10/05/2006

By BRAD CAIN  / Associated Press

The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld most of a $2.5 million racketeering judgment against anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore stemming from a lawsuit filed by two teachers unions.

The court, however, said Sizemore can continue to promote initiatives, such as the one he placed on Oregon's Nov. 7 ballot to prohibit insurance companies from raising customers' rates based on their credit history.

The court agreed with a jury's 2002 ruling that Sizemore's education foundation and political action committee committed fraud and racketeering in handling petition-gathering for a pair of anti-union ballot measures in the 2000 election.

In 2004, a Multnomah County judge ruled that Sizemore should be held personally liable for the $2.5 million judgment to the unions.

In Wednesday's ruling, the appeals court said Sizemore and his group engaged in a pattern of fraud and racketeering to strain the unions financially by getting them to spend millions of dollars to fight the anti-union measures.

"This case is about a calculated course of criminal conduct perpetrated for the express purpose of crippling, and even destroying, defendants' political opponents," the court said of the conduct of Sizemore's organizations.

Despite problems with forged signatures and false campaign spending reports, Sizemore's attorney, Gregory Byrne, says there was nothing illegal about the objectives of Sizemore's now-defunct group, Oregon Taxpayers United.

Byrne said he didn't know whether he would appeal Wednesday's ruling to the Oregon Supreme Court. But he insisted that the appeals court's ruling upheld most of the $2.5 million judgment against the OTU organizations, not Sizemore personally.

But Stephanie Soden of the Oregon attorney general's office and Greg Hartman, attorney for the teachers unions, both said Wednesday's ruling found Sizemore personally liable for $2.3 million of the judgment, a sum that would now amount to $4 million with interest and attorneys' fees.

Hartman called Wednesday's ruling a victory for Oregon's initiative process, which allows citizens to enact new laws directly by placing measures to a statewide vote.

"The court has affirmed that Bill Sizemore, acting through these committees, engaged in a pattern of conduct that sullied the initiative process," Hartman said.

Several phone messages to Sizemore weren't returned Wednesday.

Once Oregon's most prolific initiative author, Sizemore had been sidelined for the past four years because of legal troubles brought on by the racketeering lawsuit. Sizemore jumped back into the political process this year by sponsoring Measure 42, the proposal to ban "credit scoring" by insurance companies.

He also had a hand in crafting another initiative that will be on the November ballot — Measure 41, which would cut state taxes by giving Oregonians the option to take the same personal income tax deduction as on their federal return.

Patty Wentz, a leading Sizemore critic who works for the union-backed Our Oregon coalition, says Sizemore already is in the field collecting signatures for several initiatives aimed at the 2008 ballot — including an income tax cut.

She says that despite Sizemore's continuing legal problems, his opponents don't underestimate his ability to influence Oregon's political debate.

"His agenda for the state is to cut education funding and attack workers," she said.