May 20, 2003
(Updated) Complaint Filed Against 'Recall Vera' Campaign
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
Over in the PDX Update section of today's Portland Tribune is the following tidbit:
Katz recall sparks dispute
An election complaint has been filed against the Better Portland Alliance, the political action committee formed to help fund a recall drive against Mayor Vera Katz.
The complaint was filed Monday with the state Elections Division and the city elections office by North Portland resident Marvin Moore.
In the complaint, Moore charges that the committee's founders violated state law by not stating that they would be supporting the recall in their filing papers. He asks that it be discontinued.
But committee treasurer John Belgarde insists that the committee is legal. He said a separate committee will be formed when the recall petition is submitted in early June. The Better Portland Alliance "is basically a fact-finding committee to see how much support there is for the Katz recall," he said. "We found a lot."
Check out the recall campaign's website (by the Better Portland Alliance) and make up your own mind as to whether or not the BPA is a "fact-finding committee." And no, I'm not, at this point, stating a position either way.
Of course, I invite Jack Peek to respond to this in the comments to this post -- and if he does so, I will bump that response up into the main body of this item.
From the standpoint of context, I'm disappointed that the Tribune offers nothing in the way of identifying Moore. They don't even offer up an explanation of what motivated him to file this complaint.
Update
An OPB report gives slightly more detail about Marvin Moore:
Marvin Moore, who was successful in a similar complaint against a different PAC, has filed a complaint with the State Elections Division.
Unfortunately, I can't find any mention of a Marvin Moore when searching The Oregonian via the Multnomah County Library, which goes back to 1988.
They also offer some response from the Elections Division, indicating that Fred Neal sees merit in the complaint: "It does raise a valid issue that if true would indicate that this committee should not be a Political Action Committee at this time."
Update
What follows below is the complete text of email received this evening from Jack Peek:
Simply this.......all and I DO MEAN ALL needs to be a PAC HAVE BEEN SATISFIED, we have taken our time to converse with the proper people who certify these things and have NOT to this date received one question in any form about our status from the elections people.
We do intend to file on or about June 6th, we will respond to any needs before then as we really are working hard to not make any mistakes. We will have a 200 word statement on the filing which is mandated at filing and we think the gentleman see's this as the problem, as it is not in documents at this time and isn't needed yet..
We will��become active on the date of the filing and are fully aware of the limitations of time to work out the needs to make this happen.
We sort of expected this from the fringe groups and city wannabe's so we actually expected this earlier. Our thanks to the "concerned" citizen for the press and we look to early June to try to right a big wrong as we see it.