PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson will each declare a 90-day fentanyl emergency, the governor's office confirmed Tuesday morning, following through on a recommendation by the Portland Central City Task Force.
"Our country and our state have never seen a drug this deadly addictive, and all are grappling with how to respond," Kotek said in a statement. "The Chair, the Mayor and I recognize the need to act with urgency and unity across our public health and community safety systems to make a dent in this crisis. We are all in this together. The next 90 days will yield unprecedented collaboration and focused resources targeting fentanyl and provide a roadmap for next steps."
The three leaders held a news conference Tuesday afternoon to discuss the details of the emergency orders.
"We're up against a rising tide in fentanyl related addiction and deaths unlike anything that we've seen before," Wheeler said.
Each order directs the city, county and state governments to commit their resources to a unified response, according to a news release from Kotek's office, which will be coordinated through a new command center in downtown Portland. The command center will "refocus existing resources" and publicly report data it collects about the impacts of fentanyl downtown.
Nathan Reynolds with the state, Dr. Jennifer Vines with the county and Mike Myers with the city will serve as "incident commanders" for each of their respective jurisdictions. Vines was Multnomah County's health officer until last spring; Myers, a former Portland fire chief, has been heading the city's Community Safety Division.
The state will provide resources from the Oregon Department of Human Services Office of Resilience and Emergency Management, where Reynolds is a deputy chief for policy mission and support; the Oregon Department of Emergency Management; the Oregon Health Authority; and the Oregon State Police, according to the news release. County resources will come from the Health Department, County Human Services, Community Justice, County Assets and the Joint Office of Homeless Services.
The county health department's involvement will include two public education campaigns. The city will provide additional public safety, addiction and public health services. Together they'll step up street outreach and addiction prevention, train more people to use the opioid overdose medication Narcan, and continue the partnership between Portland police and OSP for drug interdiction in the central city.
Why now?
During Tuesday's press conference, reporters repeatedly questioned all three elected leaders about why an emergency wasn't declared sooner. After several answers that skirted a direct response — gesturing to the right combination of personalities and cooperation being in place — Wheeler eventually addressed the issue head-on.
"I anticipated that this question would get asked because any time anybody declares an emergency on something as important yet obvious and well-covered as fentanyl, obviously one would ask the question, 'Well, where the hell have you been?'" Wheeler said. "And the answer is: We've been working on it."
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In a statement released after the announcement Tuesday, Oregon House Republicans pounced on that aspect of the emergency, accusing Gov. Kotek of doing too little too late.
“Three years after Measure 110 initiatives started to ravage Oregon and over a year after she began her administration, Gov. Kotek has finally identified that Portland has a fentanyl crisis," said House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich. "While it’s about time, this problem is bigger than one city; we remind the Governor that this crisis has spread across the entire state. We welcome her to join Republicans in pursuing serious policy solutions — like HB 4036 — and ask her to urge her fellow Democrats in the legislature to do the same."
Both Democrats and Republicans have introduced bills that would overhaul state drug policy under Measure 110, particularly by re-criminalizing drug possession to varying degrees, but those bills do not cover precisely the same territory as this emergency declaration — nor is it clear that Measure 110 deserves the lion's share of the blame for the rise of fentanyl in Oregon.
“Fentanyl is killing Oregonians," said Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber on behalf of Senate Democrats. "This is a strong step from the governor and local leaders that will deliver urgent relief on our streets and in our communities, and the Legislature is going to take further steps this session. We’re determined to take action to get people into treatment when they need it and keep Oregonians safe.”
What will it accomplish?
The fentanyl crisis won't be solved in the 90-day timespan of this emergency, Wheeler said in his comments, but it's intended to produce sustainable strategies for addressing fentanyl instead of one-off efforts that don't result in any lasting changes. Coordination and long-term planning will ideally be the primary outcome.
Vega Pederson mentioned that the emergency would include work toward "specific, measurable objectives," but later acknowledged that those objectives have not yet been identified. Instead, that will be one of the unified command's tasks over the next 90 days. However, she said, the county Health Department has drafted an overdose response plan.
Between 2018 and 2022, Vega Pederson said, fatal overdoses increased five-fold in Multnomah County. The county saw a record 209 deaths from overdoses involving fentanyl in 2022.
"Declaring this emergency will help us address this and other gaps in our system," the county chair said.
The emergency does not come complete with new funding commitments or similarly tangible outcomes — for instance, Kotek admitted that it would not be directly responsible for the addition of new drug treatment beds. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum, she said. The Oregon Health Authority is currently assessing the need statewide for treatment beds, and 70 new beds are already expected to come online this year in Portland's central city.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are expected to have a number of bills related to fentanyl, drug treatment and behavioral health when the legislative session begins in February, and Kotek said her office will be looking at ways to speed the licensing process for behavioral health workers.
From the task force
Kotek convened the Central City Task Force last summer, recruiting about 40 people, including business owners and city leaders, and tasking the group with developing a plan to help the city's economic recovery and better address challenges like homelessness, safety, crime and drug use.
The task force held a series of meetings through the fall and released an action plan in December with a list of recommendations, including declaring this 90-day tri-government fentanyl emergency, banning public drug use, increasing outreach work in the central city, expanding the city's homeless shelter capacity and creating a command center in the city for daily communication and organization when tackling the crisis.
There were also recommendations about cleaning up trash and graffiti hotspots, providing tax relief for downtown businesses and expanding the police presence in the central city. Some of the recommendations dovetailed with work planned for the upcoming legislative session, including adjustments to Oregon's Measure 110.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.