Former Republican Gubernatorial candidate and Redmond resident Bill Sizemore, is finally serving some time behind bars for felony tax evasion. Sizemore, who spent 15 years as the king of Oregon initiatives including the infamous Ballot Measure 47, was sentenced to 30 days. Kate Medema, a spokeswoman for Attorney General John Kroger, said Sizemore also owes the state $55,000 in back taxes and $2,000 for his court-appointed lawyer.
Sizemore set up PACs and nonprofits to do his political bidding and for his personal profit and was found in to have engaged in racketeering, fraud and forgery in order to qualify initiatives on the ballot. Most of these have been targeted at reducing the influence of labor unions and tying up Democratic donor money to keep it from flowing to candidates.
“Bill Sizemore refused to file his taxes to hide the fact that he was moving hundreds of thousands of dollars into his own pockets and into his corrupt initiative campaigns,” said Patrick Green, executive director of initiative watchdog group Our Oregon. “It was a cynical shell game in order to fund initiatives that should never have made the ballot.”
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2011.
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