ed someone who had that kind of basis of good, sol
id relationship. When it reached the point, to be
honest, of them choosing to support my opponent,
which is their prerogative, then you know what?
Time out on efforts for reconciliation.
JO: Will you please give us a job description
for county chair?
DL: In the simplest terms, Multnomah County
is responsible for taking care of people in need and
people in trouble. We are the mental health and
public health authority, we’re responsible for sen
iors and people with disabilities and addiction serv
ices. We’re a sub-unit of the state to implement
state social service programs. The county’s budget
is a billion dollars, roughly. We manage people who
have less than a year’s term in jail, locally. In the
-case of the public safety system, alter the police
bureau arrests people, the county picks up where
they leave off. We book people, we incarcerate, we
prosecute through the district attorney’s office, we
supervise parolees and probationers, and we man
age the treatment services. We also manage an
extraordinary, world-class library system.
There are also general government responsibil
ities, taxation and assessment, elections, animal
services, some transportation and land use plan
ning authority, unincorporated parts of the coun
ty, the bridges, all the parts of the county outside
the city. We’re responsible for land use and regula
tory oversight.
DL: I’m in for an inch and for a mile on this
issue. 1 feel very, very strongly for making every step
we can towards equal treatment of everybody. So
besides the marriage issue...we provide health care
services to people with AIDS, HIV-positive people.
We work with [the Sexual Minority Youth
Resource Center] to support their efforts to be
empowered to have something to say about their
own lives.
JO: What is the county’s association with
SMYRC?
DL: We have funded support to SMYRC.
JO: Do you support continued funding for
SMYRC?
DL: 1 do, although I’m also hoping that we can
support their efforts to be more self-supporting.
I worry that the county’s budget challenges could
put so much at risk, and they are going to be more
free and effective and powerful when they have a
solid source of funding.
JO: Do you believe that the Multnomah
County income tax was used properly? Would
you support renewing it?
DL: It was used absolutely exactly the way that
the measure told the taxpayers it would be: $90-
plus million went directly to the school districts.
The mayor and I developed the School Efficiency
and Accountability Committee...to make sure that
all those dollars went to exactly where we said they
would go. Remember, it restored the entire school
JO: Besides being instrumental in the same-
sex marriage decision, what are some of your
year for a lot of these districts, and it maintained
I class sizes.
demonstrated commitments to queer causes?
1 don’t support the renewal of
the county income tax. We prom
ised the voters and the taxpayers
that it would be a three-year, tem
porary tax...I’ve already made a
pledge that in my budget will be
$5 million, one-time-only money.
It’s the most we can do and the
least we can do to support schools.
That may be part of a comprehen
Diane Linn has
sive solution. It’s not the solution,
because it’s not enough money. But the county
can’t really do much more than that. Otherwise
we’d be trading away huge parts of some of our oth
er systems.
JO: We imagine that there are a lot of things
about the county and the way it works that you
know that we don’t know. Whqt should we
know?
DL: The county is a critical part of the fabric of
the community. The county’s responsibility in
terms of its role in basic services and services for the
vulnerable—it’s a constitutional responsibility in a
civilized society that we make sure that nobody
flounders on the streets, that everyone has a place
to go, that the options are open for people to
change their lifestyle, to get involved in recovery
or deal with their mental health condition.
The county plays a vital role in implementing
the most quintessential or basic democratic values.
So for progressive people in this community, what
the county does is fundamental. And how we do it
is really important because we are trying to balance
the use of the tax dollar and target it in the most
a lifelong commitment to issues of social justice.
effective way.
1 have a three-pronged sense of this. We have
to do prevention. We have to prevent kids from
ending up on the streets, ending up in detention or
ending up in the hospital. So how we intervene
with kids in early childhood and school-based pro
grams is really important.
When things go wrong—when someone, for
example, presents with the onset of schizophrenia
or chemical dependency, or their identity is un
defined and they are starting to flounder in school
and things aren’t going right—it’s the county’s
responsibility to lead the charge to intervene. That
could be through a community partner, that could
be through our management of the resources that
help that intervention be effective.
Finally, when everything goes wrong and sanc
tion is necessary, to protect the rest of the commu
nity, we have to manage that, too. ©
A full transcript of this interview—including Linn’s
comments on the Wapato jail, press coverage of
women in conflict and why she thinks she should be
re-elected—is available at www.justout.com.
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