Last updated on 09/07/2018
$700M Maybe $50m [see comments] on the Cover Oregon website, $200M on green energy tax credits, and now $5M on a sawmill scam, as the Oregonian’s Gordon Friedman reports today. Perhaps his reporting will help trigger a criminal investigation. Or perhaps the Oregon DOJ will keep looking the other way:
… [Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum], who heads the Oregon Department of Justice, has declined to investigate the Ecotrust deal, spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson said in March. Edmunson said last week that the attorney general is “aware of” Business Oregon’s findings, and that the Oregon Department of Justice has “received new information” about Ecotrust since March. Citing agency policy, Edmunson declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. …
SHARED SACRIFICES! (self-censored just for you, love)
$700 million? And you call yourself an economist? Not to mention, the debacle, and that is what it was, entailed mostly misspending federal money, not Oregon tax revenue (though that also happened, obviously, just not $50 million, let alone $700 million). Unacceptable obviously but it does mean it largely did not trade off with revenue otherwise usable by the state. This is just totally dishonest framing and a grossly inaccurate sum.
Give me a number and a cite and I’ll revise it.
Let’s keep this simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon (and its many online citations, including: https://web.archive.org/web/20150128010110/http://www.katu.com/news/investigators/Federal-government-announces-Cover-Oregon-investigation-248606331.html or https://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2014/04/cover_oregon_after_spending_24.html)
I don’t mean to suggest the number is perfectly clear or that it is OK to waste smaller sums, but the Oregon share is some portion of the ~$250-300 million sunk into Cover Oregon, some of which was recovered through a settlement, and most of which was federal money, not state money that could have been used for professor salaries, etc.
Thanks, I’ve reduced this to $50M, and added a weasley “maybe”.