ABOUT
PDX Spend
A tool for showing what seven Portland-area voter funds could pay for, and the named rule that purports to stop them.
What this is
PDX Spend is a single-issue tool. It documents seven public funds in one region. For each one it shows three things: what the fund could pay for at its current balance, what’s blocking that, and who controls the lever.
Each fund’s memo ships with the page, prerendered alongside the interactive charts.
The site has a second beat — Investigations — that documents one quasi-governmental relationship at a time, in long form. Where a fund page reads a revenue stream, an investigation reads a contractor, a joint office, or a delegated administration arrangement. The first investigation is on the contractor layer behind Multnomah County’s Supportive Housing Services spending.
Who built it
Reporting and design by Ron Bronson, working under Public Capacity Lab and State Capacity AI.
Editorial reference: The Pudding (chart-led longform), the Financial Times visual desk (chart language, restraint), Reveal and ProPublica (structural framing of public-money stories), plainlanguage.gov (writing standards).
How to use it
Pick a fund. Read what it could pay for. Read who controls the blocker. Send the page to that office.
Status of the figures
Every figure on this site is modeled until audited records replace it. As audited documents become available, the modeled series get swapped out and the chart loses its MODELED badge. See the methodology.