City Hall Entrance Interview: Chris Henry

Seeking to represent: District 4 (West Side and parts of Southeast)

Age: 60

Pronouns: he/him

Job: Freelance work as a driver

Fun fact: His grandfather was President Dwight Eisenhower's speechwriter.

Of all the City Council candidates running this cycle, Chris Henry is the one most familiar with seeking elected office. He has done so more than a dozen times, for federal, state and local offices. Henry works as an Uber driver but received support to qualify for small donor matching funds. Henry is a member of the Green Party and is more focused on clean energy and climate infrastructure, with a particular focus on the city's need to prepare for the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake. Henry has sat on the boards of a number of progressive nonprofits, including the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition and Honest Elections Oregon. Here's what he'll do in office.

Why are you running for office?

I'm running for office to give working people a voice and make sure long-neglected issues like earthquake preparedness are given the attention they need. I have worked for more than a decade with Honest Electricals Oregon to limit corporate influence in politics by winning campaign finance reform in Portland, Multnomah County, and Oregon. Now that our work has secured funds for City Council elections, we have the ability to seize this political opportunity and enact progressive policies that Portland's majority supports. The next steps should be to clean up corruption in the city hall and democratize our economy.

What are your top three priorities if elected?

My top priority is to help Portland get Cascadia ready! If you think the housing crisis is bad now, wait until the big one happens. Leading Oregon scientists reported in 2018 that hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced as countless homes were destroyed. We need an overhaul to prepare. My second priority is to make PGE a public utility district so we can decentralize the grid to the neighborhood level and build systemic resilience. Third, we need to restructure our finances. I support the creation of a green public bank to invest in vital projects.

How can you promote economic growth in Portland?

Through the Public Green Bank, we will have the institutional tool we need to invest in Portland’s continued green economic growth. By getting our money back from Wall Street, we can invest in green jobs, urban agroforestry, expanding public transportation, green manufacturing, and post-earthquake rehabilitation of homeowners, apartment buildings, and major infrastructure. All of this can be financed through loans to small businesses and grants to non-profit organizations. Combined with policies to support economic equity — like a $25 an hour minimum wage — we can stimulate economic activity and provide an attractive future for Portland's working families.

The city of Portland faces budget cuts next year. Where will the money be cut from the current city budget? Please indicate a specific program, office or location.

Shockingly, Portland currently pays over $100 million a year to Wall Street, just like interest on loans! This is a huge grant to corporations and must be ended immediately. With the Public Green Bank as our financing vehicle, we will free up all of these resources to invest in Portland and for Portland instead. I would also seek to significantly reduce the budget for the planned water filtration project, which has needlessly quadrupled to $2 billion over the past five years. Decentralized water purification can be accomplished at a lower cost and will be more resistant to earthquakes.

Where is the city currently wasting money, or using money in a way that it believes is inefficient or unnecessary? Where is the bulge?

At a recent candidate forum, I spoke with a whistleblower who has worked for nearly 15 years at Portland Parks & Recreation. She told me that the excuse of budget cuts was used to fire many of the gardeners involved in basic maintenance, while upper management protected their grossly inflated salaries at the expense of the workers and gardeners. I will seek to conduct a comprehensive review of all city departments to identify and correct any such instances of inflation, while improving wage equity and strengthening protections for essential workers.

What is the Joint Office of Homeless Services doing wrong, and what things do you see that could right the ship?

Although the Joint Office of Homeless Services has made tremendous strides recently in helping our homeless residents rehouse and access needed services, significant challenges remain facing the department. One of the biggest issues is the lack of legal support, especially eviction defense. Many people who need the office's services do not get the legal representation they need to reach them. As a City Council member, I will seek to increase the resources available to public defenders, and remove unnecessary legal obstacles that prevent our residents from accessing essential services. Housing must be established as a human right.

Is Multnomah County's tax rate (with Portland Clean Energy Fund, Preschool for All, and Supportive Housing Services taxes) too high, or at an appropriate level? If it is too high, what do you suggest doing about it?

The “hidden” taxes that concern me most are the exorbitant rental costs and high utility rates that the city currently allows due to lack of regulation. To remove these hidden taxes, we must establish a rent control system and make the PGE a public utility district. This would facilitate our transition to a decentralized renewable grid with greater neighborhood autonomy, lower prices, and the ability to withstand a major earthquake. I also support cutting income taxes for 99% of the population to provide relief to working people.

What is the first piece of policy you would bring to the City Council?

I will move immediately to rescind Zenith Energy's Land Use Compatibility Statement. The City Council should never have allowed this in the first place, and the City Auditor's recent finding that the City Council allowed Zenith to illegally pressure them behind closed doors is appalling. Research conducted by Multnomah County in 2020 showed that fossil fuel tanks at CEI pose a significant risk to the health and safety of our community. Keeping so much fuel on the banks of the Willamette River on earthquake liquefaction soil is crazy. Zenith is the biggest culprit here and must be stopped.

Besides policing, what measures would you take to improve public safety in Portland neighborhoods, and where would you get the money for that?

First, we need to fully fund non-police community response, like the Portland Street Response. Second, we must invest in green streets to revitalize and beautify our most neglected neighborhoods, especially downtown. Many studies show that simply having more trees and flowers improves people's mental health and can help calm conflicts. Third, we must address the root causes of crime and poverty to ensure public safety. This will require more robust job training programs, especially for young people, and meeting the basic needs of the population such as health care and housing. We can guarantee the funds for this through the Green Public Bank!

What experience can you point to that you think will make you a wise policy maker on the City Council?

What's more wise than preparing for earthquakes? My working-class background includes pouring concrete on the Northridge Bridges after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. I know what it takes to fix our infrastructure – and that includes political infrastructure, too. My two decades of experience in grassroots campaign finance advocacy have all been geared toward combating the corrupting influence of corporate donations that constantly stand in the way of wise policy choices. Today, corporate interests like Zenith Energy would rather pay with your lives than with their money to prepare Portland for the massive Cascadia earthquake.

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