NEWS
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
A7
As governor, Kotek faces new task
By PETER WONG
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — As speaker of the Ore-
gon House, Tina Kotek helped direct
millions in the state budget to housing
and homelessness, and mental health
and addiction treatment — and also
drive legislation.
As governor starting Jan. 9, Kotek
will be responsible for making sure
the money gets spent in the right
places and the policies are carried out.
“It is a big transition from develop-
ing the policy and raising the money
to making things happen,” Ed Black-
burn says. “Sometimes it’s not as
much fun to make things happen.”
“But I think she doesn’t have much
toleration for failure.”
Blackburn should know. He
worked for Central City Concern for
25 years, the last nine as its execu-
tive director, until his retirement at
the end of 2017. The nonprofit agency
helps homeless and low-income Port-
landers find health care, housing and
employment.
He interrupted his retirement to
help Kotek, and was the first person
to introduce Kotek as governor-elect
when she appeared at a gathering at
Salmon Street Springs in Tom McCall
Waterfront Park in Portland.
Unofficial final results were due
Nov. 16, but Democrat Kotek main-
tained a lead over Republican Chris-
tine Drazan, 47% to 43.5%; nonaffil-
iated candidate Betsy Johnson trailed
with 8.6%, with almost 1.8 million
ballots tallied. Drazan and Johnson
have conceded.
During her appearance, Kotek
specified her first actions:
“I will declare a homelessness
state of emergency and work with
urgency to help Oregonians move
off the streets. I will expand access
to mental health and addiction treat-
ment services. I will work to bridge
the divisions in our state. I will spend
time in our communities all over Ore-
gon, working to fix problems and
partner with Oregonians who want to
find solutions.”
She also listed “successful
schools” as a priority, but did not
specify action.
Blackburn, in a short interview
afterward, said Kotek understands the
complexities of housing and home-
lessness — and how they intertwine
with the need for access to mental
health and addiction treatment.
“She is so focused that I think she
has a great opportunity to be success-
ful,” Blackburn said.
“I think she has a certain realism.
When I talk about the problems of
homelessness, she doesn’t go to the
orthodoxy that everybody else wants
to do. For example, I say a hous-
ing-first policy works for a lot of peo-
ple, but it doesn’t work for everybody.
When I talk to others, they say no, it
works for everybody. When I explain
to her why, she gets it.
“I was impressed by her ability to
see a comprehensive picture and not
being afraid to say we’ve got to fix
the addiction problem and the mental
health problem to be successful. They
are symptomatic of several other
problems.”
Starting off
Of 10 governors going back to
1959, when Mark Hatfield took office,
Kotek is one of eight with legisla-
tive experience, but only one of three
without prior executive experience in
public office. (Republican Vic Atiyeh
did run his family rug business before
he was elected in 1978.)
Jonathan Levinson/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Tina Kotek takes the podium at the
Democratic Party of Oregon’s elec-
tion night event Nov. 8, 2022, at the
Hyatt Regency Portland.
Among this group, Tom McCall is
unique: He was an assistant to Gov.
Douglas McKay from 1949 to 1951,
years before McCall himself was
elected governor in 1966.
Kotek also is one of four gover-
nors in this group — along with Dem-
ocrats Bob Straub, Neil Goldschmidt
and Kate Brown — to start their terms
with party control of both legislative
chambers.
Kotek will be only the second for-
mer legislative presiding officer to
win the governorship in more than six
decades. The other was John Kitzhaber,
who was Senate president for eight
years before his election in 1994.
“We have legislators who get
elected governor and it takes them two
years to figure that this is different,”
said Jim Moore, who teaches politics
at Pacific University and is director of
public outreach for its Tom McCall
Center for Civic Engagement. Moore
also is the author of a forthcoming
book about Vic Atiyeh, who donated
his personal papers to Pacific Univer-
sity, where Atiyeh was a trustee for
years.
Kotek and Maura Healey in Mas-
sachusetts will be the first lesbians
among the nation’s governors.
“I didn’t run for this job to be that
first,” Kotek said at the gathering. “But
I can tell you that being who I am is
important to Oregonians across the
state. Lots of young people have come
up to me and said thank you for run-
ning and being who you are.”
Oregon will be the third state where
a woman succeeds another woman
as governor. The others: Arizona and
New Mexico.
Other tasks
Aside from her policy priorities,
Moore and Blackburn said Kotek has
other tasks: Putting together her staff
as governor, reviewing who leads state
agencies and building public ties with
Oregonians.
Kotek has named as leader of her
transition team Tim Inman, a former
chief of staff when she was House
speaker from 2015 to 2018, when he
went to the University of Oregon as
secretary of its board of trustees and
adviser to the president. She said one
of the team’s tasks will be to review
agency leaders, most of whom offer
pro forma resignations when a new
governor takes office. (Commissions,
not the governor, name directors of
some agencies.)
Kotek was critical of the Ore-
gon Health Authority for its slow-
ness in distributing money under a
2020 ballot measure to a network of
mental health and addiction treat-
ment programs. But among the three
major candidates, she did not call for
a revision of Measure 110, which also
decriminalized possession of small
amounts of some drugs other than
marijuana.
When Kitzhaber took office in
2011 for a record third term, he had
vowed a wholesale change in agency
leadership. Although only two or three
were replaced immediately, Kitzhaber
did replace almost every state agency
leader by the close of that term in
2014.
“The key is going to be her bring-
ing in good administrators to make
things happen in Oregon,” Blackburn
said.
Political healing
For years, Oregon has been split
when it elects governors.
Democrats usually win in Port-
land-area counties — although Clack-
amas County often sides with the
Republican, as it did with Drazan,
who lives in Canby — plus the north
and central coast and the counties that
are home to the University of Oregon
and Oregon State University. Repub-
licans have generally won every-
where else. Over time, those mar-
gins have grown even larger. Harney
County, the only one of 36 that went
for the Republican in Kitzhaber’s sec-
ond-term landslide in 1998, went for
Drazan by 77%.
Moore and Blackburn said Kotek’s
pledge to travel the state and listen to
people will help her politically and
policy-wise.
Moore: “She has to actively reach
out to people across the state. It can’t
be just talking to people on the phone.”
Blackburn: “She has a much better
ability to convene people around the
state to get things done. Her ability to
engage people is very strong.”
Gov. Brown issues marijuana pardons
SALEM — Oregon Gov.
Kate Brown announced Nov.
21 that she is pardoning an
estimated 45,000 people con-
victed of simple possession of
marijuana, a month after Pres-
ident Joe Biden did the same
under federal law.
“No one deserves to be for-
ever saddled with the impacts
of a conviction for simple
possession of marijuana —
a crime that is no longer on
the books in Oregon,” said
Brown, who is also forgiv-
ing more than $14 million in
unpaid fines and fees.
Biden has been calling on
governors to issue pardons for
those convicted of state mar-
ijuana offenses, which reflect
the vast majority of marijuana
possession cases. Biden’s par-
don applies to those convicted
under federal law and thou-
sands convicted in the District
of Columbia.
In recent months, the gov-
ernors of Colorado, Nevada,
Illinois, Pennsylvania and
Washington state have taken
steps to grant pardons to those
with low-level marijuana con-
victions, according to the
National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, or
NORML.
Several states, including
California, Illinois and New
Jersey, automatically review
criminal cannabis convictions
and expunge past records. In
other jurisdictions, eligible per-
sons must petition the courts
for a review.
As a result of these laws,
an estimated 2 million Ameri-
cans had their cannabis-related
convictions set aside in recent
years, said Paul Armentano,
deputy director of NORML.
“Our sense of justice and
our principles of fairness
demand that public officials
and the courts move swiftly to
right the past wrongs of canna-
bis prohibition and criminal-
ization,” Armentano said.
In 2019, Oregon lawmak-
ers passed legislation estab-
lishing procedures for people
found guilty of low-level mar-
ijuana possession offenses to
file a motion with the court to
have the convictions set aside.
Yet, to date, relatively few Ore-
gonians have done so.
In Oregon, the pardon will
remove 47,144 convictions for
possession of a small amount
of marijuana from individ-
ual records. Brown noted
that removing these criminal
records eliminates barriers for
employment, housing and edu-
cational opportunities.
The pardon applies to con-
“NO ONE DESERVES TO BE FOREVER SADDLED WITH THE IMPACTS OF A
CONVICTION FOR SIMPLE POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA — A CRIME THAT IS NO
LONGER ON THE BOOKS IN OREGON.”
— Oregon Gov. Kate Brown
victions for possession of 1
ounce (28 grams) or less of
marijuana when the person
was 21 or older, where it was
the only charge and where
there were no victims.
“Oregonians should never
face housing insecurity,
employment barriers, and edu-
cational obstacles as a result
of doing something that is
now completely legal, and has
been for years,” Brown said.
She said people of color have
been arrested, prosecuted, and
convicted at disproportionate
rates.
The Oregon Judicial
Department will ensure that
all court records associated
with these pardoned offenses
are sealed, Brown said.
Oregonians passed a bal-
lot measure legalizing recre-
ational use of marijuana in
2014, becoming one of the
first states to do so. In Novem-
ber, Maryland and Missouri
voters also legalized cannabis
but voters in Arkansas, South
Dakota and North Dakota
rejected it.
Maryland’s
initiative
came with a mechanism to
erase convictions. By July 1,
2024, the Maryland Depart-
ment of Public Safety and
Correctional Services must
Monday - Thursday
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available
S283676-1
139101
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
SATURDAY
DECEMBER 3 RD
9 AM TO 3 PM
Blue Mountain Auxiliary Bazaar
GC Fair Grounds Pavilion
Keerins Hall
expunge all cases in which
the possession of cannabis
was the only charge in the
case, and the charge was
issued before July 1, 2023.
Maryland and Missouri
joined 19 other states and the
District of Columbia in making
recreational marijuana legal.
REPORTER
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