Campaign Visits to Portland Cost the City $180,000

It's not cheap when a presidential campaign comes to town.

There are costs for security, for traffic control, for staff.

Portland Auditor Mary Hull Cabllero released a report Tuesday spelling out some of those costs.

Looking at visits dating back to October 2014 when Vice President Joe Biden came to town to campaign for Senator Jeff Merkely, the the audit estimates the visits have cost Portland $180,000.

The cost is estimated, according to the adult, "because the Police Bureau has not tracked its time in detail. Also missing from Police Bureau cost estimates were employee bene ts and indirect costs, such as the proportional share of leave time, equipment, and internal City services. Internal City services include, for example, human resources, informa- tion technology, and City attorneys."

The visits examined by the audit were:

• October 2014 - Joe Biden, cost - $53,400;
• April 2015 - Jeb Bush, cost - auditors could not determine any cost to the city;
• May 2015 - President Obama, cost - $89,000;
• August 2015 - Hillary Clinton, cost - $3,900;
• August 2015 - Bernie Sanders, cost - $1,100;
• September 2015 - Jeb Bush, cost - auditors could not determine nay costs to the city;
• March 2016 - President Clinton, cost - $4,900;
• March 2016 - Bernie Sanders, cost - $22,200
• April 2016 - John Kasich, cost - $400.

"The Police Bureau has not tried to charge campaigns or event organizers for the City’s costs in the last two years," the audit found. "It did so many years ago, but more recently Police o cials believed campaigns would not pay.

"The Secret Service did not reimburse Portland."

The city did get reimbursed once - for Bernie Sanders August 2015 visit.

"As a result, taxpayers and the City’s General Fund subsidized these political campaign events, even as donors were asked to contribute $500 to $12,500 at political fundraisers," the audit says,

"When City funds are scarce and the City has to prioritize many competing services, it is important for the City to recover its costs from private entities when it can."

The audit concluded that the city has the authority to recover those costs and, in the future, should "follow its current policy and charge political campaigns or event organizers for the cost of City services provided for candidate visits."