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Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, Ore. Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Senior SPoTLiGHT
SPonSoreD BY i.V. Wellness resources 541-592-9781
turn to over-the-counter or
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treatment is aromatherapy,
an integrative therapy that
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Many species of laven-
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glass bottles with tightly
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Usually one drop of
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Put an oil infused cotton
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Essential oils are flam-
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(American Nurse Today,
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When Oregon lawmakers created the
state version of new market tax credits in 2011,
they instructed Business Oregon to award the
credits as long as certain federal requirements
were met, no matter how dubious a project
may appear. In a low-income community?
Arranged by a federally approved entity?
Backed with all the investment dollars
required? Ecotrust’s Rough & Ready proposal
checked all those boxes, so the taxpayer spigot
was turned on.
Business Oregon reviewers didn’t spot
warning signs because they aren’t allowed to
dig deeper than face value, agency spokesman
Nathan Buehler said.
The reopening drew high public praise
from Oregon officials. “Credit goes to
Governor Kitzhaber and to Ecotrust for their
efforts on this project and on behalf of the
Josephine County economy,” said Sen. Ron
Wyden. Rep. Greg Walden hailed the project as
“good news for working families in southern
Oregon.” Kitzhaber promised to help the mill
project “in any way I can.”
Lawmakers ended the state version of
the new market tax credit program in 2016.
Congress, however, has repeatedly extended
its new market incentive program, allowing
project backers to receive $21 billion in tax
credits since 2000.
Beginning in November 2017, The
Oregonian/OregonLive sought public records
about Ecotrust’s Rough & Ready deal. It
reviewed tax credit applications, emails and
documents given to the state by a concerned
Ecotrust insider.
Those records trace the complex financial
web that ultimately provided $8 million
under his control.
The former governor, who is working
to regain career credibility after an influence
peddling scandal led him to resign, is now
getting help from Ecotrust. It has inked a
four-month contract with him to work on an
opaque economic development and natural
resource management project called Salmon
Nation. Ecotrust would say only that the group
is paying him “his standard hourly consulting
fee.”
in federal and $4 million in state taxpayer
resources.
Following reporters’ inquiry, Business
Oregon notified Ecotrust in February of its
plans to claw back more than $1 million of
the taxpayer incentives due to misspending.
Ecotrust has the option to avoid repayment
if by May 3 it spends $2.9 million on other
allowable projects in rural Oregon. The
nonprofit has indicated it will try to do that.
WELL-CONNECTED
Ecotrust was founded nearly three
decades ago to nurture eco-friendly businesses
and show companies that they can build wealth
while also doing good. Founder Spencer Beebe
is pictured on the nonprofit’s website wearing
a white hat, an appropriate symbol of its ethos.
“Spencer has always creatively leveraged
capital to scale a new economy — finding
ways to let mission drive money,” the website
says.
One way it’s paid for that work: winning
$114 million in federal and state tax credits.
The public-facing nonprofit also sits atop
a less-publicized constellation of for-profit
subsidiaries that exist to make money.
Those for-profit companies own stakes in
a handful of other tax credit projects, eco-
centric businesses and the ultragreen Ecotrust
headquarters in the Pearl District.
Ecotrust next plans to use a new helping
of federal tax credits, intended to encourage
investment in low-income areas, to build
a new hub in southeast Portland’s rapidly
redeveloping industrial area.
Ecotrust officials are accustomed to
rubbing shoulders with influential people in
Oregon. The city of Portland rented space in
its headquarters building. In 2014, Kitzhaber
urged that the group be awarded the tax credits
— and even tossed in a $1 million largely
forgivable loan from a pot of taxpayer money
FAILING UP
To qualify for the maximum amount of
state tax credits, Ecotrust needed to show that
upgrading the Rough & Ready sawmill so it
could reopen would cost at least $8 million.
Ecotrust’s application to Business Oregon
showed half that cost would be to acquire land
and construct a building — even though the
same three-page application showed the mill
was already situated on a 300-acre site with an
existing 35,000-square-foot sawmill.
Acquiring land and buildings from Rough
& Ready’s owners only to give them to an
entity 99 percent owned by those same people
is not an upgrade eligible for a state taxpayer
subsidy, Nia Ray, director of Oregon’s
Department of Revenue, informed Ecotrust.
Tax credits should never have been awarded
for that purpose, she said.
Yet Business Oregon signed off on
the subsidies. Buehler, the spokesman, said
Ecotrust’s application didn’t provide enough
detail for officials to spot that problem.
Adam Lane, Ecotrust’s chief financial
officer, defended the companies’ handling of
tax credits.
The incentives are restricted to helping
businesses in census tracts with low median
incomes and are intended for projects that
wouldn’t be able to secure private financing
without taxpayer subsidies. Most have gone
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to urban projects, but Ecotrust’s credits were
designated for rural communities.
“One of the key elements of the new
markets program, both state and federal, is
they are supposed to go to try to fund projects
that will create economic and — the way
Ecotrust does it — environmental benefits
in these rural companies, these needy census
tracts,” Lane said. “It is supposed to go to try
to fund things that would not otherwise be
fundable.”
Still, Lane was asking hard questions of
other key decision-makers at Ecotrust as little
as seven days before the tax credit deal closed.
Bettina von Hagen, chief executive of
Ecotrust Forest Management, Ecotrust’s for-
profit forest management subsidiary, wrote
in an internal analysis of the Rough & Ready
deal that log supply wouldn’t be a problem
because the mill had “resolved supply issues”
and could easily secure logs from its previous
suppliers.
That raised questions for Lane. He wrote
in the margins of von Hagen’s memo, “I think
more needs to be said about this given that
it was the main reason the mill was closed
before. What has changed?”
Lane had other questions, too: Did
Ecotrust have proof that a log shortage really
forced the mill to close in 2013? Why wouldn’t
a commercial lender pony up money for the
project? Had von Hagen verified that a log
shortage wouldn’t “kill the company” again
after reopening?
“Rigorous analysis (i.e. ‘hard questions’)
is the expectation we would hold in any project
we undertake,” Carolyn Hollard, Ecotrust’s
vice president for communications, wrote in
an email. “We do not move forward with any
transaction until we complete our diligence
and questions are answered.
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