« Voter-Owned Elections - a review | Main | Hillarious Web Ad »

February 01, 2008

Stubborn Sizemore Threatens to Sue Some More

Somehow I intuitively knew that something today would require my writing about Bill Sizemore again. I was right. The news today is that the Secretary of State and Bill Sizemore are engaged in another argument, over which Sizemore threatens to sue (as if his five existing lawsuits weren’t enough). I actually agree with Sizemore on some of his complaints, but this newest complaint leaves me scratching my head. Let me explain.

Sizemore (as well as another of my favorite people, Russ Walker) is about to be ordered by Secretary of State Bill Bradbury to cease all signature gathering until he complies with the state’s new record-keeping laws. Those laws require the creation of a proper paper trail for wages paid to petitioners. Sizemore then has to provide his records upon request to the Secretary of State for purposes of verifying that he is paying by the hour and not by the signature. But rather than turn the records over, Sizemore is once again playing the martyr card, saying he will sue the “unbelievably arrogant” Bradbury, who, he claims, “works for the public employees’ unions.”

“They want all my initiatives shut down, and that's all they are doing.”

I don’t get this outburst. Surely Sizemore saw this coming from a mile away. After all, way back on August 2, 2007, Bradbury sent out a notice to Sizemore and all the other chief petitioners telling them that, beginning immediately, they were “required to maintain ‘accounts’” consisting of “any paperwork documenting contracts between chief petitioners and signature gathering companies, payroll records, employment manuals, copies of signature sheets etc.”

These accounts shall be made available for review by the Secretary of State. If a chief petitioner is unable to produce the required accounts, they are prohibited from obtaining additional signatures on their petition until they are able to produce the documents.

The Oregonian describes the reporting requirement this way:

Under the law, six months after an initiative is certified for signature gathering, the sponsor is told to submit payroll and other records to the Elections Division, the Attorney General's office or the Bureau of Labor and Industries. The sponsor then has 10 days to comply or stop gathering signatures.

Can we agree that Sizemore has no excuse for being surprised and outraged? That being the case, we must then assume he is feigning surprise and outrage. But why?

As I understand it, Sizemore has been working with Democracy Direct to gather signatures. Democracy Direct is owned by Tim Trickey. I’ve conversed with Trickey and with individuals I trust who know him, and by all accounts he complies faithfully with the law and is keeping Sizemore in line. At least, that’s what they tell me. That being the case, what is the problem with supplying the records to the Secretary of State, as Sizemore knew he would have to do and as the law requires?

I just love his excuse:

Sizemore … complained Thursday that the Elections Division is demanding that he match employees' signature sheets with their payroll records. He said that was impossible because he did not pay by the signature.

That just doesn’t make sense to me. You have a pay period. You collect dated signatures sheets and time cards at the end of that pay period. You copy those petition sheets as required by law. You issue a paycheck. You bundle that information and file it. How hard can this be? Particularly when you are working with a reputable company like Democracy Direct, whose website states:

Company Policy: Democracy Direct Inc. is committed to the integrity of the initiative process, and as such:

…Depending on the state in question, all circulators are paid only by the method allowed by law, with all payroll being reported accurately and taxes withheld.

All subcontractors of DDI are required to comply with all labor laws and engage in the legal practice of paying petitioners according to the proscribed method based on the jurisdiction of the petition(s) in question.

…Any employee who seeks employment with DDI must complete an employment contract and all legal paperwork before they may receive compensation for work.

Sizemore is simply being asked to verify for the enforcing agency of the government that he did what he claims he did - that he kept standard employment records. He worked with a reputable company that claims it complies with the law in terms of record-keeping. If Sizemore has the records, which surely he must (right?), then why not hand them over? Where is the trap here? In what way is this a public employee union scheme to keep his measures off the ballot? Surely I must be missing something.

I was so confused by the situation that I contacted the Secretary of State’s office myself this morning to find out what was going on. Summer Davis kindly explained the matter to me. She said that the Oregon Legislature created requirements for maintaining accounts and turning in signatures and Sizemore was informed about these changes. New petition sorting requirements did not kick in until January 1. Sizemore had already turned in signatures for initiatives 3, 19, 20, 21, and 25 prior to January 1, so those petitions were to be sorted according to the old rules - by the county in which they were collected, rather than by the petitioner.

Acceptable accounting practices, however, had to begin August 1, 2007. That means the accounting rules apply to Sizemore's five already-submitted initiatives. Again, he has known this for months. All the Secretary of State is asking is that Sizemore submit records that show some obvious correlation between the sheets turned in and the paychecks issued.

It certainly is not the job of Bradbury’s office to go through boxes and boxes of petition sheets and match them up with payroll records on the taxpayer dime, if you ask me; and were Sizemore a sane and honest taxpayer advocate, he would agree. Yet, if I understand the situation correctly, that is exactly what he is expecting them to do. Apparently, he wants to submit his payroll records and have them try to match those records up to the corresponding petitions.

Maybe it's a misunderstanding and Sizemore and Trickey just didn't quite understand that when the rules required keeping payroll records AND copies of petition sheets it was intended that the two be correlated. But then again, Mr. Trickey was able to submit at least partial accounting records for the Kevin Mannix measures he circulated. I can only assume that Trickey was less successful at keeping Sizemore in line than his advocates believed. Or maybe Sizemore is more stubborn than Mannix.

In any case, perhaps the most fascinating revelation from my conversation with Ms. Davis is this. She said that even if Sizemore refuses to turn over the employment records and "accounts" as required by law, his initiatives will still be placed on the ballot – provided sufficient qualified signatures were submitted prior to January 1, when the new sorting rules kicked in. In other words, no sneaky, underhanded, covert effort is underway to keep the measures off the ballot. Sizemore has understood the situation entirely since at least the first of August – five months ago.

I think this really just boils down to one thing. Someone is making Bill Sizemore be law-abiding and considerate and produce organized paperwork. And he doesn't want to do it.

Posted by Becky at February 1, 2008 02:23 PM