A blame game between current and former top Portland officials has intensified over their failure to notify the City Council for months of millions of dollars in unspent funds that could have been paying for emergency rent assistance, eviction defense or other housing aid.

Helmi Hisserich, the recently ousted head of the Portland Housing Bureau, said in a memo Thursday to the 12-member council that a senior bureaucrat told her in September to withhold information about the unspent funds from the body’s finance committee chair.

Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira, who oversees the bureau, had pointed to unfavorable “optics” and the potential for “a big PR problem,” Hisserich alleged in the memo sent Thursday, first reported by The Portland Mercury .

Oliveira only informed the

See Full Page