Oregon Capitol Watch Executive Director and former State Representative Jeff Kropf was interviewed by KATU Channel 2 News Anchor Steve Dunn on the state capitol mall regarding research that OCWF had conducted over a two year time period about how the state is over paying thousands of state workers and violating Oregon law in the process. Click here to view KATU's report. “The Governor is overpaying many state workers in direct violation of Oregon law and the legislature never knows its happening” said Kropf. “Shouldn’t the legislature, who writes the checks for these employees’ salary and benefits, see this market comparison report detailing how many state workers are being overpaid, some by as much as 266% over what the law says they should be paid?” By law, every two years the state must produce the Total Market Comparison Report which compares various categories of state employment with other government and private sector workers doing the same job. Yet this report does not include all the costs of employing a state worker such as COLA’s, vacation and sick time, discounted life insurance and other benefits. “Taxpayers are overpaying thousands of state workers, perhaps as much as 65 million dollars a year, though to be fair this report also shows a few hundred state workers make less than private sector and other government agencies pay for comparable work” Kropf said. “Either way, the law is being ignored, the taxpayers are paying too much and no one is doing anything about it!” Portland State University also compiles and releases a report that includes all the costs of employing a state worker and compares it to government and private sector employees. It shows a much higher cost than the state report for this very reason. “As a former legislator who sat on the budget committee for eight years, I was never told this ‘secret’ report about total employee compensation even existed” said Kropf. “Even if legislators did see it, it wouldn’t be accurate because it doesn’t include all the costs of employing as state worker” You can watch the entire interview at the link to the above right . The KATU website also has the entire report online that you can read for yourself.
- Jan 14, 2014
Petunia and OCWF Executive Director Rep. Jeff Kropf (Ret) at the I-5 Bridge
SALEM-Oregon Capitol Watch’s Executive Director and former State Representative Jeff Kropf is pleased to announce Petunia, the Pork Detective’s latest Porker Award goes to Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber for his “go it alone” proposal in building the wasteful, Columbia River Crossing boondoggle.
Oregon Capitol Watch is running statewide television commercials starting today announcing this prestigious award to the Governor, along with a social media campaign, in an effort to educate the public about this issue.
“OCWF is stunned that Governor Kitzhaber is ignoring the tremendous amount of public information detailing the waste, cronyism and inaccuracies presented to the legislature by CRC proponents” said Kropf. “In spite of this and overwhelming public opposition from the right and left, he is asking legislators to put Oregon taxpayers on the hook for billions for a project that many think will be a financial disaster”
In addition to the 30 second television ad, OCWF has produced a 30 minute mini documentary detailing the problems with how this current I-5 bridge replacement proposal has been presented to decision makers in Oregon and Washington state. OCWF staff gathered publicly released information and analysis from such notables as respected economist Joe Cortright, forensic accountant Tiffany Couch and others. The 2 part mini documentary can be seen at www.ocwf.org
“Many legislators have no idea that the story they are being told is factually inaccurate according to the CRC’s own documents” Kropf said. “Our goal is to educate the public and the legislature to what is really going on here in an effort to stop this current proposal”.
Kropf noted that a similar grassroots effort aimed at dissuading the Washington Legislature from joining Oregon in building this boondoggle, was successful last year as they rejected the proposal for many of the same reasons that OCWF and several Oregon based grassroots groups oppose this project.
Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation's Executive Director
takes a look at the Columbia River Crossing.
Forensic public accountant, Tiffany Couch,
takes an even closer look at the Columbia River Crossing.
