Isaac Laquedem

The media missed a little something about the Scappoose cattle baron

The local newspapers have had a few engaging stories (here's one from the Tribune) about an 86-year-old Scappoose farmer who was convicted on 27 pollution counts in February, and who has been sentenced to 5 days in jail and a $300,000 fine.

Apparently unremarked by the local media, the farmer, William Holdner, is a certified public accountant.  He's also the president of Data Systems, Inc,, a company headquartered in southeast Portland whose stock is thinly traded under the ticker symbol DSTO.  It's a very small company; Mr. Holdner's cattle ranching operations might be larger, but it's still one of the few public companies headquartered in Portland, and I would have thought that an enterprising reporter might have picked up on this.

Kate Brown says that a candidate who wins 97% in the primary has to go to a runoff

Last week I predicted that the Attorney General would move quickly to repair Secretary of State Kate Brown's bungling of the Labor Commissioner Election, and that the Avakian-Starr election would appear on the May ballot, as it should.  I was half-right: Willamette Week reports that the office of Legislative Counsel (the agency of the Legislature that actually drafts bills and resolutions for the legislators to consider) opined on March 21 that the law requires the Labor Commissioner race to be on the May ballot.   Counsel's opinion comes too late to return the election to its proper place, however.

Secretary Brown believes that an obscure amendment to the election laws, passed in 2009, requires the Labor Commissioner to be elected in November and not in May, and therefore because only two candidates filed, they must face each other in November.

Allowing that the question is now of only academic interest, here's another reason why she's wrong.  Imagine that three candidates had filed: let's call them Avakian, Laquedem, and Starr.  Secretary Brown told Willamette Week that if more than two candidates had filed, she would have placed them on the May ballot.  So all three of us would have been on the May ballot. 

So far so good . . . unless one of us won a majority in May.  To be extreme about it, let's say that Mr. Starr draws 1%, Mr. Avakian 2%, and the other 97% vote for Isaac.  (One can always dream.)

Under Secretary Brown's theory, the law prohibits me from being elected in May, and Mr. Avakian and I would have been in a runoff in November even though I'd won 97% of the vote in May.

That is not the law.  That cannot be the law.  Ms. Brown bungled this one badly.

How do you keep a Belgian from dehydrating? Not with water, according to the European Union

When I first saw this story a few months ago, I mistakenly thought it was a bit of British whimsy, cooked up by the people who brought us Monty Python and Bertram Wilberforce Wooster as a way to poke fun at their Continental counterparts.

It's real.  The European Union has banned marketers of bottled water from claiming that their product (water) can fight off dehydration (lack of water).  Great Britain's government doesn't like the EU edict, but can't stop it from going into effect in their nation.

The water that the English appreciate most may not be the overpriced stuff that comes in plastic bottles, but the 20 miles of the English Channel that still separate them from their daffy European neighbors. 

Kate Brown reads the election laws, and gets Starrs in her eyes

Only one Starr, actually, in this case, State Senator Bruce Starr, who is challenging Brad Avakian, the incumbent Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries.   Senator Starr and Commissioner Avakian are the only two persons who filed for this nonpartisan office.  Under the common understanding of Oregon's election laws, their names would appear on the May primary ballot.  If one were to receive a majority of the votes cast, that person would be elected; if neither received a majority, then the names of both would appear on the November ballot.

In 2009, the Oregon legislature decided to move the BOLI commissioner race to the non-presidential election years, and passed a law stating that the commissioner elected in the November 2012 general election would serve a two-year term instead of a four-year term, so that the office would next come up for election in 2014 instead of 2016.  (See the note under ORS 651.030, here.)

Secretary of State Brown determined that, since only two candidates filed for the office this year, there would be no primary election, as in her view the 2009 amendment meant that the BOLI Commissioner office must be elected at the November 2012 election, and not in the May 2012 primary.  I believe her reasoning is either (a) that as ORS 249.091 states that if only two persons file for a nonpartisan office, they are both nominated and their names shall not be printed on the primary election ballots, so neither Senator Starr nor Commissioner Avakian may have their names on the May ballot; or (b) that as ORS 249.088 says that a candidate for a nonpartisan office who receives a majority of the votes is elected, and as the 2009 amendment refers to the BOLI Commissioner being elected in November, a winner can't be elected in May without violating the 2009 amendment.

Senator Starr and Commissioner Avakian were both campaigning with the idea that the May election would decide their race.  After Secretary Brown dropped her bombshell, Senator Starr filed suit to overturn her decision. Willamette Week, which had the story first, links to the senator's complaint, which is worth reading and sets out his position clearly.

Having read the complaint, the statutes, and the legislation, it seems to me that Senator Starr has the better argument.  Secretary Brown is misreading the meaning of the words "to fill a vacancy" in ORS 249.091.  Here's the complete statute so that you can see for yourself:

Unless otherwise provided by a home rule charter, if a nominating petition or declaration of candidacy is filed by no more than two candidates for the office of sheriff, the office of county treasurer or the office of county clerk or by no more than two candidates to fill a vacancy in a nonpartisan office:

(1) The candidate or candidates shall be the nominee or nominees for the office; and

(2) The name or names of the candidate or candidates may not be printed on the ballot at the nominating election.

The question is what the words "to fill a vacancy" mean.  Senator Starr argues, rightly in my opinion, that the office of BOLI Commissioner is not vacant -- Commissioner Avakian would certainly agree with him! -- and this election is not an election to fill a vacancy.  Because this is not an election to fill a vacancy, ORS 249.091 does not prohibit the candidates' names from appearing on the May nominating ballot.  Secretary Brown got it wrong.

The clearest proof that she got it wrong is in ORS Chapter 204, relating to how county commissioners are selected.  ORS 204.005 provides that at the primary or general election, as provided in ORS 249.088, counties will elect:

      (e) A county commissioner to succeed any commissioner whose term of office expires the following January.

      (f) In any county where there is a vacancy from any cause in the office of county commissioner, an additional commissioner to fill the vacancy.

The legislature distinguished regular elections from elections to fill vacancies.  The seat of a county commissioner whose term is to expire in January is not vacant.  Neither is the office of BOLI Commissioner vacant.  The election is thus not an election "to fill a vacancy" and the names of Senator Starr and Commissioner Avakian should appear on the May ballot.

Isaac predicts that the Attorney General's office will advise Secretary Brown to correct herself before the Marion County Circuit Court has to do it.  Look for the BOLI election to be on the May ballot, as the law requires.

Eight years (two terms?) of blogging

It's been eight years since my first post on this blog. In that time I've been fortunate to have at least three Portland councilors stop by to comment, to have broken one piece of local news in advance of any of the regular media outlets, and to have had a few of my ideas show up in public debate.  The high point of this alternate life is not, however, any of my blog posts, but having my submission to a Willamette Week limerick contest read onstage by Storm Large.

If 1300 posts later my blogging pace is slowing down a bit, it's not because I'm running low on stories to tell -- the good citizens brave (or foolish) enough to become public servants create raw material faster than I can retell them -- but because I'm discovering that I'm rapidly becoming part of The Good Old Days myself.

The New And Improved Laquedem Columbia River Crossing Plan

I had thought that one or another of my solutions to the Columbia River Crossing problem might save us a couple of billion dollars despite the best efforts of our local govenrments, and then last week's news that the Coast Guard will not let Oregon's and Washington's highway departments replace the Interstate Bridges with a fixed span that is 30 feet too low to accommodate existing river traffic sent me back into contemplation.  Any solution to the problem must, as I see it, take three factors into account.  First is that the City of Portland opposes replacing the bridge unless it includes light rail to Vancouver.  Second is that although the bridge is being advertised as a solution to the traffic jams on Interstate 5, the new bridge won't add any actual car capacity: the real bottlenecks are in the cluster of on-ramps at the north end and the vanishing third lane about two miles south of the south end.  The jams would likely vanish if traffic were reduced by about 20%.  Third is that many of the bridge lifts are required because the high spans on the Interstate Bridges don't line up with the lift span on the railroad bridge 4000 feet downstream, and this forces some barge traffic to go through the Interstate Bridges' lift spans so that they can pass through the swing span on the railroad bridge.

If you start with those three principles, then a solution becomes easy to imagine.  Here is how Isaac reconciles those three principles.

First, forget about replacing the Interstate Bridges.  Leave them in place, and charge passenger cars a toll of $5 to cross.  Exempt trucks and buses from the toll, and exempt any vehicle that is carrying at least four passengers.  The only glitch is that this would require the approval of the Oregon legislature to charge a toll.

Second, build two two-track tunnels, one for light rail and one for the Burlington Northern, so that the railroad swing bridge can be taken down.  This means that the Port won't have rail service to West Hayden Island.  Too bad.

The first measure will reduce bridge traffic and thus congestion by discouraging single-passenger cars from crossing and encouraging carpooling and bus riding.  (It will become cheaper for many cross-border workers to take the bus to work instead of driving.)  The revenue from tolls can also pay part of the cost of building the rail tunnels.  It will also reduce traffic on Interstate 5 to and from the bridge, which will reduce the aggravating traffic jams that clog the freeway for four to six hours a day.

The second measure will reduce the number of bridge lifts by removing the rail bridge as an obstacle to river traffic.  Barges can pass under the high fixed span of the Interstate Bridges without having to make a tight turn to go throught the rail bridge's swing span.

Each rail tunnel should cost about $500 million.  The tolling booths, equipment, and cameras should cost about $50 million.  Designing a cute logo for the automatic toll-pass system should cost about $5 million.  (Just kidding about that last one.)  So for about $1 billion -- one-fourth the current cost of the project -- we satisfy all of its goals.

Problem solved; billions saved.  Easy!