lisa Pellegrino at a June 4 meeting. Despite Pellegrino’s detailed answers that debunked several claims, it was clear some councilors were looking for a reason to reject the recommendations.

So here we are at the halfway mark. I told you this story has a happy ending, didn’t I? We’ll get to it next time in The Judgement of Solomon Part II - A Stay of Execution.

1. The Oregonian went harder than normal. Good on you O’s Editorial Team!

2. Thanks to those of you who do. I’m dangerously close to having to declare this on my taxes.

3. We’ll get to those next time.

4. Dr Thompson is both a black woman and also a “historian of race and the black experience.”

5. 5.8% of Portlanders are black.

6. City Council Candidate AJ McCreary Paid 15-Year-Old Son $3,200 From Her Campaign Funds - WW

Portland City Council debate: AJ McCreary and Dan Ryan - OPB

Reimagining Public Safety Forum with Candidate AJ McCreary - Imagine Black

AJ McCreary - Your Neighborhood Black Friends

7. According to McKelvey’s math.

8. Not an insult. In this house we believe in Wife Guys.