3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2018
Buehlers invested $100,000
in energy credits before
lambasting the program
Purchase was
before he was
lawmaker
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Knute Bue-
hler stumped on the floor of the
state House to decry the state’s
controversial business energy
tax incentives.
Buehler, now the Republi-
can nominee for governor, left
out one fact in his speech.
He and his wife once
had personally invested in
$100,000 of the tax credits
that later mushroomed into a
multimillion dollar scandal at
the state Energy Department,
according to agency records.
Buehler didn’t respond to a
telephone message Friday seek-
ing comment. His campaign
instead issued a statement.
“The Buehlers purchased
tax credits years before he was
a lawmaker and before state
mismanagement of the pro-
gram forced the Legislature to
repeal the program,” campaign
spokeswoman Monica Wro-
blewski said.
The Bend surgeon invested
in the state’s business energy
tax credit program — referred
to as BETC, pronounced
“Betsy” — that was designed
to encourage businesses to
develop renewable energy
projects.
Nearly 30 years after its
creation in 1979, the incentive
became a boondoggle for the
state. Lawmakers questioned
the program in 2008, when the
state issued $180 million in
credits, triple the amount of the
previous year.
The state shut off the cred-
its in 2014 and soon after it
became a talking point for state
lawmakers who didn’t like how
the state was managed. That
included Buehler.
E.J. Harris/East Oregonian
Knute Buehler invested in a
controversial business en-
ergy tax credit.
In 2015, the then-fresh-
man lawmaker from Bend lam-
basted the incentives during
a debate on the state’s low
carbon fuels standard on the
House floor.
He said a proposed fuels
program was “another risky
taxpayer financed energy
jobs scheme having zero
credibility.”
He said the state had “pre-
sided over a scandalous and
perhaps even criminal waste
of tax credit giveaways that
mostly benefit out-of-state
corporations and well-heeled
investors at the expense of
Oregon taxpayers, and more
important funding priorities
like K-12.”
In about 2008, according to
state records, Buehler bought
$50,000 in tax credits for
$33,500. His wife, Patricia, had
an identical but separate trans-
action at the same time.
In purchasing the credits,
the couple were pass-through
partners in an arrangement that
allowed them to buy tax cred-
its at a discounted rate from
SeQuential-Pacific Biodiesel
LLC, for a new biodiesel pro-
duction plant, according to
Energy Department records.
Buehler’s campaign didn’t
respond to written questions
about when the purchases were
completed or whether the tax
credits were claimed on his tax
returns. The credits would off-
set other tax liabilities.
A year ago, Buehler criti-
cized the tax credit program
again in an opinion piece he
wrote for The Oregonian.
“Oregon is just beginning
to clean up the mess from its
notorious business-energy tax
credit scandal, which sent mil-
lions of tax dollars to energy
speculators and well-to-do
investors that could have been
better spent on Oregon stu-
dents,” Buehler wrote in Octo-
ber 2017.
Gov. Kate Brown’s cam-
paign said in a statement that
Buehler should release all of
his tax returns. He disclosed
his 2016 and 2017 tax returns
in June.
“We’ve been calling on
Knute Buehler to release his
tax returns for this very rea-
son,” said Christian Gaston, a
spokesman for the Brown cam-
paign. “Voters need to be able
to see what other special tax
breaks he’s taken, and what
else he’s hiding. It’s amazing
that he took advantage of these
credits and then turned around
and decried that well-to-do
investors were benefiting.”
The infamous tax credit was
back in the spotlight last week,
as the Oregon Department
of Justice announced it was
recouping $13 million from
Tesla Energy Solutions.
Tesla Energy Solutions
bought SolarCity, a solar
energy company that the state
said reported inflated proj-
ect costs to get more tax credit
money from the state.
“The BETC program was
meant to channel public funds
to help local businesses, create
clean energy jobs, and stimulate
the economy during a period of
economic uncertainty. Unfortu-
nately, some companies abused
the program,” Attorney Gen-
eral Ellen Rosenblum said in a
statement Thursday.
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