Impeachment
A Better Option for Oregon When Executive Officials Lose the Public's Trust
Among the states, only Oregon lacks impeachment as a remedy for official misconduct in public office. Instead, the Oregon Constitution provides for a recall process, which was added by the voters in 1908. Alternatives to the recall process exist for legislators and judges, but not executive officials like the Governor, Secretary of State, and Treasurer. Unlike impeachment, which is both fairly quick and evidence-based, the recall process inherently requires substantial cost and delay. Oregon voters should be asked to add cost-effective and expeditious impeachment as a constitutional remedy for misconduct in office.
Removal or Suspension of Legislators and Judges. While all elected officials are subject to recall, legislators and judges may also be removed or suspended through alternative processes. With a two-thirds vote, each chamber of the legislature may expel a member for cause. When then-Representative Mike Nearman admitted rioters into the Capitol, the Oregon House expelled him with a vote of 59-1. (I voted for the expulsion, although I had been excused for military duty on the day the misconduct occurred.) Similarly, since 1968, judges may be suspended or removed by the Oregon Supreme Court. Judge Vance Day was suspended for three years by the Supreme Court in 2018 for providing access to a firearm to a felon and inappropriately screening out same sex marriages from his courtroom.
The Recall Process. The recall process is currently the only way to remove an executive officer in Oregon. By submitting a petition with 15% of the voters in the officer’s district (which may be the entire state) in the most recent gubernatorial election, the people may require that a recall be placed on a ballot within 35 days. For comparison, a statutory initiative petition only requires 6% of voters to sign on to put the matter on the ballot, while a constitutional change requires 8%. If a majority of the voters in the recall election vote to recall, the officer is removed after the vote is certified (usually a few weeks), and the position is filled as if the office holder had died during their term.
The recall process is expensive and lengthy. With just under 2,000,000 voters in the last governor’s race, an initiative petition would need about 300,000 signatures to qualify a recall for a statewide executive officer. At an average cost of about $13 per signature, that works out to about $4 million to qualify a recall petition for a statewide elected officer for the ballot, not including any other campaign costs. In effect, the time required to recall a statewide officer would likely be at least 6 months. We have been fortunate that statewide officeholders who lost the public trust resigned in 2015 (Governor) and 2023 (Secretary of State), rather than forcing the time and expense of recall campaigns. But we should rely on law, not fortune, to maintain good governance.
An Impeachment Proposal. House Joint Resolution (HJR) 203 in the 2022 session would have referred to voters an impeachment amendment to the Oregon Constitution. If approved by the voters, statewide elected officers could have been impeached for “for malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty or other high crime or misdemeanor” upon a 3/5 vote of the Oregon House and removed from office upon conviction by the Oregon Senate with a 2/3 vote. (Note that the former is a higher standard than in the Federal Constitution.) The HJR had bipartisan sponsors, including me. However, the House Democratic Leadership refused to give it a hearing, and my discharge petition to bring it to a vote on the floor failed by a 26-30 vote. I was told that the leadership did not want to appear to be critical of the Governor, although I made clear that I was not supporting it for that purpose and that it would not take effect until her term had expired even if approved by the voters.
The amendment referral has again been introduced in the House as HJR 16, and it again enjoys bipartisan support. As Rep. Shelly Boshart-Davis put it, “Recent events illustrate, yet again, the importance of having an impeachment procedure on the books as a check against negligence and abuse of power by public officials.” Although a similar effort was introduced in the Senate, neither the House nor the Senate Democratic leadership has held or proposed to hold a hearing on it. Indeed, a discharge petition failed in the Senate last month when every Senate Democrat voted against it.
Conclusion. I certainly support the authority of the people to recall their elected officers in appropriate circumstances. However, the time and money required to mount a recall petition limit its use to well-funded interests and prevents it from being using quickly when an officer-holder commits significant misconduct. These delays often benefit a corrupt incumbent, who may take advantage of the delay to negotiate a resignation to avoid or mitigate criminal liability. If approved by the voters, an impeachment process can lower these risks and allow for greater accountability. Oregon should not be the only state that requires millions of dollars and half a year to remove corrupt executive officials from office.
Other News
Banking Crisis. As anyone who has seen It’s a Wonderful Life knows, banks don’t just sit on the money you deposit. In the words of an old adage, they follow the 3-6-3 rule, “Pay 3% on deposits, charge 6% on loans, and hit the golf course by 3 pm.” After the 2008 banking crisis, the government further restricted systemically important (large) banks to ensure that they managed money relatively conservatively, although the number of large banks fell significantly when the government changed the criteria significantly.
In the last few years, the situation had changed somewhat as interest rates fell, to result in paying less than 1% interest on most deposits and offering loans at rates between 3-5%. Still, as long as people continued to deposit and there was enough of a difference between the rates to cover costs, banks were still doing fine. Banks could even just put deposits into T-bills for a risk-free return. However, as interest rates have risen substantially, loans have fallen and depositors have started looking for better returns on their deposits. Old T-bill prices fell substantially. As depositors withdrew their funds to put them into more profitable investments like Treasury I bonds, banks found themselves having to sell those investments at a loss to cover the withdrawals.
Will this continue? Probably not. Silicon Valley Bank made a spectacularly bad decision when it invested in T-bills as interest rates were rising. Why would anyone buy a T-bill with a 3% return when the Fed is aggressively raising interest rates and the same T-bill will pay 4% or more in a few months? While more bank failures are possible, they’re not likely to substantially impact depositors. So far, all depositors have been made whole, even when their deposits exceeded the insured limits. More likely, banks that made bad investments will be forced into mergers with healthier banks (as all three have so far), wiping out shareholders, but protecting depositors. I further expect a reversal of the earlier policy limiting the number of banks subject to enhanced regulation. So, in a nutshell, you don’t have to withdraw your money and put it in the mattress.
Jail Levy. As in the past, I oppose renewing the Lane County jail levy. First, to be blunt, we have defined accountability for these funds as merely spending them on what we told the voters we would spend the money on, not in actually producing results. Has the levy reduced crime or improved lives? There is no evidence of that. Second, in response to the argument that it supports medical services in the jail, I would point out that these are constitutionally required services. Indeed, prisoners are the ONLY group with a constitutional right to healthcare under the US Constitution. Further, since 2014, most prisoners are eligible for significant federal funding of their healthcare from Medicaid, but only if they are not in custody. Federal funding stops at the door to the jail. For many of them, the federal government would pay 90% of their healthcare costs if they were out of custody. We should be taking advantage of this through increased supervised release programs for pre-trial detainees.
Do I think that we have “too many” jail beds? I don’t actually know. We’ll never find out until we try something different, something more humanitarian and efficient with taxpayer dollars than using regressive property taxes to fund more incarceration. As I’ve written many times, 95% of these incarcerated folks will be coming back to our community. The question is not whether they should be locked up for longer, only whether we want greater or lesser recidivism. The jail levy is a choice for more crime, not less. In the admittedly unlikely event that this levy fails, we should hope to see on the next ballot a more balanced approach in terms of a funding source that doesn’t disproportionately impact the poor and elderly and that makes more efficient use of taxpayer funds. I appreciate the concerns of the levy proponents, but we can’t keep embracing failure the way we have been.
Good People Running for Office. In this fraught election season, I hope we can all remember that most people running for office are good, public-spirited individuals who want to do right by our community. Most often, the relevant differences between candidates are their positions, expertise, and experience, not their personal lives. Yes, we all have human frailties, but personal attacks are what drives good people out of public service.
China and Taiwan. I don’t generally recommend books here, but I found Barbara Tuchman’s 1971 book, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 very compelling. We should absolutely support Taiwan’s defense against any aggression from the mainland. However, we should also understand the unfortunate history of the schism between Taiwan and China and own our national role in it, both for good and ill. Had we paid more attention to what was happening in China before and during the Second World War, we might have better understood the folly of militarily supporting corrupt regimes in Vietnam and Afghanistan later and chosen a path that better supported the people than the politicians.
Nice job. Lots of useful info. Frank