PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Portland City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez is voicing his criticisms of the nearly $4 billion budget recently approved by the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

The county budget included funds for distributing two million tents to the homeless and five million syringes. Gonzalez took umbrage with the syringe funds, which a Multnomah County spokesperson confirmed to KOIN 6 News would cost $515,000 on the Health Department’s budget.

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“We are struggling with the drug crisis in our community — it is killing our 911 system. And for the county to continue to distribute drug kits that tend to draw people into our community to facilitate that drug use is a real problem,” Gonzalez said.

The city leader wasn’t the only critic of the county’s budget. The dissenting Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who is finishing her final term on the board after eight years representing District 1, also expressed her dissatisfaction at Thursday’s meeting. She said the budget’s lack of focus represented government waste. Several amendments to the budget that Meieran proposed failed to pass.

Gonzalez has been critical of Multnomah County in the past, saying he thinks their Joint Office of Homeless Services should foot the bill for Portland’s Street Response program.

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