Inside the Race for County Chair: Financial Woes, Homeless Services, and Capitulating to Trump

Two current commissioners are vying to lead Multnomah County in 2027, each promising a new governing style.

by Abe Asher

The race for chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners has begun in earnest.

Last month, Commissioner Shannon Singleton became the first major contender to declare her candidacy for the position being vacated by Jessica Vega Pederson. She was quickly joined by her fellow commissioner, Julia Brim-Edwards. Voters will decide in a ranked choice election in November who will take the helm.

Singleton, who was elected to the Board in 2024 in a special election to represent a district that covers North and Northeast Portland, told the Mercury that she joined the race because she believes she can better serve the county as an executive rather than a legislator.

“I think I’ve been able to get a lot of things done in my role as commissioner for District 2—I’ve also focused a lot on some district-specific things,” Singleton said. “As chair, I’d have the ability to do some of the de-siloing work I think needs to happen.”

Brim-Edwards, a former Nike executive, served three non-consecutive terms on the Portland Public Schools board. She said she too believes executive power is the best way to drive change.

“Providing leadership and effective management from the chair's role is going to be the best way, I think, to drive change, get the county back on the right track, [and] improve accountability and transparency,” Brim-Edwards said.

Singleton and Brim-Edwards may not have the race to themselves for long. Former Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who served until January 2025 and lost a run-off to Vega Pederson four years ago, is also reportedly mulling a run and has published a campaign-like website laying out her vision for the county’s future.

The full field of candidates for the position will likely present an ideological contrast on a number of key issues, but the tenure of the next chair may be defined in large part by a major budget crunch that could lead to numerous cuts across departments and has possibly harmed the public’s perception of its work.

“Both the city and the county are struggling with revenue streams and the ability to fund what they want to fund, and that’s just driving what may appear like governance problems, but it's really just [an inability] to fill budget holes,” Terry Harris, a member of budget advisory committees for Multnomah County, said. “I think that is not going to change between now and whoever comes in in the next election.”

Brim-Edwards said that, given the county’s budget situation, her experience with budgeting at PPS is one of her foremost qualifications for the chair position.

“Frankly, when you have fewer resources, you need to decide what are the most important priorities and fund those first,” Brim-Edwards said. “And I have a track record of having done that.”

Singleton said the budget stress the county is currently facing will necessarily shape how the new chair approaches the position.

“We’re not in a position to be adding new programs,” Singleton said. “This is about us looking at where are we doing the best work. What are county core services, and how do we really focus on that?”

Part of Singleton’s pitch is that she won’t need a big budget to accomplish one of her primary objectives as chair: integrating services across the county that she believes are counterproductively siloed.

One example Singleton highlighted was the county’s pretrial services, through which people are connected either to the Department of Community Justice or the Sheriff’s Office in an effort to ensure they are ready to appear in court. The majority of the county’s pretrial clients already have a case manager in one of several county departments, but as of now, there is no care coordination across those departments.

“As we’re looking at budget reductions, we have to look for those opportunities to be more efficient—because we don’t have the funds, necessarily, for somebody to have three different case managers when they could have one case manager,” Singleton said.

Part of what Brim-Edwards is offering is not budget-related either: she said she wants to make the county’s operations more data-driven, and that she’ll offer a change in leadership style from Vega Pederson—saying she views the role of chair as the “leader of a strong, effective commission” and not as a “dictator.”

Still, the budget situation may necessitate further cuts that will test the political strength and priorities of the new chair.

In last year’s budget, the only offices that did not see their budgets reduced were the Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office—the outcome of a public battle between Vega Pederson and District Attorney Nathan Vasquez that saw Brim-Edwards side with Vasquez over the current chair.

Brim-Edwards connected her support for law enforcement funding to her focus on supporting local businesses, which she said is of particular importance with the county’s economy lagging and a national recession possibly looming.

“I have a background of working on economic development issues and how to support thriving businesses, and frankly one of the big issues right now is the lack of a functioning public safety system,” Brim-Edwards said, noting that her approach to the issue differs from Singleton’s.

The debate about public safety approaches and funding levels are connected to a larger debate that Harris believes will define the election this fall.

“In an open seat, it’s going to be on, ‘Well, what are you going to do about housing? Given the budget that we have and our responsibilities to taxpayers and our charter and our relationship with the city?’ I think that’s what it will come down to,” Harris said.

Singleton, who formerly directed the since renamed Joint Office of Homeless Services and led the housing nonprofit JOIN PDX prior to her election to the county commission, said she believes the county needs to reposition itself in relation to work on housing.

“The work of the Homeless Services Department has been overly focused on that emergency response—unsheltered homelessness and shelters,” Singleton said. “And I think primarily that's because we have allowed our partnership with the City of Portland to be focused on just that end of the spectrum.”

Singleton said the result is that the city and county have been less focused on how people can be successfully transitioned out of homeless services and into long-term housing—a key issue in how she is approaching the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the county that is set to expire shortly into the next chair’s term.

Brim-Edwards, meanwhile, made pushing for treatment requirements in the county’s deflection program one of her priorities during her first years in office and trumpeted her efforts aimed at “ending street encampments” in her campaign announcement. She has been endorsed by Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, who has been strongly focused on increasing shelter capacity.

In addition to Wilson, several moderate members of the Portland City Council have endorsed Brim-Edwards; more progressive councilors have lined up behind Singleton.

One area in which the current Board of Commissioners and the candidates for chair appear largely aligned is in the county’s response to the threats posed by the increasingly belligerent Trump administration.

“I do not believe there is anything we can do that makes Oregon and Portland and Multnomah County not a target, and so I'm not looking to ever start to pre-comply with things that we don’t think are right, that aren’t aligned with our values, and that we think are illegal,” Singleton said.

Singleton, who is a trained MigraWatch volunteer, said she wants to see elements of the immigration defense work happening in her neighborhood in North Portland happen elsewhere in the county.

“I want us to continue to fight,” she said.