March. 20, 2009:NWLP
3/17/09
9:50 AM
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IN MEMORIAM
Swan Nelson, a 63-
year member of the
United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners,
passed away March 5. He
was 85.
Nelson served as exec-
utive secretary-treasurer
of the then-Portland Dis-
trict Council of Carpen-
ters for many years begin-
ning in the mid-1960s.
The council has since undergone sev-
eral mergers and is now the Pacific
Northwest Regional Council of Car-
penters.
Nelson was elected as a full-time
business agent for the Carpenters Coun-
cil in 1954. He worked for the union un-
til 1974, when he returned to the field
as a carpenter. In 1976 he went to work
at the Job Corps, starting as a pre-ap-
prenticeship carpentry instructor at
Timber Lake and later assisting in the
opening of a carpenters’ training pro-
gram at Springdale in east Multnomah
County.
He retired in 1984.
In the late 1990s he survived bouts
with prostate and throat cancer.
Throughout his career Nelson repre-
sented the Carpenters on the executive
boards of the Oregon AFL-CIO, North-
west Oregon Labor Council, and Ore-
gon State Building and Construction
Trades Council.
He served on the Multnomah
County Planning Commission, and on
the board of the Union Labor Retire-
ment Association. He
was appointed by Gov.
Tom McCall to a work-
ers’ compensation task
force that studied how
to make power tools
safer.
He also served as
co-chair of a 1950s la-
bor committee that
raised funds and re-
cruited volunteers for
construction of the first OMSI.
He was inducted into the Northwest
Oregon Labor Retirees Council Hall of
Fame in April 2000.
Nelson was born April 26, 1923 in
Clark Fork, Idaho, one of nine siblings.
He came to Portland to work on the
new Bonneville Dam project, joining
Operating Engineers Local 701.
He served in the Navy from 1942-46
during World War II. After his discharge
he returned to Portland, where he joined
and became active in Carpenters Local
738. That union later merged into Lo-
cal 1388 in Oregon City.
He was preceded in death by his
wife, Jeanette, in 2006. They married in
September 1946.
Nelson is survived by his sons,
James C. and Chris J.; and daughter,
Patty A. Richmire.
Memorial contributions can be made
to the American Cancer Society.
Judge bans labor adversary Bill
Sizemore from running charities
Bill Sizemore — the perennial
sponsor of anti-union initiatives on the
Oregon ballot — now faces a court or-
der banning him from having a role in
any tax-deductible non-profit charity.
Multnomah County Circuit Court
Judge Janice Wilson issued the order
March 6 after lawyers from a teachers
union and the Oregon attorney gen-
eral’s office showed that Sizemore vio-
lated an earlier court order that re-
stricted his handling of money for
non-profits.
That order resulted from a 2002
jury decision in a lawsuit filed by the
Oregon Education Association (OEA)
and American Federation of Teachers
Oregon, later joined by the State of
Oregon.
The jury found that organizations
controlled by Sizemore had engaged
in a pattern of forgery and fraud in
campaigns to get anti-union initiatives
on the 2000 ballot. Sizemore used a
sham charity to avoid revealing the
identity of his political donors, and to
give them tax deductions they weren’t
legally entitled to.
Under the 2003 court order, Size-
more was instructed to obey all cam-
paign finance and charitable organiza-
tion laws, and banned from handling
money for any tax-deductible non-
profit.
But Size-
more flouted
that order when
he set up a
charitable non-
profit in an-
other state.
American Tax
Research Foun-
dation (ATRF)
— chartered in
B ILL S IZEMORE
Nevada — had
Sizemore’s mother and a close friend
on the board, and did no meaningful
work analyzing the fiscal impact of
ballot measures. ATRF enabled Size-
more donor Loren Parks to claim a tax
deduction for hundreds of thousands
of dollars of contributions that were
paid out to Sizemore while he worked
on anti-union initiatives for the 2008
ballot.
ATRF paid for everything from a
time share vacation rental to Size-
more’s daughters braces, yet Sizemore
could not show the court any meaning-
ful work he’d done for the charity.
“It was created as a sham,” Judge
Wilson said. “It was run as a sham.”
Having violated the ban on han-
dling money for charitable non-profits,
Sizemore is now banned from running
or being paid by any charitable non-
profit, and must get Judge Wilson’s
permission to fill those roles for any
political-cause-oriented non-profit. He
can still serve as chief petitioner on
ballot measures, but will face close
scrutiny if he raises or handles money
for the campaigns.
The court order runs through 2013.
OEA attorney Greg Hartman said
Judge Wilson’s ruling was more re-
strictive of Sizemore than even the
unions had asked for.
“If you had to sum it up, the pur-
pose [of the court order] is to get him
out of the charitable organization busi-
ness,” Hartman said.
As he has with every previous rul-
ing, Sizemore made statements to the
press blaming his legal difficulties on
the judge, jury, unions, and elected
leaders like the Oregon attorney gen-
eral, whose job is to enforce campaign
finance and charitable activities law.
“Bill’s perspective is the law does-
n’t apply to him,” Hartman said. “He
can keep pointing fingers, but the real-
ity is that the evidence is overwhelm-
ing that he has simply continued to ig-
nore the law and ignore the court’s
orders, continued to do whatever he
damn well pleased, and it’s finally
catching up with him.”
Rain Forest Boots
Made in America!
Try a pair on, you’ll like them.
Tough boots for the Northwest.
AL’S SHOES
5811 SE 82nd, Portland 503-771-2130
Mon-Fri 10-7:30 Sat 10-5:30 Sun 12-6
(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
Established in 1900 at Portland, Oregon
as a voice of the labor movement.
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Portland, Ore. 97213
Telephone: (503) 288-3311
Editor: Michael Gutwig
Staff: Don McIntosh, Cheri Rice
Published on a semi-monthly basis on the first and third Fridays of
each month by the Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non-
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MARCH 20, 2009
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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