Renovating the city-owned Moda Center for the Portland Trail Blazers isn’t an act of climate justice. While Portland officials emphasize that an arena makeover would include energy efficient infrastructure and other climate-friendly improvements, any such benefits are an afterthought to the mission of upgrading the 30-year-old arena to meet NBA expectations.
Not surprisingly, then, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposal to use $75 million from a climate justice tax fund as part of the city’s financing package for those renovations is already drawing some pushback. City councilors are among those arguing that such a use is inconsistent with what the public was told to expect when they passed the 2018 ballot measure establishing the Portland Clean Energy Fund.
They’re not wrong. But the more pertinent point is that the program as a whole has become inconsistent with what voters were told to expect in 2018. Instead of a program collecting an estimated $30 million in tax dollars a year, the fund rakes in more than $200 million annually from a 1% tax levied on sales at large retailers. Instead of a program that distributes grants to nonprofits for energy-efficiency improvements, small-scale renewable energy projects and workforce training, it has become a slush fund used to plug holes in the city’s transportation, parks and other bureaus for projects that may or may not be closely aligned with the original vision.
And with the city facing a $67 million budget shortfall next year, it’s hardly a shock that so many people are eyeing the expected $1.6 billion in revenue through 2028 as a lifeline to sustain services ranging from bus service to adding police officers. The mayor’s suggestion of tapping the fund to help ensure that the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers keeps the team here for 20 years or more is simply the latest ask to secure a critical priority for the city.
This scramble over one of the few thriving sources of tax revenue is neither new nor surprising. There’s little hope of raising any new taxes amid Portland’s affordability crisis, particularly after last year’s levy to fund Portland’s beloved parks passed with muted support. And the tax on sales — which is built into the price that Portlanders pay, as opposed to highlighted as a separate line item — delivers considerable bang for the buck with far less of the grief. For example, the parks levy will generate less than half of what the clean-energy tax brings in each year.
Two years ago, our editorial board urged city leaders and Clean Energy Fund advocates to quit assuming voters’ intent and instead put a new ballot measure before them. Such a measure could take shape in any number of ways — it could explicitly expand the possible purposes for the fund or it could cap the amount of revenue that flows to the original program with the rest going to the city’s General Fund, as we previously suggested.
But there’s been no effort to ask voters to weigh in again, even though the sunny outlook of 2018 in no way matches the post-pandemic Portland that’s struggling with little to no population growth, job losses, reputational damage and a local economy in shambles. A new measure can also help dispel environmental groups’ recurring claims that the Clean Energy Fund belongs to them — a wildly imperious stance to take when referring to tax dollars collected from Portlanders’ purchases of goods and services.
The urgency to cobble together state, county and city funding sources for renovating the city-owned Moda Center means there’s no time for such a vote to get that clarity. Any uncertainty in the city’s commitment only gives the Trail Blazers’ new owner, Texas businessman Tom Dundon, reason to consider other cities’ interest in becoming the next home for the Trail Blazers. He already owns an NHL franchise in North Carolina and cities are indeed shelling out hundreds of millions for any number of sports franchises. The late Paul Allen’s willingness to shoulder the cost of building the original Blazers arena was an exceedingly rare act of generosity that Portland simply cannot expect.
As we note in a companion editorial, the consequences of losing the Trail Blazers extend far beyond sports and the local economy. The instant loss of jobs, economic activity, civic pride in our storied franchise and credibility as a major city would reverberate throughout the state for many years to come.
The City Council should start efforts to put a measure on the ballot defining the fund’s future, but city leaders cannot risk losing the Trail Blazers by failing to take prompt action once the mayor provides a detailed proposal. City Council must be open to the idea of using Clean Energy Fund dollars rather than puritanically shutting off consideration. Those who would claim such a use would go against voters’ intent should acknowledge that there’s little evidence of what voters’ intent or preference is anymore. And with few alternative sources of funding in a city slashing services, there are no easy tradeoffs.
But here’s what city leaders should know: Losing the Portland Trail Blazers on their watch is a legacy that they will have to justify for decades to come. They shouldn’t base their defense on false notions of what the Clean Energy Fund really is.
-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board