Inside MEETING NO TICES See Page 6 V olume 107 Number 19 October 6, 2006 P ortland The Bus Driver TriMet retiree Ben Fain gets behind the wheel again for the cause By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor In 26 years driving buses at TriMet, Ben Fain was a loyal if not particularly active member of Amal- gamated Transit Union (ATU) Divi- sion 757. Since his 2002 retirement, how- ever, he’s become a bus-borne ac- tivist — chauffeuring the mostly young progressives of the Bus Pro- ject to political happenings and door- to-door canvasses. The Bus Project is best-known for mobilizing busloads of volunteers to do a day’s work for progressive can- didates in close electoral races. Since 2002, the group’s volunteers have knocked on 200,000 doors and con- tributed to the election of over a dozen state legislators, said Bus Pro- ject managing director Garrett Dow- nen. And the group has close ties to several politically-active unions. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teach- ers-Oregon, and the Carpenters Union have sponsored bus trips; other unions have made donations. Bus Project co-founder Joe Baessler became Oregon AFSCME’s political coordinator. Fain climbed aboard the Bus Pro- ject when it was still an idea. At a Christmas holiday family reunion in 2001, his sister’s grandson, Aaron Imlah, asked him if he would drive a bus for a group he was helping form. “They had a bus without a driver, and I was a driver without a bus,” Fain recalls. Fain, 67, said he had always voted for progressive politicians and issues, but retirement would open up much more time to get involved. He decided to keep his commer- cial driver’s license active and drive the bus, a 1978 MCI Crusader con- verted to biodiesel. Fain thinks he’s done probably 95 percent of the driving since the proj- ect began. Volunteering sparked a po- litical awakening for him. It strength- ened his belief in the importance of unions and the power of individuals to make change by coming together. Fain, the son of a bricklayer, worked in union jobs all his life, start- ing in the early 1950s with the Brick- layers Union, continuing as a Boeing (Turn to Page 8) In Oregon New Yorker pours $2.8 million into ballot measures Out-of-state money has made itself felt in Oregon politics be- fore, but a pair of ballot measures up for a vote this November has Oregonians wondering about how thoroughly their citizen initiative process can be hijacked to serve a private agenda. As detailed in three sets of mandatory campaign finance dis- closures, every phase of Ballot measures 45 and 48 has been al- most entirely financed by one individual — conservative New York real estate millionaire Howard Rich. Measure 45 would set term limits for state elected officials, and Measure 48 would set an inflexible limit on state spending; both are opposed by the Oregon AFL-CIO and other labor organizations. Rich is founder and financier of the group Americans For Limited Government, which contends that government is doing too much, and is charging excessive taxes. But rather than focus on the federal government, which has been spending more than it takes in since President Clinton left office, Rich’s group is tar- geting state governments, which by law must live within their means. Oregon is one of a number of states where Rich’s millions have financed paid petitioners and political consultants to put identical questions before voters. Such a top-down campaign is a far cry from the citizen upris- ings Oregonians imagined when they set up the initiative sys- tem. It was supposed to be a way to get around the Oregon Leg- islature in cases where legislators were truly unresponsive to the popular will: If citizens gather signatures from enough fellow citizens, statutes and constitutional amendments go directly to the electorate for approval or rejection. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that states couldn’t ban the use of paid petitioners, and that opened up the initiative process for political experiments by deep-pocket ideologues and special favors for moneyed interests. Some initiatives still come about with grassroots citizen support, but almost every election also has measures that were bought and paid for by big money. That’s why New Yorker Howard Rich may be the most im- portant man in Oregon this year. His proposals — Measures 45 and 48 — don't carry his name on them, but they come with his money. Entities controlled by Rich have given $2 million to a Mis- souri group pushing a spending cap, $1 million to an Arizona group pushing a spending cap, and $100,000 to an Oklahoma group. Rich’s contributions to Oregon ballot measure campaigns to- talled $2.8 million, the Oregonian reported Sept. 12. The most (Turn to Page 5)