Q&A
Bev Stein

BY PHILIP DAWDY
pdawdy@week.com

Last week, in a move that surprised virtually no one, Bev Stein announced that she's stepping down as chairwoman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners to seek the governorship. Although the 2002 primary is still 14 months away, Stein isn't the first to declare her intentions. Fellow Democrat Jim Hill and Republicans Jack Roberts and Ron Saxton beat her out of the blocks.

Stein stopped by for a chat last month. Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

Willamette Week: What's your biggest weakness as a candidate?

Bev Stein: I think the "Portland liberal" label is my major liability.

So how are you going to convince downstate voters that you are not just a metro-area candidate-that you're not doing the bidding of Oregon's 900-pound gorilla?

It's become a personal interest of mine to learn more about what's going on in the various counties around the state. I did county commissioner exchanges with 10 different county commissioners over the last few years, where I spent a day with them in their county. It's given me an opportunity to get a real sense of what's happening around the state. In Coos Bay, for example, they lost 3,000 jobs. That's like 30,000 jobs in Multnomah County. I met with a number of people down there, and really understood their situation and how they're really coming together now. So I've been able to penetrate a variety of different things through those mechanisms, and I think that would be a good way for me to tell people that I know what's going on.

A lot of people say we need to continue the shift from a natural-resource-based economy to high-tech. What can a governor do to make that happen, except say, 'It's a nice day out, let's have high tech, everybody?'

I don't think high tech is the answer for everybody in the state. Certainly, having access to the highways of the future, the high-speed fiber-optic cable, is absolutely essential for communities to be able to drive in the next century. So that's something that the state should continue to play a role in. But I think the other thing is to look at some of the other industries you have, like agriculture, where we can do more added value and high income crop sales.

Any examples?

In Union County, they are emphasizing things like mint. They bring the mint from the fields into the barn, and they distill it right there. And there's mint oil then that is shipped out for people's toothpaste and stuff like that. I talked to a guy who's doing stuff with poplar trees in Arlington. Poplar trees have been a crop essentially to make paper. But they have a whole system now where they are making furniture out of it and selling it at Home Depot and places like that. We can add value to the natural resource crops that we have in the state, and I think that's important.

What you really know, though, is Multnomah County. Give us an example of something you've done here that could apply to how you would run the state of Oregon in a good, strong, innovative way.

I think one thing that is important is to realize that counties, and particularly Multnomah County, are really arms of the state. So the work that I do on the county level is very much related to what's going on in the state. For instance, in the public-safety arena, I've worked hard to make sure we have a continuum, so that we don't just focus on jails. We need adequate jails, and we've doubled the amount of jails during my administration, but we also have alcohol and drug treatment, we have intensive supervision, we even pay attention to early childhood as a way of preventing crime. I feel very good about understanding that whole criminal justice dynamic. The system is very complex: The cities pick people up through the police function, the county does community corrections and the jail function, you have the District Attorney, who's half state and half county, the states runs the courts. So you have to work with everybody to make it all actually work. I've been the chair of the local Public Safety Council for the last six years, so I've been the key point person for figuring out how to keep everybody working together. I feel really good about what we've done. We've reduced recidivism, certainly we've also gotten more kids into community programs and succeeding in the community instead of being in detention, and I think we've gotten a handle on that whole continuum, so that's certainly one area.

Our understanding is that under your tenure, the county began making deposits in banks outside of Multnomah County. Why is that?

One of the things that Multnomah County has to do is have good relationships with people around the state, with other counties. Because when we go to the Legislature, I need to be able to call up people in other counties and get them to help me get things in the Legislature. We have a county Investment Advisory Board that looks at how we're investing our money. And one of its suggestions was that it would be helpful to communities around the state if we could deposit money in banks in other communities. The banks here are not owned by Portland people anymore, so the idea of depositing just in Portland doesn't necessarily make sense, and it's beneficial to smaller communities to be able to have some capital to loan out. So we said that we would be willing to deposit up to $95,000 if they showed they were actually loaning into the community. What we believed was that this is a positive thing in order to show that Multnomah County and the urban area cares about rural areas. One of the biggest problems we have right now is that the rural areas think that the urban areas don't care about them. This is an easy, safe way for us to demonstrate that Multnomah County does care about the rural areas, and to build up relationships and goodwill so that I can draw on that goodwill when I go to Salem.

Assess John Kitzhaber.

Well, I think Kitzhaber's done a good job in a number of areas, and I think the Oregon Plan-with its fish habitat and water issues-is a place where I would certainly want to follow in his footsteps. I believe that Watershed Councils are a good unit for organizing ourselves around watersheds, to figure out how to maintain the health of watersheds. The State of the Environment report was an excellent piece of work. It sets the framework for our work around restoration for the fish. I think that's really important. I think he's also focused on health care, and he's managed to keep the Oregon Health Plan afloat, which is not so easy, and we still have some challenges there.

How would you be different?

I think that people have different styles. My style is to really work on building coalitions across party lines, across jurisdictions. I don't believe that the government's the only answer to the issues that we face in communities. I've built a whole career on trying to bring together education and nonprofits and business and different jurisdictions to work on issues, and I think I would be very active around the state in getting into helping with local communities to built those kinds of efforts in the local communities. And I think I have a lot of experience with state and local government that I can bring to bear on that, as well as community-level experience.

Are you suggesting that the governor has not done that?

Well, I think that's not his style. You bring to the job certain kinds of experiences and personality. I think he's done a good job. He's very smart, does good policy work. I think what I bring that is different is that I bring a lot of grassroots kind of experience, plus I have the local government experience. I have, I think, a really good understanding of how things articulate from state to local to community.

You differ in style, yes, but how about substantively?

That's going to be part of what I bring out in my platform...

How about his current budget and his emphasis on early intervention?

One of my passions, as you know, is children, and I think investing in children at the front end, and making those hard choices that he's made, is a good thing. But I wish we'd started working on children eight years ago-that would be helpful now.

Do you think we need a radical tax reform?

Every governor since McCall has tried to do tax reform. I think we said, 'Well, maybe in good times, people do tax reform?' No. 'In bad times?' No. People just don't seem to want to do tax reform, especially if it's the sales tax, and I think we have to get off the sales tax. People have voted it down nine times. If we keep looking at that as the Holy Grail, we're probably never going to get anywhere. I believe that the tax system we have now, if you look at all of the exemptions, you'll find that it is progressive. I believe in a progressive tax system. But I'm concerned that because the income tax is so sensitive to the economy, if we don't have a rainy-day fund, it makes it very hard for us to be able to make it through tough times. In Multnomah County, we have been trying to build up our reserves, so this year when the economy went down, business income tax went down, we had a little reserve there to get us through this year. That's what we need at the state level, too, I think, and that's something I know the governor wanted too, but it hasn't happened. That's what I think we need to do-live within our means and make sure the economy stays healthy.

Is that a 'No'?

I'm not proposing at this time a radical change in the tax system.

How about the issue of education choices?

I'm not in favor of vouchers, where we give public money to people to use in the private school system, because I think it undercuts the value of the public school system. That has to be held whole, and keep as many people in it as possible. If people make choices, that's fine, in terms of the public school system. I'm very interested in providing many choices within the public system. We now have a school-to-career coordinator at Multnomah County, so that kids get a chance to come to Multnomah County to work with our nurses and our librarians and see what the world's like. From talking to these young people, what I understand is that they really like getting out into the world and doing things and having many, many different kinds of options. The idea that somehow kids learn best by only sitting in a classroom doesn't make any sense. I like the idea that kids can go to PCC, if they're ready to do that, and some kids are doing that now. Schools cannot be their own little bastions. We have to have ways for other people to participate in achieving the education for kids. It's too important not to.

There's a push in some other western states to reform drug laws. What could we expect from you as governor?

What they've done in California makes a lot of sense to me. I think that we should aggressively pursue treatment as an option instead of incarceration. Incarceration doesn't really work for people who are on drugs-I mean, maybe for the temporary time that they're in the jail, it makes a difference, but... We've had some real success with a mentor program where, when the people come out of jail, they have someone who goes with them to their first AA meeting, makes sure they get housing and stay on their program for the first several weeks. I'd rather spend my money doing that-having a mentor follow someone around, make sure they get to their program-than spend the money in the jails.

Is there any other governor you'd model yourself after?

I would take different pieces from different people. I mean, Goldschmidt is someone who I have a great deal of respect for, and if you go to Baker City now, they still bow down to Neil Goldschmidt, because he was willing to do what I am willing to do, which is go out. I will go to every county once a year. People want you to show up, and he showed up and he did things for people. Barbara Roberts is someone who has warmth and a commitment to civil rights that I would certainly want to emulate. Tom McCall was absolutely committed to the environment, and that is something I would like to call on, too. He was someone who inspired people.