ATTORNEY GENERAL John Kroger is struggling to persuade the
state legislature to fund two new units in his office to tackle civil
rights violations and environmental crimes. But the man who prosecuted
Enron and mafia bosses in New York is facing a turf war, budget issues,
and some
skepticism about his motives before he can clean up
Oregon.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) already tackles statewide
civil rights violations relating to employment, housing, and public
accommodations; its commissioner, Brad Avakian, has been fighting
Kroger to defend his civil rights patch.
“My concern is that we don’t use $1.5 million from the state’s
general fund to duplicate services,” says Avakian.
Kroger says he wants to be able to go beyond BOLI’s purview, not
take over Avakian’s cases. For example, he wants to prosecute
multinational corporations engaged in discrimination across state
lines. “Another example would be if a group of protesters illegally
block access to a reproductive services clinic, we could get the clinic
opened back up,” he adds.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Floyd Prozanski says Kroger and
Avakian failed to agree on a division of the turf at a meeting in his
office in April, and that he thought Kroger had abandoned his plan to
pursue civil rights prosecution as a result.
“There was this issue of duplication of services,” says Prozanski,
who, at the attorney general’s request, agreed to pull amendments
from Senate Bill 797 that proposed to set up a civil rights division in
Kroger’s office from Senate Bill 797 at the attorney general’s request.
“My understanding is that he didn’t have it included because there
wasn’t a meeting of the minds between BOLI and the attorney
general.”
Regardless, Kroger is now pursuing funding for civil rights and
environmental prosecutors in the Senate Ways and Means
Committee—effectively doing an end run around Prozanski’s group.
Kroger disputes Avakian’s $1.5 million projected cost for the
prosecutors, and says he’s hoping to secure $500,000 in federal funding
for his office’s environmental prosecution arm, leaving the state to
pay just $300,000 for civil rights prosecution.
The state is currently facing a $3.8 billion budget hole, so Kroger
says he’s even
prepared to make administrative cuts in his office
to pay for the civil rights prosecutors from his existing budget, if
necessary. On the environmental prosecution side, Kroger points out
that environmental litigation could potentially bring in millions of
dollars in damages for the state.
Kroger was quoted on the BlueOregon blog at a meeting of the
Multnomah County Democrats Central Committee last week saying he was
“really pissed off” about people allegedly blocking change on this
issue. But Kroger says the article implied he was criticizing
Democratic legislators when, in fact, he was just hoping to motivate
people to push their legislators to support the plan.
“I’m trying to get people fired up to go down to Salem,” he
says.
Behind the scenes, Kroger has also been accused of political
grandstanding so that he can bolster an eventual run for the governor’s
office with a series of high-profile prosecutions.
“I think whenever you try to do anything in politics, there are
people who will try to interpret it cynically,” Kroger responds.
“That’s one of the reasons I’ve been very unequivocal in my statements
that I am not running for governor.”
Regardless, those who stand to gain from the spat are pleased that
more attention is being paid to civil rights prosecution in Oregon.
“I actually think there is kind of a power play going on here,” says
civil rights advocate and former State Legislator Jo Ann Bowman. “But
it doesn’t exactly hurt my feelings that we have two white men arguing
about who has more authority to enforce civil rights.”
Bowman says she’s more interested in holding Kroger accountable if
he does manage to secure civil rights prosecution powers. Kroger was
due to appear on Bowman’s KBOO radio show late last week, but didn’t
show up.
“He didn’t show, he didn’t call,” says Bowman. “A cynic would say it
was because he was scared of some of the questions I was going to ask
him about whether he plans to sue police departments who have been
proven to carry out racial profiling.”
Kroger says he has since apologized to Bowman for not showing up,
and that he got caught on a call with his wedding planner. On racial
profiling, he says he is unsure whether his office would have legal
authority to sue police departments, but that it is important for his
office to work with police departments to ensure that racial profiling
is not happening.
Despite being stood up, Bowman says she continues to support
Kroger’s effort to secure funding for civil rights prosecutors, adding
that Avakian’s civil rights record is “pretty poor.”