Sunstone scandal: Building accountability in Multnomah County
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
My goal is not simply to become Multnomah County Chair. My goal is to fix Multnomah County.
That means my campaign emails won't be filled with political marketing. Instead, I'll focus on real events in the news: what they reveal about what's broken in County government, and what I would do to turn things around.
The Sunstone Way shelter funding scandal is a perfect example.
Recent news reports indicate that one of the County's major shelter providers received millions of dollars in public funding for expenses that were unsupported or improperly documented. Yesterday, we learned that a criminal investigation is being launched. This is outrageous.
But Sunstone isn’t the real story. The County system that allowed it to happen is.
How did the County Board - including the two sitting commissioners running for Chair - approve, contract for, and pay millions of taxpayer dollars without oversight?
Of course, now everyone is calling for investigations. I would have expected anyone seeking to lead the County to already understand why this happened and what to do about it.
The County contracts with hundreds of nonprofits to deliver services, yet it does not coordinate them, establish shared goals, tie funding to measurable results, or hold providers accountable for performance.
Sunstone is not an isolated failure. It is a symptom of a system that spends first and maybe asks questions later.
On day one as Chair I would do two things:
First, I would begin implementing the reforms already contained in my Comprehensive Turnaround Plan: results-driven contracting, zero-based budgeting, measurable performance standards, and public accountability for outcomes. And I would do it with a transition team of experts ready to hit the ground running.
At the same time, I would launch a public, independent performance and forensic review of the County's homeless services system - including its use of Supportive Housing Services tax dollars - and its largest contracts. Not to punish, but to establish the facts, identify other instances of fraud, waste and misuse of funds, restore accountability, and inform the reform process that I had already set in motion.
This is not a complicated problem.
We need to know where money goes, what it buys, whether it works, and who is accountable. The County does not know those things today. It will if I'm Chair.
If you'd like to learn more about Multnomah County’s lack of oversight of its hundreds of service providers, its $4 billion budget that fails to tie spending to results, and my proposals for changing these systems, please see Fix-Multco.com.
Thank you for caring. Together, we really can do so much better.
Sharon
