PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Justice Rajee, the director of the local, Black-led organization Reimagine Oregon, says that he felt personally disrespected by Commissioner Mingus Mapps at Wednesday’s City Council meeting after Mapps repeatedly criticized Reimagine Oregon’s lack of action in distributing $5.8 million in Recreational Marijuana Tax funds set aside by the city to help incubate Black-owned businesses in Portland.
The annually accruing funds, which were earmarked by the city in 2020 following the civil unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, have gradually rolled over in the city’s budget since Reimagine Oregon agreed to handle the planning and distribution of the endowment in 2020. However, a last-minute budget proposal introduced by Mapps between Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon’s Portland City Council meetings on April 12, now seeks to recollect the nearly $6 million in funding and distribute the money elsewhere.
A short list of Portland leaders prepared a defense of the funds at Wednesday’s meeting following the 2-hour notice that the funding was at risk of reallocation, including Rajee, Commissioner Carmen Rubio, Prosper Portland Director Chabre Vickers, Coalition of Communities of Color Executive Director Marcus Mundy and the Executive Director of the ACLU of Oregon Sandy Chung.
“What the proposed budget unamended does is carry over this pot of money which has been allocated to Reimagine Oregon over the past four years,” Mapps said at the meeting. “One of the reasons we are considering carrying over these dollars for the fourth year is Reimagine Oregon has not been able to get these dollars out the door.”
Those in opposition of Mapp’s proposal disagreed with his timeline and said issues like choosing a director for the organization — which Rajee accepted in the fall of 2021 — the pandemic, time needed for establishing programs, and an overall lack of partnership form the city delayed the organizations’ planning. Rajee said that Mapps gave a disingenuous summary of Reimagine Oregon’s planning for the funds and questioned his motives for wanting to withdraw the money.
“I would hope it is due diligence that any public official should have about public funds,” Rajee said. “But, I suspect … due to my experience as a Black man in America … there’s a good chance that someone has intentions for those funds that, more or less, are just a rebuke of the idea of their origin, and a continued lack of commitment to what government says it will do [for] the community.”
Mapps, meanwhile, repeatedly demanded answers to how the money will be spent to those who spoke in favor of the funding. Rajee was able to provide the council with a general idea that the money would be used for supporting Black-owned businesses in Portland.
However, Mapps repeatedly demanded that speakers provide more specific services that are expected to be provided to Portlanders with the funds. Mapps’ repeated line of questioning and overall demeanor during the discussion made Rajee feel “personally disrespected,” he said.
“It’s disappointing to hear that tone from an elected official who has that type of authority and should also have the information,” Rajee said.
Mapps’ questioning was also used upon Portland’s Charter Transition Project team during a later discussion about ranked-choice voting. While Rajee said that Mapp’s behavior wasn’t helpful to Wednesday’s discussion, he added that he is more concerned with the substance of the conversation than Mapp’s style of addressing the issue.
“I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done around government accountability, spending taxpayers’ dollars, efficiently making sure that we hold nonprofits and ourselves accountable,” Mapps told KOIN 6 News on Friday about the responses. “It is difficult work but I think we’ve done a good job. But there’s an awful lot of work left to be done.”
Vickers, who signed on in recent weeks to help Reimagine Oregon prepare the distribution of funds on behalf of Prosper Portland, told the city council that the organizations are working to hire a program manager to draft an economic development plan for the funds by July 1. She also provided the most detailed outline for the funding. Citing the ordinance originally signed by the city council in 2020, she listed that the funding will be considered for “business incubator programs, management training, job training opportunities and providing economic opportunity and education to communities disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition.”
As a member of Reimagine Oregon’s initial pilot program, Mundy also urged city council members not to pull the organization’s funding.
“I’m a Portlander; I’m a Black man in Portland who actually cares about Black people in Portland,” Mundy said. “This assault to disembowel dollars for Black-focused efforts and services in Portland, which were allocated and identified at the height of the George Floyd-inspired acceleration of the movement for racial justice are now targeted for reallocation with virtually no notice to the Portlanders it seeks to disenfranchise.”
Commissioner Rubio defended Reimagine Oregon’s delayed use of funding at Wednesday’s meeting, stating that a community-led discussion was always expected for the initial phase of the project.
“As the mayor and Commissioner Ryan may remember, in fall 2020, this money was promised to the Black community to expand economic opportunities, wealth creation and restorative justice through a community-led process,” Rubio said. A key part of the community’s vision for these funds was the process for deciding how the funds would be spent.”
Rubio also stated that the city of Portland hasn’t been significantly involved in helping Reimagine Oregon develop a path for distributing the funds.
“In the past two years, this work hasn’t moved forward as quickly as we would have hoped, but part of that responsibility is on us,” Rubio said. “The city hasn’t shown up in a consistent way to support Reimagine in moving the work forward and as an example of this, nearly every city staffer involved in the original conversation in 2020, including all three bureau directors staffed with standing this work up have left the city.”
Mapps and Commissioners Dan Ryan and Rene Gonzalez voted in favor of Mapp’s plan to defund Reimagine Oregon. However, the council’s overall set of proposed budget changes, which included Mapp’s Reimagine Oregon proposal, failed to pass. Listed as an emergency ordinance, the budget required the support of all five city council members and Rubio and Mayor Ted Wheeler voted against the budget. Wheeler then motioned to withdraw the emergency clause from the ordinance and the budget discussion was pushed to a second reading, where council members will have a second chance at passing the budget on April 19.