Shannon Singleton — Candidate for Multnomah County Chair
Endorsed 350PDX CJ platform? Yes
Candidate statement:
As Multnomah County Chair, I’ll bring the same urgency to climate justice that I’ve brought as County Commissioner. The County doesn’t control everything on 350PDX’s platform, but where we do have power (over public health and safety, some over the CEI Hub, over how our own investments and infrastructure work) I’m going to use it.
The Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub is where I’ve put the most sustained work, and where I’ll keep pushing as Chair. I championed the County ordinance securing risk bonding for the CEI Hub’s fuel storage, and used my political capital and relationships to help move a risk-bonding bill through the 2026 legislative session. I’ll continue to work with 350PDX and other CEI Hub advocates on what the County can do under its own public health and safety authority. And I’ll keep building Cascadia Subduction Zone planning into how the County operates day to day, not treating it as a side issue we get to when there’s time.
I’ll also keep using the tools the County actually has on air quality: implementing Strategy 6 of the Climate Justice Plan to establish nitrogen dioxide emissions standards, expanding air quality monitoring into industrial corridor near the CEI Hub, Portland International Raceway, and growing our wood-stove-to-heat-pump replacement work alongside building electrification. As Chair, I will insist that all major County policy and investment decisions include an environmental justice impact analysis so that we understand who bears the environmental and health impacts before decisions are made.
I sit on Metro’s JPACT, and I’ve used that seat the way I used my work on the Interstate Bridge Replacement’s community benefits agreement- to keep multimodal transportation and equity-priority voices at the center of regional transportation decisions. With Salem’s failure to pass a real transportation funding package and loss of transit funding impacting TriMet service, I am supportive of road usage fees and tolling that include a low-income tolling program and an exemption for Indigenous peoples, along with EV registration fees- not letting riders absorb the cost of the state’s inaction.
And because heat is already killing our neighbors, I’ll keep building resilience hubs (starting with County facilities like libraries) and keep working with Metro’s Cooling Corridors program to direct cooling resources to the residents with low income who need them most.
This is the work I’ve already started, and the work I’ll keep doing as Chair.
