Jeff Gudman for State Treasurer
Timber Policy For Sale?
On January 3, the Oregon Capital Chronicle posted a story that Senator Elizabeth Steiner (who is running for State Treasurer on this ballot) was seeking to impose a surcharge on every property owner in Oregon to finance $20,000,000 worth of subsidies to companies like Weyerhaeuser or Georgia-Pacific, multi-billion-dollar operations who would ordinarily be paying those costs themselves.
"Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland, will present the proposal on Wednesday morning to the Senate Natural Resources and Wildfire Committee for consideration during the session. It would impose a $10 fee on all property holders in Oregon to pay for fighting wildfires, raising an estimated $20 million a year, about 15% of the projected total cost for wildfire protection in 2024. The proposal would reduce the per-acre fees that private and public forest and range landowners now pay to the Oregon Department of Forestry for protection."
This would have effectively socialized their liabilities, but kept their profits private.
Thankfully, Senator Elizabeth Steiner scrubbed that portion of her proposal after the Capital Chronicle revealed that some of her timber company campaign contributors helped write the bill.
Taking Big Timber Donations
Make up your own mind: Here are links to the Secretary of State's ORESTAR campaign finance tracker for both Jeff Gudman and Elizabeth Steiner.
When each candidate was asked if they would restrict themselves from accepting any new contributions from the timber industry or fossil fuel interests:
Jeff Gudman:
"Yes."
Elizabeth Steiner:
"No and no. I won't. And I'll tell you why. When I became a legislator I committed to not taking money from tobacco or pharmaceutical companies* because as a physician I saw that as a conflict of interest. Over my tenure in the Legislature, I've received at least a total of $500,000 in contributions from corporate interests. The amounts from the timber industry has been well under, has been less than 5% of that total. The timing of these particular donations was unfortunate, but if you look at my ORESTAR (which the good thing about Oregon is that we have really good transparency and you can see every single donation I got) the timing was unfortunate but I also received tens of thousands of dollars from other corporations and other members of the lobby at the same time. Because I was doing exactly what I normally do, which is raise funds as a member of the Legislature." (March 20)
* Even though Senator Steiner claims not to take money directly from big pharma, she does accept contributions from the lobbying firm for big pharma (see OreStar transaction ID 4885283).
Thanks for reading. This is an example of the kind of transparency and engagement you can expect from Jeff Gudman as State Treasurer!
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