Goldschmidt, Kulongoski met often about clients
Salem newspaper reports
24 meetings in a 16-month period
 By JIM REDDEN Issue date: Tue, Dec 28, 2004
The Tribune

Former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt and members of his former consulting
firm repeatedly lobbied current Gov. Ted Kulongoski on behalf of its private
clients - including lumber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. and Texas Pacific Group,
the venture capital firm trying to acquire PGE - according to a recent
series of stories in the Salem Statesman Journal newspaper.
The six-part series is based on a review of Kulongoski's appointment
calendar and an examination of 1,500 pages of communications between the
governor's office and Goldschmidt Imeson Carter dating from Kulongoski's
January 2003 inauguration to May 2004, when Goldschmidt left the firm and
withdrew from public life after admitting he had sex with a 14-year-old girl
when he was mayor of Portland in the 1970s.
The series was written by reporters Steve Law and Tracy Loew. In the series,
the reporters reveal:
* Kulongoski met with Goldschmidt and/or firm partner Tom Imeson two dozen
times during the 16-month period. That's more than the governor met with
anyone else except top legislative leaders and his staff, including Attorney
General Hardy Myers, state Treasurer Randall Edwards and Secretary of State
Bill Bradbury.
* After Imeson coordinated Kulongoski's transition team in 2002, he and
Goldschmidt continued submitting names and feedback about potential
executive appointments, including candidates for the Public Employees
Retirement Board, the state Board of Higher Education, the Oregon Health &
Science University board, the Oregon Board of Forestry, the Port of Portland
Commission, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and the state
Public Utility Commission.
* After Texas Pacific recruited Goldschmidt to head up its effort to buy
PGE, he arranged a dinner between Kulongoski and the firm's partners the
night the deal was publicly announced.
* Goldschmidt's firm set up two meetings between Kulongoski, his staff and
two large construction firms - Bechtel Corp. and Parsons Brinckerhoff -
angling to build a major Columbia River bridge connecting Portland and
Vancouver, Wash. The Oregonian had previously reported that Goldschmidt
lobbied Kulongoski to make the bridge a top transportation priority.
* Goldschmidt and Imeson lobbied Kulongoski on behalf of Weyerhaeuser after
a federal jury found that the timber giant was monopolizing the alder log
industry. After the lobbying, Kulongoski voted the company's way in a state
land board meeting.
* Imeson aggressively urged the state to contract with the Maine-based
HealthWatch Technologies to track Medicaid overpayments. State managers were
ordered to change the contract selection process because of Imeson's
lobbying. After the series ran, the state Human Services and Administrative
Services departments decided to start the selection process over from
scratch.
In an interview with the Statesman Journal, Kulongoski denied doing anything
wrong. He said that he initiated most of the contacts with the firm because
he valued Goldschmidt's advice, and that he always knew when they were
lobbying on behalf of a client.
In an editorial Sunday, the Statesman Journal called on state legislators,
regulators and managers to re-examine any transaction or decision that
involved Goldschmidt or his firm.
"These latest revelations about influence peddling should have taxpayers
banging down the governor's door - demanding to know what's really going on
in state government and insisting that the 2005 Legislature add teeth to the
state's ethics law," the paper wrote.