Improving government accountability and making state elections run better were the main topics as Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and state Sen. Vicki Walker answered residents’ questions at a town hall meeting Wednesday night.
At the meeting, Walker, D-Eugene, said the Oregon legislature recently passed a number of bills that improve elections and candidate accountability, such as a bill that prevents candidates from paying themselves with campaign finances and a bill that prevents the government from entering into confidential legal settlements or compromises.
Walker also talked about her work dealing with the state-owned worker’s compensation insurance company, the State Accident Insurance Fund. She said when she found the company paying
lobbyists about $40,000 a month she filed an ethics complaint against it, eventually helping to make it more effective by replacing its management with new people and putting auditors in charge of the company’s finances.
Bradbury said part of his job includes heading the audits division, and that his office was currently working on an audit of the Oregon Department of Transportation, which he said has been spending billions of dollars very quickly.
Bradbury said another aspect of his job was making sure that people are able to vote in the state. He said the state implemented a centralized voter registration system, which guarantees a person will only be sent one ballot and that improves voter rolls at a cost of $8 million. He said the federal government’s 2002 passage of the Help America Vote Act, which creates a number of requirements for the voting system and elections such as providing voting systems to the disabled, had helped the state.
Bradbury said Lane County tried a pilot program that allowed disabled citizens to vote by phone, and he said one blind woman used it and excitedly shouted that it was the first time she had ever voted by herself privately.
“That to me made the whole effort worth it,” Bradbury said.
Although Bradbury said there were many positive changes to the state’s voting system, he said he was disappointed with the recent primary elections because of the low voter turnout.
“We had a turnout in Oregon statewide of about 38 percent, which is not very high by Oregon standards,” Bradbury said.
Bradbury and Walker fielded questions from the audience.
In a response to a question about the corporate kicker, which sends income tax rebates to corporations, most of which are out of state, both Walker and Bradbury said it is a better idea to put the money into a “rainy day” fund for the state in case of recessions. Walker said she didn’t know how the state could justify the law.
“Senate Democrats have been very strong in trying to get rid of the corporate kicker and put it into a rainy day fund,” she said. “I’m glad to see that my Republican colleagues have finally joined the call and are talking about building up a reserve so we can pay for state services in an economic downturn.”
Bradbury said it was important to encourage nonpartisanship when working on issues for the state. While serving in the Oregon Legislature during the 1983 recession, Democrats and Republicans worked together to solve the state’s problems.
“That’s what it takes, people who care first about the people they represent,” Bradbury said. “That’s the challenge, and it’s really up to us to make sure that’s who we elect.”
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