The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-04-02
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (13,601 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.
I think it is?
Good afternoon. I am calling back to order the afternoon of April 2nd. Thursday, April 2nd. We're city council hearing. Colleagues. First item. I need to make a motion to reorder the agenda. Councilor o aye, Morillo. Do you take attendance again?
We do. We have to call. Roll call. Can we please call the roll?
Thank you.
Kanal here. Pirtle-guiney here.
Ryan.
Koyama Lane here.
Aye, Morillo. Here. Novick.
CClark. Here. Green. Here.
Zimmerman.
Avalos. Present.
Smith. Dunphy.
Thank you. Can we also please read the rules of decorum?
Yes. Welcome to the Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.Portland.gov backslash backslash agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
Thank you very much, colleagues. There has been a request by our colleague, councilor Zimmerman to reorder the agenda to hear his item on city attorney code at the end of the agenda without or. I'd like to motion to move item scheduled currently item eight to the end of our regular agenda.
Second.
Motion and a second. Can we any conversation. Colleagues. Objection.
Oh hi.
Council president, we are actually wondering if staff are in the room and available for these three items.
Oh, great. Okay. I'm going to instead call a five minute recess. Thanks. We'll be right back.
So there's only seven of us here, right? Yeah. No. Elana.
Councilor Zimmerman is not able to get physically into the building until 215 and asked if we could hear his item at the end. But I'm also noting that tracy warren and our presenters are not here either. So I actually think we're going to instead. Can I yeah.
Do we need to welcome anybody here while we have them? Yeah.
Let's do that first. We have guests in the room. We have students here from the london school of economics. Welcome, friends.
Welcome. Yeah.
We're going to try and kill ten minutes rather than reorder the agenda I think and see if we can't get.
Do they have a request now?
Yeah. Since we need to, we're going to point.
At five random ones of you and ask you to come up.
Yeah.
An economist who might want to speak to them.
Well, we. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I am going to very quickly texting lauren. There he is. We okay to wait a few minutes and said, all right, we are going to instead take a ten minute recess and go chat with students for a few minutes until councilor Zimmerman is able to hear rather than reorder the agenda. We'll be back at 215 formally.
Thank you.
That's great.
And we are back. Thank you so much for that little break. Keelan can we please call item number eight.
Fast document 2020 6-078. Amend office of the city attorney code to authorize payment of costs for city employees facing certain criminal or civil proceedings. Amend code section 3.10.020.
Fantastic. I believe we have council ups here with a committee staff summary report. I don't see them yet. May have been delayed. We'll turn it over to councilor Zimmerman as they make their way back in here.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. Council president. As a hybrid comment. It came out of finance. That's where this is coming from. You know this is I don't often speak from prepared remarks. So I am going to do that today. But I do appreciate to my colleagues before I move into that, I appreciate the the delay. I went and welcomed home some of our Oregon national guard members who landed this afternoon after a year at the in the horn of africa. And so that's why I was gone, and that's why I stepped out of our earlier work session. But appreciate that flexibility. So regarding. And this will be similar to my comments that I made in finance, because I think it's serious enough to be on point. Colleagues. We're living in pretty uncertain times when it comes to the rule of law and the interactions between different levels of government. We've all felt on some level, the pressure and the rhetoric coming from the federal administration with respect to local and state leaders complying with federal demands, and sometimes those have been at odds with state law. It is not unusual for different governments to have competing laws. And in large parts, those points of friction have a long history of being worked out in our courts exactly as they should be. In those instances, we see the respect for the system, respect for the different appointed or elected officials offices held, excuse me, and a reliance and a deference to a system of laws, debates and legal proceedings. What that system has aimed to protect for 250 years is that we do have a system of multiple governments here. We are not one government centralized at the federal level with a supreme leader. We are not subservient, we are independent, and we are accountable to the laws and regulations, not just at the federal level, but also within our own state and within our own local jurisdiction. Last summer, we began hearing rhetoric from the president and his advisers about charging national, excuse me, charging local officials who they deemed to be preventing the federal government from doing their job, that being that by simply not helping with immigration enforcement, one was actually hindering or preventing the federal government from doing their job, irrespective of local laws that prevent local officials from certain actions. This is a wild escalation, but for much of the summer and fall, it seemed to be threats through rhetoric. And then that really changed. That changed in January of this year when the federal department of justice convened a grand jury to look at the governor and the attorney general of minnesota and the mayor of minneapolis, the prospect of using federal charges as an intimidation tactic against local officials has real weight, real weight to it, and it has real consequences. While exceedingly inappropriate, at the end of the day, it is perhaps not on the first page, but it is certainly within the first chapter of the authoritarian takeover handbook. So why are we here currently and appropriately, if a city official from elected leaders at our level to a front line worker is charged with a crime, the city itself does not defend that employee or that official. This is this is important. It ensures that city employees and officials know that if they choose to break the law and are charged that their defense against those charges is personal. That makes a lot of sense in a system that makes sense. But using examples and you can make up any type of example you wish. But if a PBOT employee is working and told to drive a large piece of equipment down the road, but they do so while intoxicated, there's no place where the city of Portland should defend that person against the dui charge. We all get that. Similarly, if an inspector takes a bribe while inspecting a recently completed project, the city is not going to defend those types of criminal acts. But earlier this year, we had a substantial debate about what documents the city administrator or the mayor could or should sign, and whether or not being the signatory opened them up personally, up to personal liability or criminal charges or for criminal charges. We as a council have enshrined our sanctuary laws, and we have, by that action, bestowed certain restrictions on our employees. If a parks employee refused to provide a participant name list at a recreation league to an ice officer, they would be following our local laws and they could potentially face federal charges. A police chief who does not authorize their officers to conduct missions with ice could face federal charges. And this is not just a what if thought bubble. We are seeing this move from words of the last summer to threats in the new year and threats of action occurring in minnesota. So I'm introducing this legislation that enables the city of Portland to defend either in actual or by paying for the defense of city employees and city officials if they face what the city administrator, the mayor, or the majority of council deemed to be criminal or civil federal charges for simply conducting their official duties and for the purpose of intimidation. I don't think any of us on this dais, and certainly not most of our employees, can afford to spend a year or more of our lives defending against frivolous, trumped up charges for intimidation alone. Going up against the feds would bankrupt just about everybody I know in public service. And that is why this type of intimidation is in the first chapter of the authoritarian reading. It is designed to silence. It is designed to distract, and it is designed to prevent state and local officials from doing their duties as bestowed upon them by the local leaders and local electorate who put them in office. And so I offer this up, and I hope for your support. The crux of this legislation, since our legal department here at the city would not defend in practice criminal charges because they are not criminal defense attorneys. This is essentially a funding mechanism should it ever come to pass. In a perfect world, this will cost the city $0. In an imperfect world, we defend our people. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman, colleagues, I'm going to start with technical or clarifying questions. Actually, before I move to that, just to understand, has anyone signed up to testify on this item?
No one signed up.
Okay. Then we can move into technical clarifying or council discussion questions. Councilor. Morillo.
Thank you, council president. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for bringing this forward. I just had a few questions. So reading through this, it said that the assessment from prosper says that there's not going to be it doesn't seem like there would be financial impacts. And I guess that's sort of a wait and see situation is kind of what you're saying, because we don't know how many cases could or couldn't come forward, but would we would this require more funding? Would it require more fte? Like would we need additional attorneys in the city attorney's office to make this happen? What are the things that you're anticipating? Or would what attorneys would they have to have their work reassigned in order to cover this moving forward, that sort of thing?
Thank you. Great question. So in the history, as far as I can tell, in the city of Portland, if we had had this in place through this point, we would have had to assign no attorneys and no dollars to it, meaning that this type of, of action, I think is hard to anticipate. And so I don't want to speak for our city attorney to say he would assign a team to it preemptively, but I think it is more of a signal that if this council or the city administrator or the mayor determine that one of our folks picks up a charge, that we now have the authorization to spend with a private firm, a private defense firm to spend in their defense, I think it can be hard to anticipate what is the cost of defending a federal charge, because that's just going to be different in every single case. But I would be cautious to say we must set aside money today for we must put employees to it, just because it's not something that has happened. And when I look at our these are the two groups of money that I look at when I look at our our contingency and reserves, but also our legal risk fund. I look at those as the first areas I would consider for tapping. If we felt that this came to bat.
Okay, that's helpful. I'm just trying to wrap my head around that because it's it is hard to. I'm trying to wrap my head around passing an action, not knowing how much it will cost or the staff impact later, but I understand what you're saying. It's kind of a chicken or egg situation for this. Would this apply to city councilors? Also out of curiosity, do we count as employees?
Yes.
Okay. From the mayor to whoever got hired this week. Okay. If if the administrator, the mayor or this council. And the reason and that's an important point. Let me talk about that, if you don't mind. Yeah. How how can we expect that if a different member of the of the administration or of the legislative body picks up a charge that we think falls in this category? I think by having the mayor and the administrator and the city council as a checks and balances, meaning that I can reasonably understand why the city administrator may not want to make a determination about me as one of the legislative body. If he did or didn't determine it to be for intimidation purposes. Okay. And so I think he should be able to punt and he can punt to this body and this body by a vote of majority. My vote is seven can say, yes, we do authorize the city city attorney's office to to secure the defense for a councilor and then for our regular employees who are not up here on the dais. I think if the two of them are able to say, we think this was in their course of duties, we feel good that we we are confident that they followed the laws that they that they didn't do anything illegal by Oregon or by by Portland law. And this is for the sake of intimidation that their level they can make that determination. I think that's an important checks and balances here, but it applies to everybody who is a city of Portland employee.
Thanks for clarifying. I don't have any more questions right now.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo vice president Clark.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you, council president. I think councilor. Morillo really asked the question, so I would just say thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for introducing this. I think it sends a signal. It's really alerting us to the potential danger that exists under this federal administration. So I really appreciate your bringing it forward. If nothing else, then alerting us. And you mentioned minneapolis. Are there any other examples of where this is happening across the country?
I don't have any at the tips of my fingers, but I will tell you, I was deeply alarmed by the idea of a mayor having to go to a grand jury to defend. And if those are criminal charges, having to do that on their own, I know I think about myself. I go, that's when I have to start mortgaging homes to go buy lawyers, because that's just a level of that's a year's fight that you're going to be in. That's that is a great way to shut people up. And I think that that's why it's in the first chapter of the takeover.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Vice president Clark councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. Thank you, counselor Zimmerman, for bringing this forward. I appreciate the the shout out about the folks who came back from the horn of africa today from the national guard as well. I wanted to ask a couple questions here. I'm broadly supportive of the underlying goals of this and just have some clarifying questions as well. Three kind of areas here. One is in terms of the mechanism for allowing this, we've got a written authorization from the city administrator, written authorization from the mayor or resolution of council that I think might make it more difficult for council to do just because of the length of the process. Is your anticipation that that's utilized, like, for example, if it's a council office, a staffer, for example, is the expectation that we're going to be going through the administrator and the mayor or how, how do you see that one working? It seems like that's just a longer process.
In my drafting of this, it was that all three are equal. And so and giving deference to the fact that there are some power dynamics involved there, but that. It wasn't that you had to hit certain gates before you came to council or that, you know, there was a denial process to an elevation process. And that was because the power dynamic between an administrator, a mayor and 12 city councilors. So I think that. Without being too theoretical, it makes a lot of sense to me that we as a body would not have to debate this if this was happening at a up my parks employee example, I think that the mayor and the administrator, either either one of them in their own right, could make that determination. And we wouldn't have to be involved. I mean, we wouldn't have to draw out a process about that. I think that at the same time, finding a way to protect the elected officials, the same way we can protect all employees, there had to be some sort of shoot. And I think the only people who can make that determination for for ourselves are, are us. So that's kind of where I was coming from, from a thought process that they're all equal, not first you go to the administrator, then you go to the mayor, then you come to council as a final ask. Okay, potentially that could happen that way, but that's not how I envisioned that to be.
Okay. And then similarly, it doesn't matter where in the organization you are, any of the three could still assist.
Yeah, I don't think the language and I'm happy if there's a correction out there, but I don't think the language dictates, like if you're part of the legislative branch, you can only be. Deemed in accordance with our laws because the council took action, because you're a chief of staff, for instance. I don't see that being the case. Great.
Second question was around the sort of front end cost, and I think you probably answered most, if not all of this. And to councilor Morillo. But when looking at the. So the the fiscal and budgetary impacts minimal to modest, I think is fair. I wanted to ask in the context of we have this conversation during the the, the question about whether to allocate some money from that legal defense fund to soar. And there was a desire to keep that dollar amount above roughly half a million in there. It's your expectations that given that we're at, I think still 650 or 700,000 in there, that we there's no concern about this threatening that. Right?
Yeah. You know, I, I look at I see the similarities because they come from the same fund, but I, I look at this as this changes a piece of code for us to, it allows us to take an action not just in this current budget, but in any year where the city council determines something has occurred, the. The discussion about about when to tap certain reserve funds or contingency funds, I have always been one of those, like my willingness to tap a fund like that early in the year versus later in the year when it is directly or only tangentially related to the reason in which that fund was established. I kind of see those as as separate and different. Part of me says that if the goon squad rolled in here and arrested the chief of police, I don't care what the damn number is. Yeah. And so that's where I think that it's almost about are the numbers important or not? And I think when you're defending against this type of issue, and I look at this deeply as I think this will be a piece of code that will never be executed. And I hope that's the case. But if it is, run the card. That's kind of my perspective. And maybe that lands poorly with some people. But I think that defending that, that sanctity of the local government, of the state government and that we are not one government at the federal level only. I just think that that that matters. So that's why I haven't said, you know, to this amount or to that amount, because the largest law firm on the face of the earth is the federal d.o.j.
So which is under new leadership, as of.
Which is which is leaderless, at least right now anyway. So we should be we should understand that that's why this could cripple an employee, a family, an elected official or a city administrator. That conversation that we had last year in executive session about what our former administrator could or couldn't sign, and whether or not he was or was not open to liability. And it wasn't just money types of liability, but criminal charges that really made the hair that I don't have stand up. And so that's what I was thinking about. Councilor.
Yeah, thank you for clarifying that. And I think that answers the the front part. I agree with the, the part about running the car does land well with me. I think what I'm, I'm thinking because one of the things that was a sort of thread that was left unfinished in that earlier conversation was whether or not we could come back for some other groups that maybe do different type of immigration restriction or, sorry, immigration support. And I guess this is more less about the how much it will cost and more about the how do we engage with the uncertainty around that, which is effectively, would you consider anything in this ordinance something that might be a reason for. Pause and considering other uses for the legal defense fund, for example, those other immigration focus groups getting an allocation to do that work?
Yep. Great question. In evaluating risk, I don't think that this ordinance in and of itself poses anything more than what is a minimal risk to that fund, because I don't expect this this will be tapped. And so where the council would like to make decisions with respect to the legal defense reserve fund or the risk fund, excuse me, I don't see this as even a competing question, because if we were to get to June 29th and that fund is fully expended, and we were to see abusive behavior by the federal government come to to one of our employees or one of our elected officials. Then I look at all of our other reserve and contingency funds as the next thing. So I don't think that they compete in a negative way or they even shadow that conversation, frankly. And I think that the council, if you have desires for that, continuing that conversation in other groups, I would not bring this ordinance up in that conversation as a, hey, what about ism? I wouldn't do that.
Great. Thank you. So then I have those are my three questions. I have two comments. One is very short. I think there is a very minor scrivener's error in the. I think it says three 1010 j when it should be three 1020 j in the actual exhibit. Just wanted to note that for the record and make sure I'm right about it, because I think the j is the new part that was just added down below. Is that accurate?
I that's correct.
There we go. That is correct. Thank you for pointing that out.
Awesome. Thanks. And then, you know, just the broader context here, we have seen that this is not a hypothetical risk. The federal department of justice has actually already tried to weaponize the settlement agreement that we are in against the city of Portland, based on sanctuary status. This is this is something that was threatened in other contexts around the false claims act with relation to. Any emphasis on historically underserved communities, particularly people of color, in the context of a very narrow and frankly terrible interpretation of title vi of the civil rights act. And so these are these are things that have not been not exclusively the rest of the country, but actually hypothetical here. I really appreciate the minneapolis reference. I had the privilege of meeting keith ellison, the attorney general, when I was there in October, long before the particular wave that everybody saw in the news a couple months later. But, you know, it shouldn't require a an inordinate sense of courage to do our jobs against the federal government or the profile level necessary to be able to fund raise a legal defense fund of our own to be able to do this. So I, I think that these are really valuable contexts in which to do this. And upholding sanctuary policy is a core part of every city employees job now, right? That's, that's a big reason why we did the actions we did in October around sanctuary codification in the first place. Given that the answers that I've just heard, I appreciate all that information and I'm looking forward to this conversation continuing and us continuing to make sure our employees have a good, a good context in which to work and that we're an employer of choice. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, council president. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for bringing this forward. Your sort of motivating comments are well taken and I think timely. I remember that executive session well, and I won't divulge the contents of that, but I, I felt the risks acutely. I want to make sure I understand the legislative intent of, of item j, which reads defend or provide for the defense of any legal proceeding, civil or criminal, brought by the federal government for the apparent purpose to intimidate or retaliate against a city employee. So my my reading of this paragraph is that we would only expand the legal defense to our city employees in the context of actions brought by the federal government. Is that is that your intention? It is. Okay. And that's I see the city attorney in the back and you're nodding. Okay, great. And I was following along. I, I, I put my hand in the. Q for some of the questions. I think they've already been settled around the sort of who initiates the action of defense and what I'm my plain reading was because it's written either option a or option b or option c, these are all independent pathways. They're not subsidiary. Okay. And that's I see. Okay. City attorney's nodding on that. Great. I have no issue with this. I actually think it's an important intervention. It's narrowly focused on the type of risks that a city employee would be faced with. I do want to talk about the money question, because it's been raised at this dais and just step back a level of abstraction and think about how I think about budgeting. I think that reserve funds are different than contingency funds. I think contingency funds are places where you park money that you that you have a pretty good sense of what you're going to budget to for over a period of time. But a reserve fund is where you park money because risk and uncertainty exists in the world. And I think anytime that you have a reserve fund, there's no right level in there that lasts for all of time immemorial. It's it's always going to be a function of what your risk profile is. And so, for example, if the municipal corporation of the city of Portland has one risk profile that doesn't change, and it's pretty, you know, maybe it's a police settlement, or maybe it's like someone hit someone with a, on a bike with a dump truck or, you know, something like that. You have a pretty good understanding of what it costs to settle those. And then we've added this new thing, which then changes the risk profile. I think as far as I'm concerned, what we want to do is we want to make sure our code matches our values. And then when we budget, we we put in those risk funds, the reserves necessary to backstop those values. That's how I think about it. And so in the context of what we have used that legal risk fund for recently, I don't think it's a practice that we should continue going forward to draw from to pay for things like grants. I think in the context of a one off, a couple, two, one, two actions, fine. But if we want to provide grants to entities doing work that align with our values, we should draw that from the general fund. If we want to spin up a program to fund things like immigration, legal, defense, we should draw that from the general fund. A legal defense risk fund, though, is for that unknown, unexpected expense that the city attorney will need to pay for. So that's how I think about it. And in the context of that, I'm prepared to support this ordinance. And if we if we vote to adopt this ordinance, we need to make sure that when we set a budget in the fall. I'm sorry, what is time in the spring? We need to appropriately capitalize that reserve fund. Okay. We spend a lot of money, a lot of money in the general fund on things that are one time programs that not all of us agree upon. And so if we want to provide a couple hundred thousand dollars more for other legal, defense and immigration services, we can get that from this week's budget as far as I'm concerned. So that's kind of where I'm going with this colleagues. And I don't think that the legal defense fund should be the kind of pivot on all this. So I'm supportive.
Thank you. Councilor Green. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.
Thanks so much, council president. I just want to lend my support to this. I asked some questions in committee. I won't repeat them here, but as we think about the work that we are asking our city employees to do, we are asking them to be bold. It shouldn't take being bold to work in this day and age to stand up for portlanders. But when we do things like expand the the provisions that we have in our sanctuary city status, when we pass other provisions that I know council will be considering over the next year to make sure that all portlanders are safe. We're asking a lot of our city employees, and to me, this is the obvious way of the obvious second step, the obvious way of saying. And city employees, we want you to have every portlanders back. We will have your back when you do that. I think it's critically important. I know there's a lot of details that folks need to fully understand to make sure we get it right, but it this is a no brainer to me and I was glad to support it coming out of committee and look forward to supporting it today.
Thank you. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. Councilor Smith. Legacy councilor. Avalos.
Thank you. So yeah, I want to start by saying I'm supportive of this amendment or ordinance. These are not normal times, as we know. And we're seeing these the increased federal scrutiny of local governments. And so I think we do need to make sure that our employees are protected when they're carrying out the policies that this council adopts in good faith. And to be clear, this is not about shielding misconduct. It's about ensuring that employees acting within their legal scope of duties are not left to shoulder the personal financial risk, which I think is key here in committee. I appreciated the conversation around how this will be implemented. I asked a lot of questions around that. It was helpful to understand that decisions about coverage will sit with the city administrator and the mayor and council with legal guidelines, guidance from the city attorney. I do think that there are some important implementation details to work through. And again, I raise those in committee, particularly around how we define official duties in practice and how we're ensuring clarity for employees across the organization. One of the things that I raised in committee was just around. How do we what if an employee does not want to take on the risk, right. What does it look like for an employee to say, I don't want to make this kind of decision, if that's going to put me in a risk situation. And I think, you know, what I heard in committee was that, again, those can kind of be worked out through the city administrator, but I just raise it because it is a concern to me, because what I don't want is to assume that every single city important employee must endure this risk with the federal government. So I think that, you know, managers, for example, should be taking that on, right? They should be the ones who sign off on the documents or whatever that looks like to ensure that your everyday employee doesn't have that. And yet, as this is still doing, it's still protecting everybody all the way down to the park's employee or anybody who could get because we don't, we really just don't know, right, what could happen. So I appreciate that this is creating some flexibility, knowing that it is unclear what could happen. So, and I think that it's important that we build in clear accountability. And so I want to as we discussed, there should be a path to revisit revoking coverage, right, if new information comes to light. So I'd like to see that clearly addressed in the policy. There's just some nuances there that I'm unsure about. It's not enough to make me not support this, but just want to raise that. I agree that the with the overall premise of the policy, and I appreciate the intent, and I'm interested in staying engaged in the administrative policy side as that's being developed. I just have one more question I wanted to raise. I was just curious if what types of federal actions or investigations are we currently seeing that prompted this policy? Just want to put that out on the public of what we're concerned about, you know, is that something you can answer?
Councilor yeah, I think. The we've had at different times discussions about because of the federal government has changed. They've made us certify whether or not the city is involved in certain types of activity. And if we are and we sign something that somehow they're going to come back with, with charges. And we had that discussion relative to different city programs, I thought that was my first going to. What does that mean? Then during the summer when the president and the and the folks around him made comments about. As we saw ice operations happening across the the country, we saw him ramp up his rhetoric about holding local officials accountable. And I took that directly with charging them with crimes. And then in January, opening a grand jury into a governor and attorney general and a mayor of a city. That was my red line. And that that was the I'm not screwing around anymore. And so for me, that was the thing. I think that that type of intimidation, I put myself in this chair in this privilege with this job that I have, I don't know that I could personally deal with such a charge in an effective way that doesn't bankrupt the family. And I have a microphone. So I think about those charges to anybody at every level. And those were the those are the examples that I have. Councilor. And they seemed very relevant for many of us, not just the 12 up here, but all levels of our organization.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I just thought it was important to kind of daylight that so people understand what the gravity is of the situation and the problem that we're trying to solve, because we have been.
Proving your innocence is a very expensive endeavor. And I don't I don't actually think that much will come of those grand juries, but I think it is a delay tactic. I think it's an intimidation tactic. And I think it's an expense tactic that has real world outcomes on the way people will govern, or the way people can show up to work, because we know process can be used to ruin people, things, etc. To use d.o.j. In that process is scary.
Yeah. Thank you. I think that's really important to highlight. And just in general, right? The whole goal is to intimidate people, to not act or to bully them into acting in the way that the federal government wants. And we want to protect our employees to serve the interests of portlanders, not of the president. So thank you for bringing this forward. Again, I'll continue to look at how we implement that. Hopefully, we won't need to, like you say, hopefully this can just sit there and we don't have to tap it. But it's good to have in an emergency. As we're facing an increasingly hostile federal government and we want to protect our own. So thank you for doing that.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for bringing this forward and for the work that your team put into this. I was sitting here looking at robert taylor. One of the games I play sometimes is like what you're thinking during meetings, and I also play it with city administrator lee. But I was just sitting there like, I wonder what robert taylor's thinking. And so I just wanted to see if there's anything you wanted to add to this. Any thoughts? Your perspective? Concerns, areas of support. Details on implementation. Thanks.
Thank you. Robert taylor, city attorney. I appreciate the item. I appreciate the discussion. Appreciate the thoughts around the budget impacts and how it might pay for it. The I think it's a good idea. I. I hope we will never have to use it. And I hope that these times in our country pass soon. But given where we're at, I think this is a valuable tool to have. I view it as providing the city attorney's office authority to represent employees and we currently don't have that authority. So this would give us the authority to do it or to go hire outside counsel to to perform those services. And so for my part, I would like to have that authority so that we, we don't leave employees sort of high and dry in a very difficult situation.
Thank you. That's very helpful. And the reason why I play that game with you both is because you have very good neutral poker faces. So it's great to hear your perspective. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor. Koyama Lane. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you. Robert, if you could.
Hang out. Sorry. I wanted to just kind of. And I don't imagine you'll be able to answer it, but just on the off chance you could, I figured I'd ask. I would love at some point, maybe in the future and potentially in a privileged setting to talk about what how this should this pass, how it is changing the way in which you prepare for potential issues as an office? I don't think this is the right setting in this space to have that conversation, but I'd love to have that at some point. I think it's fair for us to, to, to know, you know, obviously every situation is different, but I also think it'd be helpful for us to have more information on what the whole administration has been thinking about for the current context in which legal defense is not an option. And I'm not sure if you want to say anything to that, but just for the future might be helpful in a in a different setting.
Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. And, and I think it's probably good for me to say that, you know, in the city of Portland, we are still guided by the law. We follow the law and we will continue to do so. What what I think we have seen, though, is the federal government has a different view of what the law is. We disagree with it, and they have used their authority to retaliate against local or state officials. And, you know, you can I think we have heard examples of that today. You could add letitia james to the list of folks. Right. And so that's that's an example where a public official is following the law doing their duties. And yet they are retaliated with federal prosecution. And that is something that. So I just I think that is what we're getting at. And, and something we want to try to account for here at the city.
Thanks. And I'm not sure if this is for you for councilor Zimmerman in the context of employees who are assigned duties and responsibilities, I understand the phrase taken for action taken as part of the employee's official duties and responsibilities in the context of those who maybe are not directly assigned. And by the way, that is not just elected officials. I imagine there's some folks actually actually potentially yourself, robert, who there are some things which are not assigned, but which are sort of discretionary in terms of what we do. For example, the choice to bring forward an ordinance or not is not required that we do so. And so how? We're going to be interpreting that as within the scope of our authority that is given to us by our positions, right. Is that an accurate reading? I'm trying to make sure I get this legislative intent on the record here.
Yeah. I mean, the way the way I would view that and it is if you are exercising the authority you have as a public official, if it's discretion that you have and you're exercising that authority and it's otherwise lawful, and then you get a a criminal complaint against you from the federal government, then we can can step in and provide you with defense. And and we don't have that authority now, which is which is why I think this is helpful.
I think the other aspect that is important here is the determination that it was for the purpose of intimidation or retaliation is an important grouping of words there. It doesn't mean that if any federal charge is placed against any city employee, that we are automatically in the midst of defense. It means that we think and we've determined this is for that purpose, meaning? I cannot go commit a federal crime. And just because I'm a city employee, then expect to be defended. I think that that's the due diligence on all three layers of authority. Who would say, yes, we can defend is that you meet the criteria for those bodies of authority. So it's the mayor, the city administrator or this body to say, we believe that is for intimidation purposes. So I think that's an important aspect as well, because it is not. As councilor Avalos points out, it's not a Green card to do crime, right? That's not what this is. But if we think that a weaponization has occurred, then I think this gives it is that authority for the city attorney to to exercise their professional duties.
Okay.
Thank you, council president.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: This is a great conversation, and I also want to appreciate the city attorney's office. There were a number of people who helped us draft this and make this workable. This may be the most unusual piece of legislation I've ever written and worked on, just because it shouldn't have to exist. And so there there was picking of words, there was implication, discussion, and that happened professionally with the city attorney's team. A little bit of discussion with with raymond lee right when he first got here. So just for those who contributed to this, I think it's going to pass today. And I just want to be grateful for your work on that.
Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. I'll go ahead and just thank you for those final comments you just made. Councilor Zimmerman that was helpful. And this is great instincts on your part. Yeah. Who knew we'd be here to to work on such legislation? And I appreciate that it'll it'll help our city's public servants from federal overreach, you know, from bullies in general. I'm all in. This is proactive and brings me comfort in the scenarios that you mentioned and discussed in this meeting today. And I'm sure in committee, our public servants will have the support and the legal representation they deserve. And anyway, just, just brings me a lot of comfort. And I'm so happy that this is something we can vote on today. Thank you.
Thank you very much, councilor Ryan. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue first, actually, I want to make a very quick remark. I'm really excited that our students from london school of economics were here to hear about how local government is responding to an increasingly tyrannical federal government. Please go home and tell your colleagues that we're keeping the good fight here alive on the local level and that the president does not represent us. So thank you guys for being here. Councilor Koyama Lane last word before we move this.
I'm not exactly sure the right way to do this, but I. If councilor Zimmerman is interested, I am open to adding an emergency clause. That's what it's called. Yeah. To make this effective as soon as possible.
So we just see 9/12.
We would need language for what the emergency would be in order to add that amendment. But that is a motion you can make.
Federal overreach.
Due to the threat of an increasingly tyrannical federal government.
I ask, can I ask the city attorney your interpretation? Because what you say might make me say, if I view this as a friendly amendment or not, because my instinct is that that would be okay. But I'd like to get a sense for your thoughts here.
You,
You.
Yeah, you can amend it. You can add an amendment to add an emergency clause. When you do that, it's just important that you are articulate with some particularity what the emergency is. So if you could say. The emergency is declared and this is effective immediately due to the urgent need to have protections in place, due to the posture of the federal government.
Thank you.
So moved.
If that's the case, I consider it friendly. And I do think since we've seen charges in other communities already, this is pertinent and falls into that category. Thank you. Councilor.
So she moved.
I just say so moved. And and get you.
A second from councilor Ryan colleagues. Is there any debate on the emergency clause amendment? Okay. Keelan can you please call the roll on Koyama Lane Lane? One amendment?
Yes.
Sorry. Just a second. Okay. Kanal. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick. Oh, sorry. Absent Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. Aye, Morillo. Avalos. I Smith. I Dunphy. I the motion to add an emergency clause passes with 11 yes votes and one absent.
Okay. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue for this now amended emergency ordinance. Pausing keelan. Can we please call the roll?
Kanal I.
Pirtle-guiney I.
Ryan I.
Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Dunphy. I. The ordinance, as amended, passes with 11 yes votes and one absent.
Thank you very much, colleagues. Before we move to our next item. Councilor Green, with your consent, I'd like to withdraw the previous motion that to reorder the agenda that I had introduced.
I consent.
Okay. That order has been with the motion has been withdrawn. Withdrawn. Thank you. Keelan can we please call items nine, ten and 11 together?
Item nine document 2020 6-116. Amend the Portland police association, Portland police bureau city employee benefits program for the plan offerings for fy 20 2627. Item ten document 2020 6-117. Amend the city employee benefits program for the fy 20 2627 plan offerings. Item 11 document 2020 6-118 authorized the deputy city administrator of city operations to enter into a three year contract with express scripts incorporated to provide pharmacy benefits manager services on behalf of the city through the bureau of human resources benefits office to begin July 1st, 2026, with a not to exceed amount of $120 million.
Colleagues. This item was heard not in committee but at executive session. As such, we have staff here to give us a little bit of a presentation, I believe. Am I turning over to you, ron? Ron ron, our interim director of human resources.
Thank you, council president. Good afternoon, councilors. For the record, my name is ron zito. I'm the interim director of the bureau of human resources. I'm joined today by the city's benefits manager, michelle taylor, a protec 17 representative rachel whiteside and ppa president aaron schmaltz. We're with you today to request your authorization to amend the city's employee benefits program to incorporate the necessary plan design changes for fiscal year 2627, as well as your approval to renew the city's contract for pharmacy benefit management services. Before I turn it over to, I believe, aaron, I want to acknowledge that managing health care costs continue to be a significant challenge for our city. Due to rising expenses and increased claims. However, thanks to this council's budget guidance last year, along with the dedicated efforts of our labor management benefits committee, the ppa board and the city's benefits team, we're pleased to be presenting renewals that will stay within budget while also helping strengthen our reserve funds. To share more of those details, I'm going to turn it over to ppa president aaron schmaltz.
Just to echo aaron schmaltz, president of Portland police association. I also represent dispatch, which is in rachel's lmc group. You know, two years ago, we were in the Portland building while this building was being renovated, having conversations with people who were having scheduled mastectomies and trying to figure out how to change plans in real time. These conversations have been incredibly difficult. I think. Councilor Avalos, you presented the budget note, or whatever it was last year to discuss just how important these decisions are. And frankly, I think the most important thing that people forget is it's not just our employees, it's our families that navigate these very difficult decisions. So this year has been an incredibly. We're entering into a difficult budget conversation, but an incredible time to not have to have those hard conversations about our health benefits. So I think the changes we made last year set us up for success this year. Your budget note and budget guidance, which you all approved of, set us up for success. And councilor Ryan, you were there two years ago and voted to save us on some difficult things. So just appreciative of all of that. The what we're presenting today is in fact, just effectively status quo, other health benefits from last year with some important money going back into reserves for those rainy days that we will see coming in the future, I believe.
Thank you. Aaron. I think we're just going to bring up the slides here and then we'll turn it over to benefits manager michelle taylor.
And while those are all those are coming up, I will go ahead and get started. Save some time. Good afternoon council. My name is michelle taylor and the benefit manager here at the city of Portland. I'm here to talk to you about three different ordinances that are all being presented together. But we're asking for your vote separately. It feels very appropriate to be here today because it is national employee benefit day. It is a real thing, probably made up by some folks who do this work. But this year's theme is caring in action. And as we heard in the previous ordinance, you'll hear throughout this presentation, it's really the core of what we do for our employees. And as aaron stated, their families as well. Also retirees. Every day we meet people where they're at, the decisions that are made related to benefits have a huge impact on whether employees view the city as an employer of choice, as a supportive employer, whether it's the new hire who's coming to us never having employer sponsored coverage before, whether it's the employee that's gotten a recent diagnosis, whether it's the well tenured employee who is on their way to whatever is next past city employment. Those are the folks that we get to talk to every single day. We've got an amazing team of benefit professionals that talk with these folks every day. They help navigate complicated healthcare questions, retirement options, income replacement leave programs, accommodations so that employees can continue to serve our wonderful community. So I absolutely thank the team for all that they do. I also want to thank the committee members, our union partners who have come together and made these recommendations towards you and also to you all for giving us the opportunity to to look at 15% increases and preserve some of the benefits that we have for our employees. So going on to the next slide. So as I said, we're going to be presenting three different ordinances to you all today. We're going to start with 2026117, which is related to benefits under the labor management benefit committee and will refer to the labor management benefit committee throughout this presentation as lmc that covers most of our city labor agreements, with the exception of the ppa PPB folks, and it also includes non-represented employees. We've got rachel whiteside here, who is our labor co-chair of lmc, to help co-present this ordinance. Then we're going to move on to 2026-116, which is related to employees represented by the Portland police association Portland police bureau. We refer to those folks as ppa or ppa PPB. The benefit team worked with ppa union ahead of time so that they can take recommendations back to their board. And then we've got aaron here who will help co-present that portion of it, and we can bounce around if aaron needs to, to take off, then we'll finish up with a third ordinance, which is 2026-118. Giving the deputy city administrator authorization to enter into a pharmacy benefit manager contract for our self-funded plans. All three of these are being presented as emergency ordinances because we do have an open enrollment period coming up starting on may 8th. We've got to get these things in place and out to our employees so that they can make intentional decisions about the next year's benefit plan. All right. So we're going to move on to the labor management benefit committee, comprised of 24 voting members, split evenly between labor and management. Co-chair rachel will be sharing some more information on the good work that they've done throughout this year.
Thank you. Michelle. I am very pleased to sit before council today and let you know that our vote this year was a much smoother process, and that is because of all of the work that this committee put in to reach this year's vote. Earlier in March, we went through a month long, months long process to review and update our committee guidelines. We took time to debrief what went well from the last cycle as well as unpack. There were a lot of feelings on both the labor side and the management side. Around the last two years, we've had some really tough discussions at the lmc. Through sorry, my notes just went blank on me here. So additionally, as part of this process, we also onboarded multiple new committee members this year. It is a steep learning curve, and everybody who serves on this committee has to go through that learning curve. But I am pleased to say that we have created some excellent standardized documents working with michelle and our consultants to outline the process so that new committee members can understand what to expect over the course of the year, as well. As we speak in our own language in that committee. And you have to know all the acronyms. So we've created a multitude of new materials to help onboard new members, and we've established procedural rules for when we're in person versus zoom or hybrid meetings. And again, all this led up to the guidelines for this committee being adopted unanimously and then put into put implemented for this year's vote. I'll go ahead and move to the next slide. And I'm going to highlight for you the recommendations that were approved by the full committee for referral to this body. So this includes the continuation of our five additional employee assistance visits for the upcoming 2627 plan year. We have voted to keep a higher level of employee assistance visits consistent with the last several years. We voted to add verta for weight loss and diabetes reversal support under the city core medical plan. This has been part of the ppa plan for the last year, and the committee voted to add it to the lmc plan for this year. We added to remove the co-pay for members first, three serious md virtual visits under the city core medical plan, and this is to support virtual visit access. So this would be say, in lieu of going to urgent care, you could access immediate medical services through virtual care. And then finally on this slide, we voted to add cone beam x-ray services. Now if you're like me, you're like, what are those? Well guess what? My husband needed a root Kanal this year and he needed a cone beam x-ray. This is if you're going to have a root Kanal, you need to have a cone beam x-ray. So if you if you're going to cover the the root Kanal, we probably need to cover the diagnostic services. So those were added to the plan for the moda dental members. Next slide please. The package includes increasing the out of pocket maximum for the city high deductible plan from 4000 to $4050 per individual, and from 7150 to $7250 per family. And this is to align with federally required changes to the deductible. And finally, we voted to cover a two year pilot program for self-referred chiropractic and acupuncture alternative care under the kaiser medical plan. This would include a $25 co-pay and some visit limit limitations that are on the slide. I can tell you that alternative care is a hugely popular benefit under the moda plan, and we're excited to be able to offer this as part of the kaiser plan. Michelle, do you have anything to add?
I do, thanks, rachel. So one of the stipulations of the kaiser pilot program is that kaiser came to us this year with a very favorable renewal, around 6%. So it helps offset the self-funded plan, bringing you the 10.8% overall renewal with medical, dental and vision all combined. Kaiser has asked that we continue this for two years, and they will lock us into a 7% increase for the 2728 period. So our hope is that we can add. Thanks. We can all do a little dance. So we're hoping that with the 6% renewal, the 7% for next year will get us into a really good position to preserve some of the benefits that we have, and also continue building up the reserves on the self-funded plan side. So we're asking for approval of the lmc recommendation to implement these five benefit changes on the next slide. And also included in the ordinance are additional recommendations that are being brought forth by the bureau of human resources. And this is to essentially shore up the renewal from the 10.8% to the 15%, which falls within the budget. Note to address the self-funded reserve levels that are below the prudent and recommended amount, the difference between the 10.8 and the 15%, we would essentially fund that by the city through our composite rate, and not pass that increase onto our employees. And that's valued at $5.7 million. On the next slide, you'll see the cost. So on the far left, you'll see the fiscal year 2526 costs in the middle. You'll see with the lmc recommendations at the 10.8%. And then on the right side, you will see with the lmc and the human resources recommendations that the 15%. With that being said, I'm going to go ahead and throw it over to erin on the next slide to address some of the ppa PPB items.
You can go to the next slide. Most of these are basically the same, so I'll move through pretty quickly, but we recommended an 11.1%. We have less employees on our list. And so the percentages are slightly different. But effectively it's the same movement. We continue to support eep eep in policing in particular is something that is, you know, my dad was a police officer for a long time. This is something that's very, very critical for our members. You know, I think the policing industry has moved towards a much greater focus on on self-care and taking care of our folks and making sure that they're healthy when they're out serving our community. Again, with the cone beam, my daughter had to have a the same service, so it's very good. And then this the movement towards chiropractic and acupuncture for kaiser, this was a big issue for our members. I actually, kaiser did not have a labor representative for years and hired a new one this year. I met with her early in the plan design conversation. Kaiser has always been a bit of an interesting thing for our members because, you know, a lot of young families want to do it. Childcare is very cheap, but you don't have a lot of the kind of care that many members do seek. And so this is a huge addition for us. And it will again, give people an option. Last year, we added some cost to kaiser to kind of level things, but this piece is really important for people who do have kaiser because chiropractic was not included in the past. Next slide. Increase the composite rate to 15%. This is the same thing that we were doing on the lmc plan. And again, councilor Avalos, this is kind of a nod to your discussion last year. One big issue that we've seen, our reserves have been crumbling, and it led to the cascading costs and effectively the really, really hard decisions we've had the last two years. This is, frankly, this council's legacy as it relates to caring about health care for our city employees. And again, I think this sets us up for success in the future. One of the big issues we had in the past is that the city, historically, when we had rainy days, would, would cut benefits for for our city employees. But when we had sunny days, we'd spend the money on other things and not plan for those rainy days as it relates to health care. And so this, this to me is in my 15 years of doing union work, perhaps one of the most remarkable moments for for this council to show how it cares for city employees. And this is your legacy. So I appreciate that. Next slide. Michelle.
Yeah, very similar to what you saw on the lmc side. You'll see the current year coverage costs. Then you will see it with the 11.1, which is the ppa PPB board recommendation. And then on the far right you'll see with the board recommendations and also the bureau of human resources at the 15%. So by approving 2020 6-116, it would move it forward at the 15%. All right. Go ahead and go to the next slide. We're going to finish up with the final ordinance. This is representing the pharmacy benefit manager contract which covers the groups on the lmc and the ppa PPB side who are enrolled in the city's self-funded plans. Ordinance 2020 6-118 would give authority to the deputy city administrator for city operations to enter into a three year contract for pharmacy benefit manager services. This group provides administrative services and provides as a pass through for member claims under the city core, the city net, the city basic and the city high deductible plans. Our current three year contract is expiring at the end of June of this year, so we are at a point where we need to look at services going into the new fiscal year. Everything that we're presenting in the 2020 6-118 ordinance, those costs are all included in what you saw in the first two ordinances. So this does not increase the renewal proposals that we put forth to you today. The city did intentionally and choose intentionally choose a competitive process rather than extending our existing contract. Under city procurement rules. Hr did not feel that it was in the best financial decision to just do a continuation and extend the contract, because we know the pharmacy landscape changes pretty rapidly, and often with limited ability to shift the increased costs through plan design, employee premium share, and fluctuating utilization. As you've highlighted that as a priority, one of the ways that we can help control costs is through contracting through the folks that we sign up with to do pharmacy benefit manager, health plan, things like that. This is the one area that we do have some influence on. How do we extended our existing contract and if we can go to the next slide, that would be super helpful. Thank you. As allowed under city procurement rules, the value would have been around $79 million over the next three years for our pharmacy costs, and that is after rebates and manufacturer discounts. So the costs are even greater. But we do get some of that money back. What I want to share is that that $79 million is based on what we know right now. We know who our employee, population dependent population, retiree, we know not specifically, but express scripts knows what medications folks are on. We know what the cost of those medications are. So we can kind of freeze things in time and look at what the value of that contract would have been over the next three years. We know that's not always the case. Things are going to change. Our employees are going to change.
Dependents are going to change. Medications are going to change. But we did evaluate multiple vendors throughout the process. We brought in the top three for finalist interviews and presentations, thoroughly diving into capabilities and costs. All three of the finalists that we brought in provided revised final offers, improving their potential contract with the city. It wasn't an easy decision. These are very, as we know, personal decisions. Things like medical, pharmacy, dental, all of those are very personal. But everybody did a wonderful job in showing their commitment to providing service to the city. A lot of folks want city business, and so they do really show up and understand what it is that we need for our plan participants. They all put out very favorable pricing terms. I do want to throw a little shout out. Santos aguilar, our benefit supervisor, led this contract and has also done a fabulous job on a number of benefit things. But he really led this process alongside our consulting partners. We had a wonderful panel of folks who participated in the interviews, in the presentations and the evaluations, but they spent countless hours ensuring that we put forth a great contract for you all. If we can go to the next slide, please. So as a result, express scripts, which is our current pharmacy benefit manager for our self-insured plans, was selected to retain our business for the next three years. We believe this selection achieves the best pricing contracting terms and minimizes our member disruption, because it is what we have in place right now. This contract would be effective July 1st of 2026, and it's expected to cost the city $65 million over the next three years. So as you saw in the previous slide, had we just extended the contract, our expected costs would have been 79 million. By going out, doing the work, pounding the pavement, we were able to get a much better contract from express scripts. That is now currently valued at $65 million. I want to emphasize that this is not necessarily a savings because again, we were freezing things in time. We know that things change. Our population changes. Our healthcare needs change, our diagnoses change. We're not going to be the same people that we are. You know that we were three years ago and that we will be three years from now. So I want to just say that had we frozen it in time, that's what we were looking at. We also know that prices go up. New medications hit the market, things change, generics go become available, so some prices might go down. We just know that the city is going to look very different in three years, as it did look three years prior. In this ordinance, the contract is written to be valued at $120 million, which is drastically different than the 65 million I just told you. Part of that is that the city system must account for all monies that go from the city to our vendor partners. We're responsible to pay for member claims plus any applicable admin costs. Our new contract is expected to net us about $40 million in pharmacy rebates and manufacture payments over that three year period, so those must be accounted for. We also need to build in a little space because pharmacy needs change. And and we've seen over the last few years that our claims have gone up significantly. So we have to project those costs. We also need to ensure that the city has sufficient funds within the contract period, so we can pay the claims on behalf of our members. So your approval of ordinance 2026-118 allows for dc a warrant to enter into this contract so that we can continue pharmacy services into July and into the next three years. Again, the funding in this contract is included in the first two ordinances. So there's not any additional costs associated. I believe that is the end of it. So I really do want to thank folks for your time. To ron, to tracy, to rachel, to aaron for their support of these ordinances. And that concludes my remarks. Unless any others have remarks. I would go ahead and turn it back all to you.
Thank you very much. Keelan has anyone signed up for testimony on this?
No, no.
Any of these three items? Okay, colleagues, council discussion now or technical or clarifying questions, councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for this presentation. I'm really glad to see the impact of the budget note. I see and feel how much this means to you all and just know I will continue to fight for that. Colleagues, I will bring that back up this year. I do think we need to. In this economy, the very minimum we can. We need to or that our employees should expect is that they can be covered when their family has emergency, when they're sick. That's really critical to me. So I'm glad to know that that's important and I'll keep fighting for it. One quick thing I just wanted to mention about the pbem is that what it's called, the.
Pharmacy benefit manager.
Thank you. Pharmacy benefit manager. You know, I plan on supporting all of this today for sure. We need a functioning system to manage our prescription drug benefits. That's not optional. I just want to name something really clearly for the record, though, that pbms are under some serious scrutiny right now across the country. They were created to lower costs, but often we're seeing the opposite. And, you know, they have these complex pricing structures and these rebate systems that are opaque and practices that are actually driving up costs. So I just want to name that publicly and just say that I want to ensure that we demand transparency from them, that we know where every dollar is going, and so that our employees are actually benefiting from the savings that these systems are supposed to give us. So I just want to name that, and I'll be keeping an eye on that for sure, because yeah, it's just really extractive what they're doing across the country. And we should demand better for our Portland employees. But thank you. Looking forward to supporting this.
Councilor.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. Thank you, everyone, for your work on this. Members of the committee that are here as well. I had a question, and this is based off of something that I don't know if everyone heard, but yesterday we were asking in the context of a of a spring technical adjustment ordinance work session, there was a conversation where they were showing the balance of the health fund and asked a question about whether or not that reflected the delta between the 11.1% or the 10.8% and the 15% going back into the fund, because just as I had originally read this, there's a recommendation in I think it's number four in the council finds that says that the bureau of human resources out recommends putting that money into the fund. My understanding from that conversation is that these ordinances don't actually do that. So I wanted to understand the delta and whether or not we are actually replenishing that. The again, we we penciled in 15%. It's going to end up being 10.8 or 11.1, respectively, I think. And so my understanding is from yesterday is that that remaining money remains unallocated right now. Can can someone speak to that based off of. And that's just what I was we were told yesterday in the work session.
Thank you. Council. I can speak to it just at a high level, but I might be off on any specific numbers. My understanding is that the interfund loan that you spoke to yesterday with cbo director ruth levine, really mentioned closing the gap for this year. But then as we look to next year, the ordinance is before you today would look to use some of those excess funds to be put into the the reserve to help shore that up.
So there was a question immediately after the one year referencing from from me to to budget director levine about why the gap is, is $15 million, which is the exact amount of the loan, right, that I, and I asked specifically that there's no, there's that that none of that additional money. So the $700,000 for the ppa one, for example, that that is not was not shown on the graph as going in. And I'm curious if that was simply limited to just the graph didn't show it, or does this simply not allocate it? Because as you look at the the recommendations, there's all these other pieces. But then when you. I just want to make sure I understood the context of that and whether or not it was narrowly focused on the graph or whether it was about the actual actions we're taking today.
Thank you, councilor Kanal, for the record, deputy city administrator tracy warren, I was present at the session yesterday and I did hear the conversation. I'll need to confirm with the city budget office. My understanding is that the ordinance today is providing the recommendation, but it takes a budget action for the money to be allocated, which will happen, excuse me, through the fiscal year budget process.
Okay. So the intent remains to to take that remaining money and put it into the fund that we're talking. Okay. But this this itself does not do.
So that is my understanding from the city budget.
Correct.
That works for me. I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page there. First, as it relates to the first two items last year, you know, we also, in addition to and just prior to councilor Avalos budget, know, which I'm very grateful both that it happened and that it'll be happening again. We also, you know, took the the conversation. Councilor Smith and I respectively, had amendments to increase the two plans last year. I'm really grateful for all of your work that we don't have to do that. Again. Let me just start with that because that that's a big success and a big win. And as is the, the, the pharmacy benefits manager contract, because it would have been it is often easier to just keep the contract, just extend it, roll it over and appreciate the work that you did on that. I think it's worth mentioning that although we can't guarantee any particular savings because of the frozen in time aspect of it, that there is clearly been an attempt here to achieve cost savings. I think the public doesn't always know that that effort does happen. And when it does, I want to make sure to to call it out and praise it. So thank you all for the for the work on that. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Colleagues seeing no one else in the queue with questions or comments. Pausing keelan. Can we please call votes on all three of these emergency items? I think we do them sequentially, right? We're going to do three different sets of votes.
Yes.
Three votes.
Yep.
Okay.
Okay. So first vote is going to be on item nine 2020 6-116 Kanal. I pirtle-guiney is absent.
Ryan I. Koyama Lane I.
Morillo I.
Novick oh sorry. Gosh darn it.
Clark a.
Green Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Dunphy. I the ordinance passes with ten yes votes and two absent. The next vote will calls and is on item ten 2020 6-117 Kanal. I pirtle-guiney no Ryan. I Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman.
I I. Smith I. Dunphy I.
The last vote will call is on item 11 2020 6-118.
Kanal I. Ryan I. Koyama Lane I.
Morillo I.
Clark I.
Green Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Smith. I Dunphy I. And I realized I forgot to announce the vote for those last two items. So they both have passed with ten yes votes and two absent.
Thank you all very much for being here today and all your hard work on this. Colleagues seeing nothing else on our agenda. We are adjourned.