Portland Auditor Receives Final Payment from Publicly Funded Elections Scam

One of the darkest and most unintentionally hilarious chapters in recent City of Portland political history has come to close, with the repayment of monies owed the city from a scam perpetrated during the 2006 election season.

Back in those more innocent times, city council candidates could qualify for public funding for their campaigns if they obtained the requisite number of signatures.

In the 2006 primary, a little-known candidate named Emilie Boyles surprised political observers by gathering 1,000 $5 contributions. As WW first reported, there was something unusual about Boyles' supporters—95 percent of them came from the former Soviet Union.

"I'm very popular in the Slavic community," Boyles told WW at the time.

As required under the rules of publicly-funded elections, the city then gave her $145,000 to run a campaign. Some of her expenditures—paying her 16-year-old daughter $15,000, for example—set off alarms.

Boyles and the man who'd gathered signatures for her, Volodymyr Golovan, both pleaded guilty to violating elections laws but have now satisfied their obligations to the city, according to the auditor's office.

Voters pulled the plug on publicly-financed city elections in 2010.

Here's the release from the city:

WWeek 2015