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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels July 15, 2004 Ethics commission overwhelmed by SAIF case By Brad Cain The Associated Press SALEM - The state's ethics watchdog agency plans to extend its investigation of SAIF Corp.'s lobbying expenses into the fall, citing a lack of staffing and a backlog of paperwork. It's the latest sign that the ethics panel's budget has been squeezed to the point where it no longer has the manpower to adequately investigate alleged ethics violations, the agency's chief said Wednesday. Patrick Hearn, executive director of the state Government Standards and Practices Commission, said he will ask the panel on Friday to extend the SAIF investigation until Sept. 20. "It has to do with the large size of the case," he said. "We have about 15,000 pages of documents for our one investigator to analyze." Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, filed the complaint in December against SAIF, saying the state-owned workers' compensation insurer intentionally underreported exorbitant lobbying expenses, a claim SAIF denies. Walker alleges SAIF paid former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt and former House Speaker Larry Campbell about $1.4 million to lobby the Legislature since 1998 but reported only $223,000 in lobbying spending. Hearn said that while the SAIF case is pending, the ethics panel won't be able to process the dozens of other complaints it receives about alleged ethics violations by state and local government officials. "I've got a drawer full of those complaints," he said. "But it's gotten to the point where I tell people to not bother sending them to me because we can't do anything about it anyway." Created by Oregon voters in 1974 to be the ethics watchdog over thousands of public officials, the ethics commission has often been in the news for its pursuit of government officials accused of using their public office for private gain. However, over the years the Legislature has slowly squeezed the commission's budget. The ethics panel had six full-time employees in the mid 1990s, but now it consists of Hearn, his executive assistant and one investigator to handle the more than 150 ethics complaints that come in each year. The commission's two-year budget is about $565,000. The ethics panel is in an awkward position because it must go to the Legislature for its budget, and over the years it has investigated various instances of alleged ethics violations by individual lawmakers. In one case, the commission found that three lawmakers broke the law by accepting free airfare for their wives to accompany them to beer and wine industry conferences in Palm Springs, Calif., and Hawaii. A Marion County judge dismissed the case in 2001, saying that the commission failed to prove any wrongdoing. The co-chairman of the Legislature's budget-writing panel, Rep. Randy Miller, said the ethics commission isn't popular with a lot of lawmakers. "They were pretty good at wasting money in prior years," the West Linn Republican said. "So people in the Legislature were reluctant to give them more money." A spokesman for the Oregon chapter of Common Cause said he thinks many state lawmakers are leery of the ethics commission and have intentionally kept it on a "shoestring" budget. "They wouldn't have the nerve to overturn the will of the people by disbanding the commission outright, but they are accomplishing the same thing by starving their budget," said David Buchanan, chairman of Common Cause's state board. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams