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The two leading candidates for Oregon secretary of state represent starkly different political perspectives. State Sen. Shemia Fagan is voting for Joe Biden for president, and Sen. Kim Thatcher recently spoke immediately after a rally for President Donald Trump.
But both agree on the state agency that needs an audit most.
Besides running state elections, Oregon’s secretary of state has the crucial duty of ferreting out the flawed performance of various state agencies. We asked the candidates:
Which agency would you audit first and why? What’s your second priority?
State Sen. Shemia Fagan
(D-East Portland)
“As secretary of state, I’ll audit the Oregon Employment Department to find out what went wrong for the thousands of Oregonians who were pushed to the edge waiting on their checks, and make sure this never happens again.”
Second priority? “Our emergency response. Which I would have answered the same back in August before these wildfires. But now these wildfires need to be included. As I am sure that you have read, there are reports of people in Southern Oregon literally not even receiving the warning. They didn’t go from a Level 1 to a Level 2 to a Level 3 evacuation; they went from zero to Level 3 evacuation. And we need to audit our emergency response. We need to have a much more efficient system for folks in rural communities facing wildfire to have somewhere to take their livestock. So I think our entire emergency management response with respect to COVID and wildfires needs to be reviewed. Lives and people’s most precious belongings are at stake.”
State Sen. Kim Thatcher
(R-Keizer)
“If the state of Oregon was one agency, I would be tempted to do an audit on that agency, specifically related to how it’s responded to the COVID crisis. Most importantly, under that umbrella would be the Employment Department over the failure to promptly deliver unemployment benefits to tens of thousands of Oregonians in need over the past several months. As the longest-serving member of the Joint Audits Committee, I’ve called for the comprehensive audit of the Employment Department that was delayed last year and is finally underway.”
Second priority? “It would be the Oregon Department of Forestry. My time on the Senate Wildfire Reduction and Recovery Committee taught me this agency has significant financial and management issues, many pointed out in a 2016 audit. If ODF could find a better way to collect tens of millions of dollars owed by the federal government for fighting wildfires, perhaps more resources could be spent preventing these fires and nipping them in the bud.”
