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Former Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned under a cloud of scandal on Feb. 18, 2015, and in recent months has been tentatively feeling his way back into public life.
That tentative approach turned more aggressive today, as Kitzhaber took aim at Gov. Kate Brown's unwillingness to state her position on Initiative Petition 28, the proposed corporate tax increase that qualified for the November ballot earlier this week.
Here's what Kitzhaber had to say in a Facebook post today:
For months, Brown has been saying that she was gathering information about the measure, which an analysis from the non-partisan Legislative Revenue Office says will raise $3 billion a year through a gross receipts tax on corporations with Oregon sales of more than $25 million a year.
Last week, Brown issued a brief statement on the merits of the measure, saying she'd like the Legislature to fix some of what she perceives as shortcomings: that it's regressive, would punish Oregon employers and would hit the state's growing software industry.
Then on Monday, the secretary of state's office certified the signatures the advocacy group Our Oregon had turned in to qualify I.P. 28 for the November ballot.
Brown remained silent on whether she supported or opposed the measure but then on Wednesday, The Oregonian's Jeff Manning produced an analysis from the state economist showing the measure would hammer Oregon companies with big sales and thin profit margins, such as Powell's Books.
There's plenty of context for Kitzhaber's statement. In 2014, he negotiated a truce between union and corporate interests who were headed for a ballot show-down.
Brown and Kitzhaber also have a chilly history.
In the waning days of his fourth term, which ended just a little more than a month after he was sworn in, he summoned Brown, then Oregon's secretary of state, back from a conference in Washington, D.C. and met her in at Portland International Airport to discussion her succeeding him, only to later deny he'd done so. Brown then went public with what she termed a "bizarre and unprecedented situation," which contributed to the perception that Kitzhaber had lost control of his governorship.
Kitzhaber and former first lady Cylvia Hayes remain under federal investigation relating to influence peddling allegations.
Kitzhaber did not today say whether he'd vote for or against I.P. 28, instead encouraging Brown and other elected officials to seek a compromise.
"It seems clear from the Legislative Revenue Office analysis that the measure was written by pollsters rather than economists, and is the product of ballot title shopping," Kitzhaber wrote. "Ballot Measures 66 and 67 [corprate and individual tax increases voters passed in 2010] tore our state apart in the depths of the Great Recession and did not solve the problem of chronic underfunding in our system of public education. We are heading for something much worse in terms of the bitterness and polarization that a multi-million dollar IP28 campaign will generate."
Brown's spokeswoman, Kristen Grainger, says the governor will not respond to Kitzhaber's comments.
Willamette Week