News A claim often repeated by opponents of Measures 66 and 67 is that the state has billions of dollars sitting in reserve accounts that could be used rather than raising $727 million in new taxes. The Legislative Fiscal Office, a nonpartisan agency that tracks state spending, has told WW these claims are untrue. And today Secretary of State Kate Brown, who oversees state auditors, issued the ...   More

News Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown's elections office has completed its review of a complaint filed earlier this week against Mark Nelson, campaign manager for the opposition to Measures 66 and 67. State elections compliance officer Carla Corbin wrote [PDF] to the complainant, Marge Easley, President of the League of Women Voters of Oregon, telling Easley that the mock ballots Nelson is sending ...   More

News Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown today released an audit [PDF] of the $200 million grant that state lawmakers awarded OHSU in 2001. The Oregon Opportunity grant was a pretty big deal because it was funded by tobacco settlement money and represented a relatively bold move during the last recession. Bottom line: auditors found that OHSU put the money to good use and did what it said it ...   More

News During the contentious campaign in Oregon over Measures 66 and 67, "No" campaign manager Mark Nelson's practice of sending out mock ballots drew fire from the measures' supporters. Backers of Measures 66 and 67 questioned whether Nelson's mass-mailing of such ballots to more than 100,000 voters were an attempt to suppress the vote by tricking people into thinking they'd already voted when the ...   More

News Two years ago, then-Secretary of State Bill Bradbury disqualified Jeff Duyck, a GOP candidate in House District 29 (Hillsboro and parts of Washington County) after an investigation by elections officials determined Duyck lived just outside the district boundaries. Fast forward to 2010 and Oregon's Secretary of State, now Kate Brown, has once again been called upon to determine whether a GOP ...   More

News We asked Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Bill Bradbury in an endorsement interview last week how he'd make state government more efficient. Bradbury, Oregon's former Secretary of State, responded that he'd get the Oregon Department of Revenue to do a better job collecting unpaid taxes from deadbeats. That was an interesting answer because Bradbury's opponent in the May 18 Democratic primary, ...   More

News The prospect that Saturday mail delivery would end nationwide as part of a cost-cutting move by the U.S. Postal Service could have been worse from the perspective of Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown. Brown, whose office oversees elections, had raised concerns when the Postal Service considered ending delivery on the comparatively light delivery day of Tuesday. She noted that killing Tuesday ...   More

News Here's a statement from Clackamas County on an embarrassing and costly screw-up that will mean late arrival of ballots for about 217,000 county voters in the May 18 election: The secretary of state has issued a directive ordering the Clackamas County Clerk to reprint ballots for the May 18 election because of an error that was discovered on Monday. As a result, newly printed ballots will be sent ...   More

News Marion County Court Judge Dennis Graves provided a lesson today about conserving scarce public resources. Judge Graves addressed [PDF] a dispute between Clackamas County and the Secretary of State's Elections division this morning by proposing that rather than spending $120,000 to replace inaccurately printed ballots, the county insert a piece of colored paper alerting voters to the error. "The ...   More

News Tom Moyer is back on the hot seat. Moyer has been in the news lately because the city-owned Portland Development Commission is considering relocating from its Old Town headquarters to a partially-built downtown office on which Moyer halted construction in 2009. But Moyer is in the news today for suffering a legal reversal in a battle that involves a relative pittance but has major implications ...   More