Skip to main contentThe Nose swears on his mother's grave that he hasn't been tainted by the Enron scandal. No cash, no fruit basket, no holiday cards from Kenny-boy.
It's a bold statement to make because it appears everyone else was befriended by the now-bankrupt energy company. In Oregon alone, the line of those who got gifts from Enron is longer than the Sunday-morning wait for a table at the Original Pancake House on Barbur Boulevard.
Elected officials, of course, top the list. The boys from Texas proved looser with their wallets than a sailor at the Dancin' Bare, tossing wads of cash without regard to sex, race or party affiliation. In 2000 alone, $68,000 of Enron-related cash made its way to more than 80 candidates for the Oregon Legislature. And over the past few years, every single member of Oregon's congressional delegation has received Enron-related dough: Peter Defazio ($1,750), Darlene Hooley ($1,950), David Wu ($2,250), Greg Walden ($3,500), Ron Wyden ($4,000) Earl Blumenauer ($8,500) and Gordon Smith ($18,000). Smith's take was particularly embarrassing--he received more Enron cash than all but six members of the U.S Senate.
As the Enron hearings drag on up on the Hill, it will become clear how difficult it is to pin the quid to the quo of this donkey. For example, two years ago Wu and Hooley voted for one of many Enron-helpers that passed Congress--an amendment to the Commodity Exchange Act that exempted Enron from regulatory scrutiny. Was this a bit of political payback, or simply support for a larger appropriations bill?
It's not just elected officials who sidled up to the Enron oil-based buffet. When the company was wooing Portland General Electric, it offered a number of key employees windfalls if they were able to help smooth the purchase past the recalcitrant Oregon Public Utility Commission.
They did, and Enron made good: In the year 2000, PGE CEO Ken Harrison and treasurer Joseph Hirko cashed in their Enron stock options. Harrison walked away with $75 million. Hirko cleared a mere $35 million. A number of other PGE execs, including Peggy Fowler, Fred Miller, Don Kielblock, Alvin Alexanderson and Richard Dyer, received stock and options that, depending on when and if they were exercised, were worth in excess of $1 million for each.
Even the tofu crowd helped itself to the Enron smorgasbord. In February 1997, a coalition of environmental groups endorsed Enron's purchase of PGE. In return, Enron awarded them grants totaling $500,000, including $30,000 given to Northwest Environmental Advocates, $15,000 to Salmon Watch and $5,000 to American Rivers. The trail of cashed checks even leads to the door of the Citizens' Utility Board, which received $227,000 in 2000 for dropping a lawsuit and backing off its campaign for a statewide referendum on the closed Trojan nuclear power plant that would have cost Enron $300 million.
Would the Nose have liked a piece of this action? You bet. But now that the Enron collapse is the biggest scandal since the savings-and-loan crisis, the Beak will gladly take the high road.
What's scary about this is not that all these folks took money from a company that distorted the public process in the name of obscene--and ultimately, unsupportable--profits. What's scary is that if the boys from Texas hadn't been so gluttonous, they might just have pulled it off--and none of these folks would be looking at their old deposit slips with such embarrassment.
WWeek 2015