On Thursday afternoon, the Oregon Senate passed a bill that would prohibit any political candidate or committee from accepting more than $100 in cash per year from any source.
The clause prohibiting cash contributions of more than $100 was added as a House Rules Committee amendment to an existing ballot bill approved earlier in the session. That bill, with the cash contribution amendment, was re-approved Thursday afternoon by a resounding 22-0 vote.
Republican lawmakers drafted their own version of the bill in mid-May, but it never received a first hearing because of the Republican walkout, which ended today.
Related: Senate Republicans return after longest walkout in Oregon history.
Republican lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp (R-Bend) and House Minority Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson (R-Prineville), authored this bill in response to the WW reported in May that Rosa Cazares and Aaron Mitchell, the co-founders of the anti-cannabis chain La Mota, paid tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions to top Democrats in piles of cash. Among those who accepted cash contributions from the couple are Gov. Tina Kotek, Senate President Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) and Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Christina Stephenson.
Kotek’s campaign staff last year went to a West Hills mansion the couple was renting at the time to collect the tens of thousands of dollars in cash, Kotek’s campaign manager told WW last month past So did Wagner’s campaign staff.
That raised concerns about the difficulty of tracking cash donations, and critics said it exacerbated another problem with the state’s campaign finance laws: Oregon is one of five states that allows unlimited contributions. This meant that donors could give unlimited contributions, in cash, from untraceable sources.
“When you have physical cash, it’s much more difficult to trace and locate the true original source of funding,” Portland attorney Jason Kafoury said at the time. “Do we really want our Oregon democracy to be defined by people who have tens of thousands of dollars in cash available to politicians?”
WW reported on the cash donations shortly after revealing Mitchell and Cazares’ failure to pay taxes and creditors while contributing to politicians, Fagan’s decision to moonlight as a consultant for his troubled chain of cannabis La Mota and how Fagan shaped a state audit of cannabis regulation to please Cazares, his patron. These reports led to Fagan’s resignation on May 2.
The bill will take effect upon signature by the governor.
