The Portland City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday that will tap underspent budgets to preserve 30 jobs across the city and reverse some of the planned cuts in the fire and police bureaus.
While the ordinance passed by a 10-2 vote, it came at the expense of a rival proposal. One proposal was backed by the council’s centrists, the other by its progressives. The centrist caucus won out, but only after Mayor Keith Wilson, for the first time in more than 18 months in office, wielded his tiebreaking powers to kill the progressive caucus’s ordinance.
Wilson’s one-word tiebreaking vote came after more than five weeks of tense debate over the two competing ordinances that would save jobs and reverse some of the public safety cuts baked into the recently passed 2026–27 budget…