Just what is an HJRA, anyway?

Health Justice Recovery Alliance is the unregistered name under which two Oregon nonprofits funded by New York-based Drug Policy Alliance defend Measure 110

Tera Hurst, the executive director of Health Justice Recovery Alliance, is employed by an Oregon nonprofit that has received grant funding from New York-based and George Soros-cofounded Drug Policy Alliance

The Health Justice Recovery Alliance is the mysterious organization leading the defense of Measure 110, Oregon’s unpopular first-in-the-nation law decriminalizing hard drugs including fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine. No Oregon-based organization has done more to try to preserve Measure 110 in the face of the growing public backlash against it.

HJRA staff serving on the state committee implementing Measure 110 have repeatedly used urged state employees to use state resources to defend the measure. HJRA organized a trip to Portugal, which decriminalized hard drugs some time ago, last summer for lawmakers and other Oregon officials to try to rally support for Oregon’s decriminalization effort. HJRA is currently organizing drug decriminalization fans to testify against a Democrat bill in the current legislative session that would, just barely, recriminalize hard drugs.

What’s in a name?

I noticed some time ago that HJRA is not listed on the Oregon Secretary of State’s website that’s supposed to contain all for- and non-profit business names in the state.

The failure to register the HJRA name got my attention, and got me wondering what HJRA even is.

When I’m not writing stuff like this, I’m usually practicing business law. It’s not uncommon that I pester clients about things that other (ed.: normal) people may think minor, things like what state-created category their legal entity fits into, and whether it’s registered with the Oregon Secretary of State.

With HJRA front-and-center defending Measure 110 during the legislative session, I figured why not satisfy my curiosity? So, I emailed the spokesperson for HJRA, Devon Downeysmith to ask why HJRA’s not registered with the Secretary of State and also what entities employ HJRA staff. To her credit, she responded promptly:

1) HJRA is fiscally sponsored by Partnership for Safety and Justice (C3 work) and Safety & Justice Oregon (C4 work.) HJRA is not registered with the SOS separately since PSJ/SJO are our fiscal sponsors, but you can find them in the SOS database. 

2) Our organization is fully funded by private foundations whose work focuses on criminal justice reform. We are not funded by the Drug Policy Alliance, nor do we receive Measure 110 dollars. 

Partnership for Safety and Justice and Safety & Justice Oregon are affiliated nonprofit corporations registered in Oregon. Partnership for Safety and Justice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, meaning donations to it are tax-exempt, but its ability to use those donations for political advocacy is limited. Safety & Justice Oregon is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, so donations to it are not deductible as charitable contributions, but they can be used entirely for political advocacy. Both entities are, indeed, registered with the Oregon Secretary of State.

But the name HJRA should be registered, too, but isn’t. Oregon law provides,

No person shall carry on, conduct or transact business under an assumed business name in a county where the business is located, where a physical facility of the business is located or where an employee of the business is stationed, unless the person has registered the assumed business name as provided in this chapter and maintains a current registration.

The statute defines “business” broadly, to include “activity carried on, conducted or transacted by or on behalf of nonprofit, social, fraternal and charitable entities and unincorporated associations[.]”

Oregon requires the registration of a business name so that Oregon residents can easily identify who is conducting “business” in the state.

HJRA’s website says it is a “statewide advocacy organization that represents nearly 100 community-based organizations and addiction recovery service providers across the state.” Ms. Downeysmith says HJRA is “fiscally sponsored” by the two nonprofits. That relationship is confirmed in Partnership for Safety and Justice’s 2021 filing, the most recent available, with the Oregon Department of Justice. That was the year Measure 110 first went into effect. Partnership for Safety and Justice spent more on HJRA staff and professional services, $332,016, than any of its other reported functions. It paid HJRA’s executive director Tera Hurst $120,500, more than its own executive director Andy Ko ($111,942).

Partnership for Safety and Justice is, according to its filing, the “direct controlling entity,” of Safety and Justice Oregon, the other nonprofit mentioned by Ms. Downeysmith. Safety and Justice Oregon’s 2021 DOJ filinsays it spent $395,194 on HJRA that year, while spending only $108,166 on its general criminal justice reform mission.

In other words, Partnership for Safety and Justice and its subsidiary Safety and Justice Oregon, have been doing business under the name of Health Justice Recovery Alliance without registering the name with the Secretary of State as required by law. Oregon law provides that a court may dissolve a nonprofit corporation if it is a “shell entity,” in that it “was used or incorporated to fraudulently conceal any business activity from another person or a government agency.” The evidence required to make out a legitimate case for dissolution is a mere showing by the Attorney General that “the corporation did not provide provide a name or address required by the Secretary of State.”

Partnership for Safety and Justice/Safety and Justice Oregon are in violation of Oregon law by failing to register the name Health Justice Recovery Alliance, under which as recently as 2021 both entities did a majority of their business in Oregon. That failure, coupled with tracing the funding that supports HJRA, serves to obscure for Oregonians the true nature of the organization.

HJRA’s fiscal sponsors received funds from Drug Policy Alliance

You’ll recall that Ms. Downeysmith, the HJRA spokesperson, asserted in her email to me that HJRA is not funded by Drug Policy Alliance, the New York-based, George Soros-cofounded nonprofit that pushes drug decriminalization.

Now, I didn’t ask whether Drug Policy Alliance funded HJRA, but have written that it probably does many times. In a follow-up email, Ms. Downeysmith confirmed that HJRA was not funded by Drug Policy Alliance’s affiliated nonprofit Drug Policy Action, either. I asked whether either of HJRA’s fiscal sponsor nonprofits received funding from either Drug Policy Alliance or Drug Policy Action. Ms. Downeysmith said she didn’t know, but I should contact their spokesperson. I did email the spokesperson, and have not received a response as of this morning.

Drug Policy Alliance’s filings with Oregon DOJ for 2018 and 2019 report it issued $15,000 grants each of those years to Partnership for Safety and Justice to “engage in a major strategic goal-setting process.” Its 2020 filing shows it issued another $15,000 grant to Partnership for Safety and Justice to “support the IP 44 campaign and implementation through Oregon’s 2021 legislative session.” Initiative Petition 44 was the name for Measure 110 before sponsors obtained enough signatures to get it on the ballot. Drug Policy Alliance’s 2021 filing as shown on Oregon DOJ’s website, does not include a description of grants issued that year.

HJRA says its mission is to implement Measure 110. One of its sponsoring nonprofits, which employs, at least, HJRA’s executive director, received at least $45,000 in grants from the Drug Policy Alliance between 2018-2020. A complete 2021 filing might show the Drug Policy Alliance cut off funding for Partnership for Safety and Justice just as implementation of Measure 110 really got underway and HJRA staffed up. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Drug Policy Action is to Drug Policy Alliance as Safety & Justice Oregon is to the Partnership for Safety and Justice: a 501(c)(4) nonprofit controlled by a 501(c)(3). Drug Policy Action boasted about its central role in enacting Measure 110 in its 2020 Oregon DOJ filing:

Drug Policy Action designed Measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act of 2020, and spearheaded the campaign in partnership with a broad and deep coalition of state-based allies. In Oregon, we saw a profound need to treat drug use as a health issue and not a criminal problem and enough of an opportunity at the ballot that we decided to move forward with our bold plan.

Drug Policy Action reported that in 2020 it gave $2,445,000 to the political action committee urging Oregonians to vote yes on Measure 110, $472,649 to the committee that got Measure 110 on the ballot and $35,000 to Safety & Justice Oregon for implementation of the measure.

By the time the dust had settled from the 2020 election, Drug Policy Action had contributed over $5 million to help pass Measure 110, according to Ballotpedia, the most of any contributor by far.

Drug Policy Action’s financial filings with the Oregon DOJ end in 2020, so we lack a full picture of its involvement with Safety & Justice Oregon for the later years when HJRA was hitting its stride. However, Drug Policy Action contributed $16,000 to Safety & Justice Oregon’s political action committee, Safety and Justice PAC, in October 2022, according to the state’s campaign finance database.

To finally wrap all this up, we know the following:

1. HJRA is not registered with the Oregon Secretary of State, but it should be.

2. HJRA says it is fiscally sponsored by Partnership for Safety and Justice and Safety & Justice Oregon.

3. Partnership for Safety and Justice was, as of 2021, the employer of HJRA’s executive director Tera Hurst and perhaps other HJRA staff.

4. HJRA says it is not funded by either Drug Policy Alliance or Drug Policy Action.

5. But, Drug Policy Alliance funded Partnership for Safety and Justice and Drug Policy Action funded Safety & Justice Oregon as recently as 2020, the last year for which that data is available.

My suspicion is that a full reporting of Drug Policy Alliance’s and Drug Policy Action’s post-2020 Oregon spending would show ongoing substantial financial support for the nonprofits HJRA admits fund its activities. Drug Policy Action is unlikely to have walked away from its $5 million investment in Measure 110, and the scale of HJRA’s efforts suggests major sources of national funding, like Drug Policy Action.

Likely, HJRA was established as an unregistered “alliance” to help protect the image, which it strives to cultivate, that Measure 110 was and is primarily a homegrown Oregon endeavor.

It’s not, and never has been.