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| 9/17/2009 10:43:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article
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Elane Dickenson/Chieftain
Kate Brown
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A conversation with Kate Brown, Oregon's secretary of state
Kate Brown, former state speaker of the house and now secretary of state, was interviewed by the Chieftain Editorial Board on a recent visit to Wallowa County.
How well do you know Wallowa County?
My husband worked for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest when we started dating. We dated for a year, then commuted for a year after we got married. We got married in 1997 in the roller rink at Wallowa Lake Lodge. My mother about died when she walked in. I spent about two years coming back and forth over here and developed some nice relationships-with [former longtime County Commissioner] Ben Boswell, Susan Roberts, who was mayor of Enterprise back then, and others.
It gave me a different perspective than that of my urban colleagues. I've tried really hard to work on rural issues and build partnerships. Sen. Dave Nelson and I worked on the forest biomass bill passed in 2005. On cougar issues, I probably am a little different than my urban colleagues where the cougar problem is not very great.
It's really easy for people to say you can't shoot cougars unless they're about to attack you.
What are you doing as secretary of state?
My experience working as a legislator and chair of the Council of State Governments West has been valuable. I attended a workshop on how to build credibility with your constituents. The woman asked who in the room could do 20 pushups, and I - eager beaver - said, "Of course I can do 20 pushups."
Twenty minutes later, she called me up to do the 20 pushups in front of all these people, which luckily I could do. But the other legislator who said he could couldn't do them. Her whole premise was if you're going to promise things on the campaign trail, you need to make sure you can deliver on them.
So I've made a number of commitments and most people don't know what the secretary of state does, so visiting the various counties has been a useful tool to refresh people's recollection and lay out what I've accomplished so far.
Initiative reform
You know how wild and crazy the initiative process is - it's the fourth leg of government in Oregon. We passed legislation in this session to give the secretary of state more tools to crack down on fraud, including both criminal and civil penalties, and the ability to pull signature sheets when signatures have been gathered fraudulently. Also, we were given additional resources to hire investigators. I can't say we've cleaned it up entirely, but we're working on it.
Is it too easy to file an initiative?
No. In the last 10 years there have been 49 initiatives on the ballot and only 12 passed. So I would say that Oregon voters are very discriminating. I'm guessing that about 20 percent of those are repeat offender initiatives. So we're tackling that problem.
I think the bigger problem is technology. Legislation we passed in 2007 allowed people to spread petitions on the Internet and you can pull it off and sign it and send it in. So I think we're not that far removed from actual signature gathering on the Internet.
Why are paid signature gatherers even allowed?
Because the courts told us we have to. It was the U.S. Supreme Court. We're trying to focus the regulations on the paid signature gatherers and let the volunteers do this out of the goodness of their hearts.
What about Bill Sizemore [a Clackamas activist who has filed several initiatives and been jailed and fined for campaign fraud]?
He's in big trouble. As a result of a court case-I think it was a civil contempt case in Multnomah County-the judge provided some additional evidence that we are now investigating. I don't know the status of the criminal stuff-I think most of it has been civil because it's so hard to prove on the criminal side.
If Sizemore came in with a petition right now, would you accept it?
I'd have to go through the background check and all that sort of stuff with him. The folks that are funding these initiatives that are out of state are not funneling Bill Sizemore any money anymore.
There is a much higher level of coordination and collaboration now between the Department of Justice and the secretary of state's office. We really need their legal assistance to go after the bad guys and gals so that when initiatives get on the ballot they are there through legal and legitimate means.
Voter engagementMy focus has been working with young people - getting them to register and then vote. Our turnout rate is very high-we're in the top five in the nation-I think that's due to vote-by-mail. Where we lag is in voter registration. So if we can come up with a way to make it easier to register, that will increase our turnout numbers. Working with a number of my former colleagues in the House, we were able to pass an online voter registration bill that will be in effect in 2010. It will be fabulous for young people, who live some of their worlds online, and other mobile people.
The other bill we passed allows military men and women and others living overseas to vote by fax. We have the security in place now to have this happen.
What do you think of online voting?
It's premature at this point. We don't have the security to implement it. One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of vote-by-mail is that we have a paper trail. I won my first race by seven votes, and while I had to wait 30 days for the recount, at least I could watch the recount take place. We don't want to come up with a situation where there is no ability to recount.
Why do other states have so much trouble with voting?
Some of it was with the machines. What happened after the Bush vs. Gore race was that the federal government passed the Help America Vote Act to update and modernize the elections systems across the states. We got rid of some machines and punched ballots. It was an incredible updating of the technology. It also created centralized voter registration databases, which is fabulous.
I don't know why more states haven't gone to vote-by-mail. Washington is probably 95 percent vote-by-mail, California is 40 percent, we're almost 100 percent vote-by-mail. We see this as a West Coast trend-I think it will move across the country. It's so convenient.
Some of us of a certain vintage prefer going to the polls on Election Day. I'm 64, and I've voted in every election since I was old enough to vote.
Good for you. For some voters, it's a ritual. I will say that vote-by-mail has increased from Election Day to 18 days, so I'm guessing it's increased the cost. That's something we're looking at.
The alternative that's cropping up in civic engagement is folks are having neighborhood parties, having conversations about what's on the ballot and discussions on how they should vote.
But don't the people who get together like that already know how the others are going to vote?
Probably that's true to some extent. But there are other ways of engaging folks.
A way to get young folks engaged is a more unified civic engagement process in the schools. In Bosnia, it's called Project Citizen. Every student is required to participate in a public policymaking project. They pick a project, they come up with a solution and they work on it.
I'm not sure we have the resources for that, so a scaled back version might be: Here's how you register, here's how you fill out a mail ballot, here's when you vote, here are the different parties you can register in, this is your legislature and here's how you contact them-basic stuff.
What about a one-stop-shopping concept for businesses? Here the only state office is the D.M.V. We have to go to La Grande for other offices, and not everything is available even there.
That's really true, isn't it? I think the Central Business Registry has been a great tool. I wasn't the visionary behind it. I think Gov. Atiyeh in the 1980s had that vision. We have implemented it with today's technology.
When you go to register your business online, you can connect automatically to the Employment Department, Department of Consumer and Business Affairs and Department of Revenue. I think it's
a model for the other state agencies. We had our 50,000th business register online in February.
AuditingAs the constitutional officer, I have the ability to audit all three branches of state government. Washington has a state auditor, a secretary of state and a lieutenant governor, and Oregonians get all three for the price of one in their secretary of state.
Oregon does a really good job with fiscal audits. Where we were a bit behind the nation was in performance auditing. State government and all government is going to struggle for the next five to 10 years in terms of fiscal sustainability, so I see our challenge is about how to deliver state services better-to get more bang for the taxpayer dollar. That's why performance auditing is essential for the next decade.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Friday, September 18, 2009
Article comment by:
Bill Sizemore
I have never been jailed or fined for campaign fraud. I have never been charged with a crime in my life. Kate Brown is a partisan political tool of the public employee unions and uses her office to attack the opponents of her union donors.
When her union friends, such as Our Oregon, do something, her office signs off on it. When I do the same thing, I get investigated or sued or am found in contempt of a Multnomah County Court.
As for Ms. Brown's statement about me not having financial support for future initiatives, she's ill-informed. Her OEA friends have been tying up our ballot titles in court, but 2010 petitions should hit the streets in two or three weeks.
Bll Sizemore
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