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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018
Year of the dog
Accusations of partisanship
rile Oregon audits chief
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Volunteers with the Astoria Downtown Historic District
Association lined the alley on 13th Street downtown
with 100 red lanterns in honor of the Lunar New Year.
Judge rules new
property crime law
unconstitutional
By NOELLE CROMBIE
The Oregonian
A controversial new law
that reduces sentences for
some property crimes is
unconstitutional, a Wash-
ington County Circuit Court
judge has ruled.
Judge Charles Bailey
handed down the decision last
week from the bench while
presiding over a shoplifting
case; he didn’t issue a written
opinion.
While the ruling has lim-
ited legal implications, it fuels
the clash over the law passed
last year that, among other
things, reduces prison sen-
tences for identity theft and
first-degree theft.
The battle over the law
played out last week in Clack-
amas County, where Dis-
trict Attorney John Foote has
sued the state, arguing that the
lower sentences are uncon-
stitutional and undermine the
will of Oregon voters. Clatsop
County District Attorney Josh
Marquis supports Foote’s suit.
Foote claims the law alters
parts of Measure 57, the 2008
voter-approved initiative that
cracked down on repeat prop-
erty thieves and drug offend-
ers. He has asked the court to
declare the new law “invalid
and unenforceable” or to at
least strike down parts of
the law that reduce property
crime sentences.
Foote said the bill passed
both chambers of the Legis-
lature with simple majorities
and as a result failed to com-
ply with Article IV of the Ore-
gon Constitution. That provi-
sion requires two-thirds votes
of each house, or a super-
majority, to pass a “bill that
reduces a criminal sentence
approved by the people”
through the initiative process.
The ACLU of Oregon and
the Partnership for Safety
and Justice support the latest
sentencing law and argued it
didn’t require supermajorities
because it revised a 2009 law
passed by the Legislature, not
Measure 57.
That 2009 law, House Bill
3508, temporarily reduced
prison sentences for property
crimes in response to the state’s
budget crisis. The Measure 57
sentences for property crimes
were phased in two years later.
SALEM — A public accu-
sation by a gubernatorial staffer
that the secretary of state’s
audits are politically motivated
has created a dustup between
Oregon’s two top offices, pub-
lic records show.
Top advisers from each
office now plan to meet in per-
son to discuss their working
relationship.
Allegations of partisan-
ship have popped up on occa-
sion since Oregon’s Republican
Secretary of State Dennis Rich-
ardson took office a little over a
year ago.
But the most recent flare-up
began last week after Richard-
son’s office released a lengthy
and critical audit of the state’s
foster care system. Over a
year’s worth of work, audi-
tors found numerous problems
at Oregon’s Department of
Human Services that could put
kids’ safety at risk.
After the audit came out,
a spokesman for Democratic
Gov. Kate Brown told the
Salem Statesman Journal that
Richardson’s audits “are just
about politics.”
The spokesman, Chris
Pair, also told the newspa-
per that the governor’s office
had already identified the
issues raised by the audit and
that the department had begun
addressing most of the auditors’
recommendations.
Problems in the state’s fos-
ter care system are longstand-
ing and well-documented.
In 2016, outside consultants
Brown hired the year before
to dig into child safety issues
found that the child welfare
system needed a culture change
and other “foundational” shifts.
Last week’s audit reinforced
those outside findings and said
the Department of Human Ser-
vices still hadn’t made progress.
Pair’s comments were not
well-received by Kip Mem-
mott, the state’s audit director,
records show.
Their correspondence was
released to the EO Media
Group/Pamplin Media Group
Capital Bureau through a pub-
lic records request.
Memmott told Berri Leslie
and Gina Zejdlik, Brown’s dep-
uty chiefs of staff, in an email
that he was “disappointed”
by Pair’s statement, which
the audit director claimed was
“impugning the professional-
ism of our audit staff.”
Memmott also said that the
most recent audit of the fos-
ter care system was scheduled
under the administration of
prior Secretary of State Jeanne
Atkins, a Democrat who was
Pamplin Media Group
Secretary of State Dennis Richardson’s staff says state au-
dits are nonpartisan.
‘I think they’re trying to do
quicker and more focused
audits. They’re going after
real problems and not just
politicizing it.’
Steve March,
Multnomah County’s outgoing elected auditor and a former
Democratic state lawmaker
appointed to fill the role after
Brown left that office to become
governor after the resignation
of Gov. John Kitzhaber.
The next day, Zejdlik asked
Memmott for a meeting.
In a follow-up email Friday
— written after she was made
aware that the emails would
imminently be public due to
the Capital Bureau’s records
request — Zejdlik also raised
concerns about the secretary’s
press conferences on audits
and closed-door meetings with
legislators.
“While we know the audi-
tors are not politicizing audits,
it would be naive to underesti-
mate the extent to which audits
can be used as political tools,”
Zejdlik wrote, citing a recent
audit of the Oregon Health
Authority.
When that audit came out
in November, Richardson said
in a public statement that “mis-
feasance and obfuscation” by
the health authority meant the
agency faced “tough questions
about its credibility and its abil-
ity to appropriately spend the
money it is provided.”
Democrats objected, say-
ing that Richardson was using
state resources to campaign
for an election outcome — in
that case, Measure 101, the
health care funding ballot mea-
sure that went before voters in
January.
And now the governor’s
office is also raising questions
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about how Richardson’s office
has handled other issues under
his leadership.
For example, they doubt a
public preview of the Oregon
Health Authority audit Rich-
ardson sent out in May was in
compliance with government
auditing standards. They also
say they weren’t notified until
late in the process that the gov-
ernor’s office would be asked
to officially respond to a recent
audit of the state’s Emergency
Management office.
Richardson’s chief of staff,
Deb Royal, denied that Rich-
ardson was politicizing the
audits.
“To keep findings like these
on a shelf to collect dust is not
why Dennis Richardson ran for
secretary of state,” Royal said
in a written statement. “He will
publicize, not politicize, these
audits.”
Gary Blackmer led the
audits division from 2009
to 2015. He was hired by
then-Secretary of State Brown
after serving as elected audi-
tor for the city of Portland for
10 years.
Throughout his career,
Blackmer stressed his office’s
apolitical independence. He
said that, judging by the audits
that he’s seen in the past year, it
appears the unit he oversaw has
continued in that vein.
Memmott, he said, “came
from Denver. He did good
auditing there, and so far
I’ve been pretty pleased with
the work that’s come out. I
think they’ve pretty consis-
tently identified key issues and
challenges.”
Memmott joined the secre-
tary of state’s office last April.
Blackmer added that, if any-
thing, the findings of the recent
foster care audit were unusu-
ally sympathetic to the bureau-
cracy — for example, noting
that the Department of Human
Services lacked enough fund-
ing, an observation Richardson
mentioned in his accompany-
ing press release.
“There’s another way spin
that,” Blackmer said. “How
often does a Republican say
a government program needs
more money?”
Steve March, Multnomah
County’s outgoing elected
auditor and a former Demo-
cratic state lawmaker, says he
hasn’t heard anything about
state auditors being politicized.
He said he’s heard there
may be differences of style and
approach between Blackmer
and Memmott.
“I think they’re trying to
do quicker and more focused
audits,” March said, adding
that it’s not a matter of having
an agenda. “They’re going after
real problems and not just polit-
icizing it.”
In an interview posted on
the secretary of state’s auditing
division blog in June, Mem-
mott said that he was “disap-
pointed” by what he charac-
terized as “the strong political
reaction to our audit work.”
“(The audits division) is
completely nonpartisan yet
it appears our work is often
viewed from a partisan per-
spective,” Memmott told the
interviewer. “This is not sur-
prising but disappointing. I
will be working hard to change
this dynamic as the citizens
are not well served within this
paradigm.”
Portland Tribune reporter
Nick Budnick contributed to
this report.
Josh Marquis
A Columbia Forum Presentation
Josh Marquis is about to start his 25th year as Clatsop
County’s District Attorney. First appointed by Gov. Barbara
Roberts in 1994 after the recall and criminal conviction of
his predecessor.
A graduate of the Honors College and Law School of the
University of Oregon, he has spent most of his 37 years as a
lawyer as a prosecutor, fi rst in Eugene, then Newport, and as
Chief Deputy DA in Bend before coming to Astoria. He also
spent time as a newspaper reporter and speechwriter in
Los Angeles and two years as a criminal defense lawyer. He
lectures and teaches to lawyers and others across the nation and overseas and has been
asked to testify four times before Congress. Marquis served as President of the Oregon
District Attorneys Association and Vice President of the National DA’s Association,
on whose board he still serves 21 years later. He is married to City Councilor Cindy
Price. For more than 20 years he’s been a jazz programmer at KMUN and appeared in
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