Lars Larson: is Portland permanently broke?

By Lars Larson
NW and national radio host,

The Northwest Nonsense

Is Portland city government just permanently broke?

How long will it take for the rocket scientists on the new, more than twice as big Portland City Council to realize they’re drowning in red ink of their own creation?

January of this year, a 100-million dollar budget shortfall and all the wailing and gnashing of teeth. They patched that one up with the financial equivalent of bailing wire and chewing gum.

8 months later, the city claims it’s back in the fiscal soup…sixteen million short.

What happened? Business taxes are down sharply.

Huh? A city that defunded cops, encouraged riots, tolerated all the antifa “all cops are bastards” nonsense has businesses fleeing the “Riot City”.

Who wudda thunk it.

Meantime, the city just budgeted more than 100-million bucks from one of its newest taxes…the clean energy fund…to plant street trees.

And rather than demanding tough enforcement of criminal laws to clean up the environment that’s making the businesses run away…Mayor Keith Wilson is launching a lawfare attack on ICE for rounding up illegals who are a major piece of the crime problem.

And city council members are taking junkets to foreign countries on the taxpayer’s dime to investigate making Portland housing more socialist than it is already.

A strange set of priorities…and we’re all paying for it.

That’s the Rose City Rap. Join me at noon on KXL for First Amendment Friday. I’m Lars Larson