Oregon’s mayors didn’t get their desired solution for addressing homelessness in Gov. Tina Kotek’s proposed state budget for the next two years.

That omission might reveal much about how she will lead. She doesn’t waver, but does she already have her mind made up?

Her 2023-2025 budget recommendation to the Legislature reflects her long-held political views and her commitments on the campaign trail. In are her priorities of housing and homelessness, mental health and substance abuse treatment, schools and young children, as well as raises for state workers. Out are dollars for university construction projections, including Oregon State University-Cascades, and additional payments to the state budget reserves.

The heart of the budget is the $32.1 billion in programs financed by the general fund and lottery, particularly education and human services.

Kotek receives well-deserved praise for tackling homelessness head-on as a statewide issue. But public officials and service providers in some rural areas contend they won’t get nearly enough help. Their regions aren’t included in her sweeping executive order.

The Oregon Mayors Association proposal released in October would address that.

The mayors favor a direct allocation to every city based on its population — $40 per resident. Although Kotek publicly expressed concern about the per capita approach, it wasn’t until late last month that she discussed it with the mayors and the League of Oregon Cities.

The plan’s exclusion from Kotek’s budget disappointed city officials.

“For years, the state, local government, nonprofits, and community action agencies have done their best to support our most vulnerable residents, but our combined efforts have proven unsuccessful. There are many reasons why tackling this crisis has been unsuccessful, chief of which is the lack of a collaborative partnership between the state and local government,” Patty Mulvihill, the league’s executive director, said in an email to me on Thursday.

“Plans to funnel money into the same leaky and broken buckets already being used, regardless of how significant the funding, will result in the same devastating results we see on the ground today.

“Oregon needs a new plan, and a new way of fighting this issue. The OMA proposal is that new plan. A strong and collaborative partnership between the state and its 241 cities is the only way this crisis is resolved.”

Kotek met informally with reporters after her Jan. 31 press conference at which she unveiled her budget. We asked how her discussion went with city officials.

She described it as a frank conversation. Local governments need more ongoing state funding, but she doesn’t think per capita funding is the way to go.

“What I took away was we agree that local government, the cities, need ongoing support from the state to meet their goals. We just have to figure out how to do it,” Kotek said. “I said to them, ‘It’s not in the budget, but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out by the end of the legislative session.’”

Mulvihill and Kotek seem to agree the current system is bound in too much red tape and competition instead of collaboration.

Ed Blackburn, the former head of Central City Concern, who was an adviser to Kotek’s campaign, gave the keynote speech at a 2019 housing conference. He said the great barrier to ending chronic homelessness in Portland was agencies’ institutional egos, inability to break bureaucratic norms and fully collaborate.

When I pressed Kotek more on the mayors’ proposal, she responded that the answer is not dollars alone, as is demonstrated by the metro area’s difficulty in reducing homelessness despite having more money.

“It’s about working better together,” Kotek said. “We’re going to bring some more money to the table, but you all have to use your money more effectively.”