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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 11, 2016)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2016 Secretary of state candidates lay out positions in forum Avakian, Richardson joined by other candidates By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE Capital Bureau ALOHA — In a race that’s become largely a heated back- and-forth between the Demo- crat and Republican candidates, the frontrunners in the race for secretary of state were joined Monday by two candidates from other parties at a meeting hosted by the Washington County Pub- lic Affairs Forum. Democrat Brad Avakian, the state’s labor commissioner, and Republican Dennis Rich- ardson, a former state legislator, are competing to be the state’s top auditor and elections ofi- cer, as are Paciic Green Party candidate Alan Zundel, of Eu- gene, and Libertarian candidate Sharon Durbin, a former Forest Grove planning commissioner. In an opening statement, Avakian said that, as labor com- missioner, a position he has held since 2008, he had turned “val- ues into action,” laying out plans to close the wage disparity be- tween men and women and to promote workforce devel- opment through modern shop classes for high schoolers. As secretary of state, Ava- kian said, he’d promote same- day voter registration, inspire Oregonians to participate in elections, “break down barri- ers” for potential voters to regis- ter and vote, and cause Oregon to be a “global leader in the ight against climate change” through the secretary of state’s position on the State Land Board. The board oversees state land man- aged for the inancial beneit of Oregon’s public schools through the Common School Fund. Richardson, the Republican, touted his willingness to work across the aisle in the Legisla- ture in 2011, when he was se- lected to be co-chair of the Ways and Means Committee. “We worked together, in a very dificult time, and passed the education budget irst, in- stead of making it a political football at the very end of the session,” Richardson said. Richardson, a 2014 guberna- torial candidate who lost to John Kitzhaber, a four-term Demo- crat who later resigned after al- legations of inluence-peddling surfaced, also claimed that he brought forward evidence of corruption. “I brought forward the cor- ruption I felt was rampant in the Governor’s Ofice,” Richardson said. “It ultimately led to investi- gations that led to (Kitzhaber’s) resignation after the election.” He criticized the state for not auditing the failed health insur- ance exchange, Cover Oregon, and the Columbia River Cross- ing, the never-realized bridge project across the Columbia River and the state’s millions of dollars in “suspicious” Business Energy Tax Credits. Libertarian view Durbin, the Libertarian can- didate and an attorney, is run- ning because the job of secretary of state has become too “politi- cized,” saying the ofice should be “ministerial.” She said the main priorities of the ofice should include run- ning elections, assisting corpo- rations, auditing state agencies and providing records to the public. She said Oregon has “too many rules” for corporations, citing her experience working for the Arizona Department of Revenue. “The entire purpose of the secretary of state is to keep gov- ernment moving forward on a fair and even scale,” Durbin said. She also said the ofice should be run by someone who will not favor “pet projects” or party loyalties. She railed against the Columbia River Crossing and the abuse and ne- glect of children in Oregon’s foster care system. Paciic Green Party Zundel, the Paciic Green Party candidate and a coun- selor and former political sci- entist, said he is running to ad- vocate for a rank-choice voting system, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of pref- erence rather than choosing a single candidate. Responding to questions, all candidates said they were in fa- vor of “fair” legislative redis- tricting according to population. Richardson suggested a neutral commission to evaluate districts, and all said they were against voter fraud, in response to two other questions. Avakian, saying there was little voter fraud in Oregon, em- phasized breaking down barri- ers to participating in elections and criticized Richardson for proposing laws as a state legis- lator that would require people to present “burdensome” docu- ments to be able to cast a vote. Zundel said he wondered how secure the state’s vote tab- ulators are. Richardson said that a de- cade ago the Legislature ixed the “underlying problem” by re- quiring proof of legal residency to obtain a state driver’s license. The Republican said he wanted to restore trust in the state’s elec- tion system. Renewable energy In a question regarding Ava- kian’s support of renewable en- ergy on state lands, an audience member said that alternative energy programs “historically have been risky investments,” and wondered how supporting renewable energy development met the iduciary responsibility the state has for the Common School Fund. Avakian claimed that the “clean energy economy is a booming economy” but that the state hasn’t encouraged it to thrive as other nations have. Avakian said he aimed to free up state lands for renew- able energy development and encourage innovative use of state land. He opposes sell- ing the Elliott State Forest to private timber companies and wanted to preserve it for “pub- lic good.” The state plans to sell the forest, appraised at $220.8 mil- lion, because it has been a net loss to the Common School Fund since 2013. No buyer has been selected — acquisition proposals are due in mid-No- vember and the inal purchase agreement is estimated to be executed at the end of February. Zundel said that in the long term, public lands such as for- ests were more valuable as pro- tected natural resources be- cause of their ability to store carbon in the context of global climate change. “I think we undervalue those lands when we don’t think about them in the context of what’s going on in the larger world,” Zundel said. The Capital Bureau is a col- laboration between EO Media Group and Pamplin Media Group. R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Doug Dougherty addresses the Seaside City Council. Seaside City Council endorses school bond By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian SEASIDE —The Sea- side City Council gave a thumbs-up to the Seaside School District’s November bond to move tsunami-endan- gered schools to safer ground. “I have to commend you and the board for putting the package together that shows us what’s going on,” Mayor Don Larson said at a meeting Monday. “This thing is just fantastic.” “So much time and effort has been put into this by so many people,” Councilor Dana Phillips said. “It’s some- thing for the good of our com- munity as well as the safety of our students.” Seaside School District Superintendent-emeritus Doug Dougherty provided a presentation that stressed not so much the beneits of the new campus but the defects of current schools, which are well beyond their projected life span. He called the bond an opportunity to make a dif- ference to the community for generations. “It’s one of those things that we are very excited about,” he said. “This is an outstanding chance.” After the defeat of the dis- trict’s 2013 bond, the city went back to voters to ind out why. “We trimmed this plan to its bare bones,” Dougherty said. The new campus, to be located on 80 acres donated by Weyerhaeuser Co., is near Seaside Heights Elementary School in the East Hills. The $99.7 million plan scales back from the $128.8 million 2013 proposal, elimi- nating an auditorium, covered bleachers, long-term emer- gency shelters and a varsity playing ield. If the bond passes, the school district would approach the City Council for an urban growth boundary expansion. W A NTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber N orth w es t H a rdw oods • Lon gview , W A Contact: Steve Axtell • 360-430-0885 or John Anderson • 360-269-2500 HEALTH NOTIFICATION Are You Hard of Hearing? 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