Critics question Leonard splurges

Commissioner spends campaign cash on pricy business dinners

By Steve Law

The Portland Tribune, Feb 26, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (19 Reader comments)

JAIME VALDEZ / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Portland city Commissioner Randy Leonard said it saves taxpayer money for him to spend from his campaign funds for dinners where he discusses official business.

When blues artist Curtis Salgado sought to help a small weightlifters’ gym fend off a large competitor eying a nearby Southeast Portland site, he called on a fan with clout: Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard.

Leonard, whose City Hall office wall is adorned with a large photo of Salgado, wound up treating the musician and a buddy to dinner at Ringside steakhouse to discuss the matter, using $338 in leftover campaign funds from Leonard’s 2008 City Council race.

On other occasions, Leonard used 2008 campaign donations for a $225 Ringside dinner with future Mayor Sam Adams; a $340 Ringside dinner with parking lot baron Greg Goodman; $180 to attend a Portland Timbers game; and $750 to buy a portrait of himself, among other non-campaign uses.

It’s illegal under Oregon law to divert campaign funds for personal use. But Leonard said all that spending was related to his official duties as a city commissioner – an allowable use of surplus campaign funds.

That’s a good deal for taxpayers, Leonard said, because he doesn’t have to use his city-issued credit card for official meetings. And, Leonard said, it’s cleaner than allowing others to pay his way.

“I don’t let people pay for my meals,” Leonard said. “I have consistently chosen not to do that, and use money raised privately that the law allows.”

Still, several campaign experts said Leonard’s spending raises ethical concerns. Some said it highlights holes in state law: lax rules for spending campaign funds, and the ineffectiveness of a 2007 ethics reform that restricted gifts to officeholders.

“I’m hard-pressed to see how buying artwork with campaign funds can be considered either a valid campaign or officeholder expense, especially given that city officials are provided office budgets,” said Janice Thompson, executive director of Democracy Reform Oregon, a prominent backer of Portland’s publicly financed city elections.

The state should “put an end to this kind of slush-fund system we’ve got now,” said Chuck Bennett, a school administrators’ lobbyist and Salem city councilor, who served on a 2006 Oregon Law Commission panel that proposed state ethics reforms.

There’s also a question of fairness, Thompson said. A Portland City Council candidate relying on public campaign financing “has no post-election campaign funds to use for wining and dining,” she said.

Lobbyists, who provide much of the money for state and local campaigns, frequently complain about being solicited for donations by powerful politicians, who then get free rein to spend that money, because of the lax state law.

“If you were the contributor of the campaign funds, I think you would wonder why they were being used for that purpose,” said Bruce Bishop, legal counsel for Northwest Permanente in Portland, and the 2006-07 president of The Capitol Club, an association of Salem lobbyists.

“I personally would support limiting campaign funds for campaign purposes,” said Bishop, who no longer is lobbying.

‘I just follow the law’

Leonard isn’t the only politician facing criticism for how he spends campaign funds. Public concerns about this issue “seem to come up a lot,” said John Lindback, state elections director.

Most states allow campaign funds to be spent on officeholder expenses, Lindback said. Oregon’s law “pretty much leaves it up to the officeholder to decide” those uses, he said.

Leonard’s use of campaign funds for business meetings is just what critics predicted after the 2007 Legislature’s ethics reform, which enacted a $50 annual cap on gifts to officeholders, Lindback said. “People said, ‘Here’s what’s going to happen – we’re going to start paying for stuff out of our campaign funds.’”

The idea behind the $50 cap, which includes food, drinks and entertainment, was to limit lobbyists’ special access to people in power.

Bennett and other lobbyists complain that the gift limit is a headache to enforce. Lobbyists say they can easily circumvent the cap by meeting politicians for meals or drinks, and then handing them a campaign contribution instead of paying the tab. There’s no limit on campaign contributions in Oregon.

Leonard adamantly denied ever taking someone to dinner and then accepting a campaign donation. “I would consider that unethical,” he said. A review of his campaign donations and City Hall schedule showed no evidence to refute that.

Leonard declined to say if he thought expensive steak dinners and entertainment are an ethical use of campaign money.

“I don’t make a judgment about whether that’s a good idea or a bad idea; I just follow the law,” he said.

Leonard said he bought the portrait of himself to decorate his City Hall office, and also received stationery from the artist that he can use as thank-you notes. The $750 price tag is lower than some photographers charge for campaign photographs, he said.

He paid for the Portland Timbers tickets rather than accept free tickets, Leonard said, to discuss a proposed baseball stadium in Lents with Timbers and Portland Beavers team owner Merritt Paulson.

A business-related meeting

Salgado initially said his dinner meeting with Leonard was a “completely social” event. Salgado said he heard Leonard had a large photo of the blues star in his office, and called Leonard to offer to autograph it. Leonard initially suggested they meet for a hot dog at Nick’s Coney Island, a Hawthorne Boulevard joint, Salgado said. But he and his friend objected, and they settled on Ringside.

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