PORTLAND, Ore. — In what absolutely no one familiar with government oversight will find surprising, Multnomah County has announced it cannot account for more than $150,000 in gift cards and cash-equivalent incentives handed out over the last few years.

The missing funds, per a story from FOX 12 Oregon, were distributed through the Multnomah County Health Department between 2022 and 2025, where gift cards were apparently used as incentives for various programs. The idea was simple enough: hand them out, track where they go, and ensure taxpayer dollars are used properly.

Unfortunately, somewhere between “hand them out” and “track where they go,” things got a little… blurry.

According to the county, there were 629 orders placed for gift cards and similar cash incentives. But when officials went back to check the records, they found 129 of those orders had no documentation showing where the cards actually went.

That’s not a small clerical error. That’s a six-figure “uh… where’d that go?” moment.

To be clear, employees were required to track distribution of these gift cards. That was already the policy. The tracking system existed. The expectation was there.

And yet, here we are.

County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson addressed the situation with a statement that can best be summarized as: yes, this is bad, but also, look on the bright side, we found the problem ourselves.

“My expectation is that all county funds are accounted for and used for their intended purpose,” she said, adding that the discrepancy was discovered through internal review, which she framed as a sign that monitoring systems are working.

Which is one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it is that over $150,000 in taxpayer-funded incentives went missing for years before anyone noticed enough to do something about it.

But don’t worry — the solution is already in motion.

The county says it is now working on “stronger safeguards,” including a groundbreaking new requirement that staff must log gift cards before they are distributed.

Yes, you read that right.

The new fix for losing track of gift cards… is to track the gift cards.

Revolutionary stuff.

Officials also say additional audits are currently underway, and the expectation is that these reviews, combined with updated training and procedures, will prevent similar issues in the future.

Because if there’s one thing government does best, it’s solving problems by adding more processes to the processes that already weren’t followed.

At this point, there’s no indication of where the missing gift cards actually ended up — whether they were lost, misrecorded, or simply handed out with zero documentation.

So for now, the official status of 129 gift cards worth tens of thousands of dollars is essentially:

¯\(ツ)/¯

But hey, at least there will be a form for it next time.