Senate Special Committee on Conduct Clears Sen. Chip Shields

Willamette Week:

The Senate Special Committee on Conduct met at 10 am this morning, the first such meeting longtime lawmakers and lobbyists could remember."Colleagues, this is new for all of us," committee chair Laurie Monnes Anderson (D-Gresham) said as she opened the hearing.At issue was HB 3052, legislation that Sen. Chip Shields (D-Portland) asked a House colleague, Rep. Lew Frederick (D-Portland) to introduce. The bill, which Frederick introduced March 10, would have required all publicly funded projects in Oregon use biodegradable lubricants, rather than petroleum-based lubricants.The rub was that Shields' family company, of which he is a shareholder and new employee, is a manufacturer of biodegradable lubricants. After WW and other media raised concerns about the potential conflict of interest, Frederick withdrew the bill.The Oregon Republican Party then filed a complaint against Shields March 19, accusing him of a conflict of interest and of using state resources to prepare legislation that could benefit him. In testimony before the committee this morning, Shields denied any financial motivation and said he pushed the legislation only because conventional lubricants were "putting Oregon ecosystems at risk." "I know intentions are hard to prove," Shields said. "My motivation was to protect Oregon's environment." The committee asked Legislative Counsel Dexter Johnson for an opinion on the two elements of the GOP complaint: first that Shields was guilty of a conflict of interest; and second, the he'd used public resources to develop legislation that could benefit himself. Johnson was in an awkward spot because his office wrote the bill for Frederick. He told the committee that in his view, Shields was not guilty of a conflict of interest because the bill he asked Frederick to introduce never left the House. Legislative rules require only that before voting on a bill that may present a conflict, a lawmaker disclose the potential or actual conflict. Since the bill never came to the Senate, that aspect of the complaint was moot. Second, Johnson told the committee that because there are many manufacturers of biodegradable lubricants, Shields probably would not have had a conflict in any case. On the question of whether Shields had improperly used public resources to prepare a bill that could benefit him, Johnson also told the committee Shields had done nothing wrong. "So there is no merit to the allegations," Monnes Anderson said. He colleagues on the committee, Sens. Jackie Winters (R-Salem), Chris Edwards (D-Eugene) and Bill Hansell (R-Athena), unanimously agreed.

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