North Coast Oregon

Articles listed under the tag: Betsy Johnson

Betsy Johnson Under FBI Criminal Investigation

by Tryan Hartill

Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, who admitted to violating state ethics laws earlier this year, is now under a criminal investigation by the local FBI office.

Three sources who have been interviewed by investigators say the FBI since last summer has been looking into business dealings by the Democratic senator. Pete Williamson, the former executive director of the Port of St. Helens, said he’s one of the people interviewed by the FBI, but he declined to discuss what the investigators have been looking at or why they suspect Johnson might have broken the law.

WWeek has more

More Local News

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Tommy D. Walker, 29, of Clatskanie was killed Monday in a logging accident in eastern Clatsop County. Walker was part of a crew falling timber in the Big Creek area outside Knappa when the accident occurred.

• Wave Energy receives shot in the arm from the State.

Oregon’s new wave energy association just received $1 million from the state, the first allotment in a $4.2 million budget approved by the 2007 state Legislature.

The Oregon Wave Energy Trust (with the apt acronym: OWET) will serve as a clearinghouse for wave energy information, assessment and development. The trust includes industry, academic and state agency representatives and is designed to assess the costs and benefits of the emergence of this new form of renewable energy.

• Astoria Fishermen Boys Basketball

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• Seaside Seagull Boys Basketball

Seaside loses to the Tillamook Cheesemakers 55-49.

On Besty Johnson

by Tryan Hartill

Since the Betsy thing started a few weeks ago, quite a few people that I have talked to brought up the point that all this came about because she is planning a run for Gov in a few years. They also say that her adversaries want to torpedo her candidacy before it gets off the ground and that they have probably succeeded.

To this I say hogwash!

Name Recognition

If there is one thing this whole deal has done, it has put Betsy’s name all over the place. Unless you’re an Oregonian living underground, after this you know who Betsy is and what she looks like. You know where she lives, which counties she represents and that she is a Oregon Senator.

No Major Screw ups

From this point on, Betsy will be dotting her “i”s and crossing her “t”s. She will watch all future conflicts very closely because she knows she is on the radar. If she didn’t get busted for this, she would get that much more brazen with every passing year.

Sympathy

What she did didn’t turn out nearly as bad as the first few stories. The first few in hindsight seemed a bit over-hyped. Most of us were waiting for more skeletons to appear and figured this was just the tip of the iceberg. But it wasn’t.

Once I explain this, so far no one has disagreed.

Anyone else see is different?

Betsy! Johnson: She Screws up...Does it even matter?

by Tryan Hartill

Short answer no.

Figures though that the one night a fail to stay awake till midnight (When the Oregonian stories are released) Betsy! is on the front page.

The most interesting part of this is that the Oregonian was after her almost a week ago about this particular bill.

From the May 26th edition:

An Oregon lawmaker is the chief sponsor of a rural airports improvement bill that could help her family’s aviation business. Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, said Friday she plans to declare a potential conflict of interest when Senate Bill 807 comes up for a vote on the Senate floor, but she defended her work on the measure…....“If there’s a conflict, I honest-to-God don’t see it,” Johnson said. “I have no qualms” about sponsoring the bill, she said.

Johnson said she plans to declare a potential conflict of interest because “I am so jumpy around here, I’m ready to declare a conflict on anything.” But she also acknowledged a potential financial tie. “Will more planes come in, so we sell more gas? Maybe,” Johnson said. But she said that’s a minor concern compared with the overall good the bill could do.

I have know idea whether she contacted the paper about this issue, or if reporters were prodding her, but I have feeling the Oregonian reporter knew what was up with the recent land sale and gave her a chance to come clean. But she showed a general lack of “truthyness” in her response.

Now from today’s article which is written by the same 2 reporters:

In late 2004, state Sen. Betsy Johnson bought 36 acres of farmland for $635,000 in her hometown of Scappoose next to the airport. Three months later, she sold the land to a developer for a $119,000 profit.

And within weeks, Johnson introduced a bill in the Legislature to promote special airport access for private landowners—something the developer needed to turn the land into an industrial park catering to the aviation business.

Is there proof that she scammed this whole deal? I doubt we will ever know unless someone involved wants to come forward and explain how things went down. But anyone reading the article can smell something fishy about the whole thing. Why would a plot of land increase by $119,000 in value in only 3 months?

But really no one really cares, this will not change anything in the mind of her supporters. This may make her heavily rumored run for Governor a bit tougher. But this will no way affect her local appeal.
She is at every large function and fundraiser. Always has the mic in her hands and then proceeds to throw a thousand bucks here $500 there and then sneaks out the back door to the local bar during breaks.

But really what is a thousand bucks to a multi-millionaire like Betsy?
It would be like us working class folks tossing a dollar in the cancer jar at Safeway.

And where is our applause? Why does no one call us God?

Update

Here is a short news blurb and interview with BJ on KATU.

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