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FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2022
VOL. 131, NO. 2 Serving the Lower Columbia Region since 1891
Oregon taxpayers to share $3B kicker
County to review voter roll concerns
JEREMY C. RUARK jruark@countrymedia.net
Oregon taxpayers can expect to share a $3 billion kicker. The kicker tax credit goes into effect when the actual state revenue exceeds the forecasted revenue by at least 2%. An amount is then returned to the taxpayers through a credit on their tax returns. The new kicker tax credit figures were announced in the just-released state revenue forecast. “The economy continues to boom. Jobs, income, spending, and production are all rising quickly. However, pessimism about the expansion is growing,” is the opening statement in the June 2022 Oregon Economic and Revenue Forecast issued by the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis. “Inflation is at multi-decade highs, eroding household budgets,” the summary reads. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created an oil shock and raised fears of increased conflict. A new round of pandemicrelated shutdowns in China is set to exacerbate global supply chain struggles.” The summary states that the economic dynamics are shifting. “No longer is the U.S. or Oregon in recovery mode, but in net expansion territory,” the summary reads. “The challenges, risks, and trends associated with a mid-cycle expansion are different than those faced during the initial recovery.” The summary claims the 2022 personal income tax filing season “has been shocking.” The tax season payments will come in more than $1.2 billion (70%) larger than last year. The summary states that the unexpected revenue growth seen this year has left Oregon with unprecedented balances this biennium, followed by a record kicker in 2023-25.
Jeremy C. Ruark / The Chief
2 candidates to square off for county commission seat JEREMY C. RUARK jruark@countrymedia.net
The unofficial Columbia County 2022 Oregon Primary Election results show Kelly Niles and Kellie Jo Smith leading in the race for the open Columbia County Commissioners race. The final unofficial report from the May 17 election, shows Smith with 3,946 votes and Niles with 3,353 votes. Both candidates are expected to face off in the Novem-
ber General Election. Smith, a St. Helens School Board member, business owner, and former foster care worker, told The Chief following the election that she believes the communities are “tired of politics.” “Which I completely understand,” she said. “I’ll continue to try and build relationships within our communities, listening to concerns, historic knowledge and memories. I’ll continue to learn, listen and care about our communi-
ties and the issues they’d like to tackle. I don’t have an agenda other than being a good steward and positive representative.” Smith characterized said the race so far with Niles as very clean race and in response to The Chief’s question if she would consider debating Niles, Smith said, “there’s really no reason to debate as we’re both similar. The forums that we’ve
See ELECTION Page A7
Looking back on ‘Good Raymond’
Kickers • The projected personal kicker is $3 billion, which will be credited to taxpayers when they file their returns in Spring 2024. • The projected corporate kicker is $931 million and will be retained for educational spending. Even so, if balances are not spent, net resources for the 2023-25 biennium will have increased by $427 million relative to the March 2022 forecast, according to the summary. Reaction Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said the revenue forecast indicates that Oregon continues to experi-
See KICKER Page A8
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Contact The Chief Phone: 503-397-0116 Fax: 503-397-4093 chiefnews@countrymedia.net 1805 Columbia Blvd., St. Helens, OR 97051
Zoe Gottlieb / The Chief
Oregon was the first state to hold a primary election by mail. ZOE GOTTLIEB chronicle2@countrymedia.net
Voter rolls in Columbia County are a “great reason for concern,” says Columbia County resident Kathy Cooper. On Wednesday, May 4, during the public comment period of a regular county meeting, Cooper presented canvassing data from a portion of one Columbia County precinct to the Board of Commissioners. Cooper told the Board how she used a voter roll from January 2021 and canvassed 44 addresses, which gave her information on 226 registered voters. “Of those 226 voters, 98 did not live at the address where they were listed as living on the roll. That’s a 43% error rate on the rolls for our sample groups,” she said. Cooper brought in guest Dr. Douglas Frank, a teacher, chemist, and mathematician from Morrow, Ohio, to provide insight on voter roll anomalies in Columbia County. “We’ve begun an effort where we’re going to begin canvassing throughout Oregon. We’ll probably begin in Columbia County, where we’re going to be canvassing and investigating all these anomalies that we’re finding in your rolls,” he said. During his testimony, Frank estimated there could be a 10% margin of error in ballots submitted to the county. “What we’ve already begun finding (is) exactly as I predicted, not because I’m some genius, but because I’ve looked at so many other states, I’ve seen what happens,” he said. “This new movie coming out, 2000 Mules, is confirming exactly what we’ve been finding when we do canvassing. We’ll find the same sorts of things in your county.” In 2021, Frank faced media backlash for making stolen election claims during a keynote speech he delivered at a Trump rally in Ohio.
Raymond Carver, a world-renowned writer from the 20th century, has been credited for reviving the genre of the short story. ZOE GOTTLIEB chronicle2@countrymedia.net
For one weekend each year, tourists would cross countries and continents to experience the atmosphere of a small, rural town along the Columbia River where Raymond Carver was born. Paying homage The Raymond Carver Writing Festival, hosted every year by the Clatskanie Arts Commission and the Clatskanie Library until its discontinuation in 2012, was an opportunity for many to pay homage to a writer praised as one of the most important contributors to American literature. In 2022, when event organizers decided to revive the festival once and for all, word spread cross-country to Maine, home of American novelist Richard Ford. In an interview with The Chief, Clatskanie Public Library Director Maryanne Hirning recounted the moment Ford telephoned her. “The boy who works for me texted me, and he said some dude from Maine just called,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, take (his) information and leave it on my desk.’ And then I was busy and never got to look at it.”
“Then I looked down, and I was like, Oh my word. Are they messing with me? There’s a postit note on my desk with Richard Ford’s phone number?” Hirning said she immediately consulted Google to find what linked Ford, an author she already admired, to Carver. “I had google searched, as a good librarian does, and found his article that appeared in the New Yorker. It was like his Ode to Raymond Carver after his death, and it’s absolutely positively amazing,” she said. Ford’s essay, ‘Good Raymond,’ was published in the New Yorker on September 27, 1998. In his first few opening lines, Ford describes where the two were in their writing careers when they met. “I was thirty-three, and Ray was vaguely thirty-nine. Neither of us had much gotten our head up out of the foggy ether young writers live in—sometimes for years, sometimes forever—in which you’re indistinctly aware of a ‘writing world,’ conscious of a few names on its periphery, a few stories, an occasional significant breakthrough into print, but most are just beavering away trying to make isolation and persistence into a virtue, and anonymity your
County response
sneak attack on public notice,” he wrote. Ford and Carver met in the fall of 1977 at a writers’ conference at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Ford told The Chief. “We’d both published our first books the year before -- his to rather considerable success,” he said. According to Ford, the two saw themselves in the other. They both came from working-class families. They both liked to hunt and fish. Above all, they had the passion - and talent - for writing. “We liked to laugh at the things in life that were so dark only laughter would suffice,” Ford said. “(Carver) was a sweet man who’d seen some hard roads, and I liked the way he’d emerged from all that.” In his phone conversation with Hirning, Ford admitted he was taken by surprise when he first learned about the Raymond Carver Writing Festival. “Of course, I know he’d be happy about this, as well,” Ford told The Chief. “He liked being famous and used his celebrity to good ends.”
The Chief asked Elections Supervisor Don Clack what precautions his division takes to verify voter roll accuracy. “Columbia County works with the Oregon Elections Division (OED) to regularly update voter registration lists to remove deceased people, people who have moved, and other changes that impact eligibility,” he responded. According to Clack, Oregon is a member of the Elections Registration Information Center (ERIC), a national data-sharing system that ensures sharing of up-to-date voter registration information across states. The county Elections Division also compiles monthly reports from the USPS, state agencies, and the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Clack told The Chief that the three employees charged with verifying ballot signatures in Columbia County have 22 years of combined experience and are all trained by a daylong in-person course. According to Clack, the Elections Division takes the following steps to verify a ballot per the Oregon Vote by Mail Procedures Manual:
See RAYMOND Page A7
See VOTE Page A7