Councilors backtrack on drug seizures.

Byline: DIANE DIETZ The Register-Guard

The Eugene City Council on Wednesday retreated from its 2-day-old decision to earmark assets seized in drug busts for drug treatment.

Councilor Nancy Nathanson asked the council to reconsider the decision out of concern about a clause in the ordinance that restricted the treatment to Eugene residents only.

That's a problem because Eugene pays for social services through the Human Services Commission, a governmental consortium that pools money from Eugene, Springfield and Lane County.

Earmarking the treatment money for Eugene residents could cause a fight, Nathanson warned.

At best the clause would cause complications and confusion, she said. "And at worst, retaliation."

The council voted 5 to 3 to revisit the issue of how to spend drug forfeiture dollars on Jan. 14.

The council could adopt the same ordinance, adopt a similar ordinance without the Eugene-only clause or it could start dealing with the controversial issue from scratch.

Councilors Bonny Bettman, Gary Pape and David Kelly voted against reconsidering the ordinance, especially with minimal time to discuss why the sudden call for a review was necessary.

"I'm sure there's more here than meets the eye," Kelly said.

The proceeds in question are roughly $200,000 to $400,000 annually, and they were used to support the countywide Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team - until Oregon voters last year approved restrictions on financing police with drug forfeiture proceeds.

The council has worked on the forfeiture ordinance since early October, addressing the issue three times before the final discussion and vote on Monday and the reversal on Wednesday.

Lane County Circuit Judge Darryl Larson weighed in with support for putting the money into drug treatment. Lane County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad favored putting the money into the city's general fund, where it would create slack for other general government programs, including police operations.

How to spend the drug forfeiture money is not at issue in other jurisdictions in the state because they largely abandoned use of the civil forfeiture law when voters made it more difficult to give the proceeds to police.

Other counties are focusing, instead, on a new criminal forfeiture procedure that divvies up the proceeds with 40 percent going to local law enforcement, 40 percent for local drug treatment and 20 percent for state programs.

The civil forfeitures law, however, leaves it up to local governments to make the call.

Several Eugene city councilors expressed their reluctance to pump more money into the Human Services Commission, which funds a variety of social service programs.

Eugene already provides a disproportionate amount, Nathanson said.

The city pays eight times more than Springfield and more than double what Lane County pays, she said.

That's why Kelly specified that the forfeiture dollars from Eugene should buy treatment for Eugene residents.

"We talk a lot about the concern that we're providing services to nonresidents, so here's an attempt to deal with it, and it's suddenly being shot down without good discussion," he said.

Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken, however, said the problem may be that Eugene generally chooses to spend too much on social services, so the other governments don't attain the proportional match.

"In Springfield, the church community has always stepped up to the plate on many of these issues," he said. "They've done the same services that government can do and probably do them better."