By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

Defying predictions that a 2002 conviction for forgery and fraud would end his run in politics, staunchly anti-union ballot measure sponsor Bill Sizemore is back in business.

Sizemore has so far submitted 38 initiative petitions for the November 2008 ballot, many of them different versions of the same idea, filed to increase the odds of getting a favorable ballot title. Of those petitions, 29 are still active, 10 have been approved for circulation, and at least five have been sighted on the clipboards of Sizemore’s roving signature crews.

In the 1990s, Sizemore’s ballot measure machine was a major force in Oregon politics. His influence is said to have peaked in 1996, with the passage of Measure 47, a property tax limitation, or in 2000, when he had a record seven initiatives on the ballot. Either way, subsequently, the Sizemore operation fell on hard times. None of his seven measures passed in 2000. Union vigilance prevented him from qualifying two measures in 2002. His group Oregon Taxpayers United was legally dissolved in 2003. Fallout from a successful union lawsuit appears to have sidelined him in 2004.

But in 2006, he was back on the ballot, with an initiative that would have banned the use of credit scores in setting insurance premiums. The somewhat innocuous measure may have been designed to rehabilitate his image. It was defeated.

Judging by his latest crop of initiative petitions, he’s attempting a comeback in ’08.

Several other measures, not yet circulating, are aimed directly at union political clout or worker rights. One would ban public employee unions from making political campaign contributions. Another would ban “card- check” union recognition for public employees. A third would allow employers to deduct cost of employees’ medical and retirement benefits from the Oregon minimum wage they’re required to pay. Sizemore also introduced, and then withdrew, a repeal of the state’s “little Davis-Bacon” requirement that government-funded construction projects pay the prevailing wage.

But wasn’t he supposed to be out of business?

In May 2003, a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ordered damages of $2.5 million, dissolved Sizemore’s Oregon Taxpayers United Education Foundation, and issued an injunction restricting his political activities for five years.

But Sizemore sought ways to get around that judgment, just as he earlier got around — and crossed over — laws on signature-gathering and campaign finance reporting. He emptied his group’s bank accounts. He renamed his group. And he appealed the jury verdict.

In October 2006, an appeals court struck down the third of three counts of his conviction, on a legal technicality. That reduced his civil liability to about $300,000. Sizemore was jubilant. Both sides are now appealing to the Oregon Supreme Court. The Supreme Court doesn’t have to review the case, and normally does so only if it wants to use it to settle a particular point of law. Lawyers expect to learn some time in the next six months whether the Court will look at the case.

So far, the unions have gotten very little out of Sizemore. They went after him personally for collection, and when he sold some property were able to get about $16,000 out of him.

But union leaders say they have no regrets about the suit, despite close to a $1 million they’ve paid in legal bills. The suit revealed a great deal of unflattering information about Sizemore’s operation, and must have made many Sizemore donors pause, particularly when it seemed his motive was as much personal gain as furthering the cause.

Sizemore was not the first chief petitioner to pay for signatures, but he may be the first in Oregon to make a vertically integrated business out of it. As revealed in the lawsuit, Sizemore made money at every stage. His 2000 personal tax returns reported $213,000 income that year. In the 2000 election cycle, Sizemore collected a $65,000 salary from his Oregon Taxpayers United, but his signature-gathering company I&R paid Sizemore $50,000 directly and as much as $170,000 indirectly, including: up to $25,000 for construction work on his property; a $123,919 loan to Sizemore’s failing radio station; payments on his automobile, and $20,000 in American Express bills.

And his operation brought the initiative process to new levels of lawlessness.

“Until our suit exposed rampant abuse, it was like the initiative process was run on the honor system,” says Oregon Education Association staff attorney Mark Toledo.

The honor system assumes integrity.

But well before Bill Sizemore became a well-known political figure, his conduct raised questions about his integrity. During Sizemore’s 1998 campaign for governor, an Oregonian investigation brought to light the messy details of his failed carpet and toy companies.

Sizemore walked away from $358,000 in debts when Sizemore Carpet Brokers liquidated under bankruptcy protection in 1987. His Illuminated Toy Inc., founded in 1984, ceased operations in 1994, with unpaid debts of about $795,000.

Anybody can have a business failure. It was Sizemore’s business practices that raised eyebrows. Sizemore raised funds for his businesses by persuading members of his church and his softball team to loan him money, promising to double their money in six months. One fellow member of Portland Bible Temple cashed a life insurance policy to lend Sizemore $30,000, which the entrepreneur promised to return in one month with $3,000 in interest (That’s 120 percent annual interest). Instead it took years, and a lawsuit to recover the money. And he was the only creditor to get repaid. Another church member, dying of cancer, asked Sizemore in 1997 to return the $98,000 he was owed, and was told it would be repaid after he became governor. Later, Sizemore asked the widow to recant what she had told the Oregonian about the incident.

In the end, Sizemore stiffed his landlord, the factories that made his products, the IRS, and a printing company he wrote a bad check to. He used toy company money to buy land that he would then build his family’s home on. Later, he sold the company property and used proceeds to pay off personal income tax liens. The explanations he gave to the Oregonian of the details were contradicted by most of the individuals.

That was how he operated his toy business.

By 1994, Sizemore’s business was politics. The businessman who hadn’t paid his taxes now formed Oregon Taxpayers United, a political action committee, and devoted himself to raising money to wage ballot initiative campaigns. That year his Ballot Measure 8 won by 1,000 votes, requiring public employees to contribute 6 percent of their salary to their pensions. The measure was later overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court as a violation of contract rights.

In 1996, Sizemore was back with a referendum that overturned the Legislature’s plan to build statewide light-rail system. He also won passage of Measure 47, a property tax limitation to cap property taxes, limit increases to 3 percent per year, and establish a double-majority requirement for local temporary future tax increases.

In 1998, he went after public employees unions again; his Measure 59 would have restricted their ability to participate in politics. It was narrowly rejected by voters, but union political action committees reportedly spent over $4 million opposing the measure.

Sizemore had a sure thing: Win or lose, his measures would drain union treasuries, weakening their ability to pursue other issues.

It was a cynical purpose, said judges on the appeals court panel, and the cynical means by which he conducted the campaigns spurred voters to approve Measure 46 in 2004, which banned the “bounty,” by prohibiting initiative campaigns from paying by the signature.

But abuses continued. Media accounts about circulators paid in cash on street corners led the Bureau of Labor and Industries to aggressively prosecute whatever violations of Measure 46 they could prove.

Now, the Oregon Legislature is preparing to clean up the initiative process. The House Committee on Elections, Ethics and Rules, chaired by Diane Rosenbaum, began hearings on initiative abuse in January.

“I am not an opponent of the initiative process,” said Rosenbaum, who herself was a chief petitioner on a ballot measure that increased the minimum wage. “But we believe it has been hijacked.”

“A lot of people wonder why can’t we just ban paid petitioning altogether. Rosenbaum said. “The problem is the Oregon constitution doesn’t allow it.”

“By 2002 the ideal of citizen volunteers gathering signatures from their friends, neighbors and colleagues had long ago disappeared,” Ellen Lowe told Rosenbaum’s committee Jan. 31. Lowe was a longtime lobbyist for Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, a social justice group. “Instead,” Lowe said, “every initiative season, armies of mercenary signature gatherers descended on our state looking for a quick and easy buck …. Too often last year Oregon’s initiative system looked more like drug deals than democracy.”

Sizemore told Rosenbaum’s committee he didn’t like that last suggestion.

“I don’t believe you get anywhere by pursuing chief petitioners,” Sizemore testified Jan. 31. “It isn’t possible to control what everybody circulating your petition does.”