Of course Eric will defend his idea--it's the ultimate incumbent-protection racket. Challengers are presented two opportunities: refuse the VOE money and be branded "bought and paid for" by the incumbent, or take the money and be unable to outspend your opponent who has tons of name recognition. It is such a scam, and sadly has suckered many of the good government crowd into thinking it is somehow progressive politics.

It's kind of hilariously sad that one of the first people to take advantage (literally) of this system suckered the city out of $92,000, however. Classic.

I too, like Blackmer, am "hopeful".

I'm hopeful Blackmer will find a good job somewhere else and pay back the $92K he helped give away so irresponsibly.

Only in Portland...

is that the limit now....$92000.00. we can steal up to that amount from the city and not be prosecuted? cool, i like that county sheriffs boat and think ill take it leaving me at least another 60 grand or so of larcenous credit. thanks opie

I heard this on OPB recently... What struck me is how sad this press release had to sound. "Uh, we found her..." -- and we're supposed to give the prize to...?? She has no job, no money, no way to repay the city. And we're supposed to be excited about them "finding" her? Woo-freakin'-hoo.

I wonder what happened to our friend Vladimir Golovan. Out of state as well?

I've gotta agree with rickyragg here. If you got to City Online and look at the sheets Boyles turned in, you don't have to get beyond the first page to notice multiple names from the same address, several apartments in the same building, etc. Take the whole thing, pin it to the fence and throw darts for your sample verification, and you're still going come up with abnormalities. Sten may not have come up with enough fine print, but the funds should have never been released. There's a lot of worthy causes that are struggling for funding right now and this woman who had defaulted on her student loans gets $150K and heads across the border. What a shame.

Poor Emilie. She didn't have the money to finance her candidacy, so she took out a payday loan from the City of Portland.

On her contract, in big black letters, the terms clearly stated "don't use this money for personal use. If you do, you have to pay the money back".

She violated the terms of the contract and now she's on the run, owing $92,000, a villain of epic proportions.

Too bad she's not a little old lady who just needed $200 for orthopedic shoes and got a payday loan but failed to pay it back. Then she'd be a saint.

Isn't a $92,000 saint more angelic than a $200 saint? I don't know. It's probably in the fine print somewhere.

A question for lawyers out there: can the city go after the people to whom Emilie gave the $92,000, to try to recoup some of the money? It's not like she's living high on the proceeds - she paid it to others. She may not have a job, but do the people to whom she paid exorbitant salaries? Did the 16 year old daughter spend the entire $15,000 already? Surely if the money they were given really were from robbing a bank, the bank would be able to ask for it back, not just from the robber. How is this different, legally?

And/or, can the city go to the property owner that leased her office space for a year, and ask for a refund or at least for the city to be able to use the rented space for the remainder of the lease?

My campaign volunteers, staff, and I put so much effort into making sure we followed all the rules and did everything right .... it seems unreasonable and unfair to read of a mere "hope" that Emilie's will somehow eventually make good on their debt.

There are rules against "preferences" and "fraudulent conveyances," whereby the city could try to get some money back from people to whom Emilie paid the taxpayers' money. But resort to such rules assumes that someone in City Hall takes this seriously, which I'm afraid is not a valid assumption.

Thanks, Jack. Sigh. But your readers should remember that some people took it seriously, at least. In my campaign, we discussed at length whether we should declare the value of two folding chairs loaned to my office, and if so, what it might be. I paid my staff a pittance compared with the bounty paid to Emilie's, didn't ask for extra money from the city despite Dan's excess spending, and returned $5,000 I could have spent. Yet still, it's the bad news that gets the headlines.

maybe someone could check OJIN and the court file to see her current address on the summons and service docs

I think we ought to give her the balance of the funds she returned, just to reward her for revealing how easy it is to milk the Campaign Finance rules for personal enrichment.

Vladimir and the Boyles girls are laughing all the way to the bank. Heck, we might as well rename the VOE program Portlanders out of Poverty (POOP), and begin an outreach program to get low income folks to apply for qualified candidacies. It's only a fraction of a percentage of total expenditures, right?

Another idea: get her on the ballot in Arizona, and she can "borrow" from Peter to pay Paul.

Then she can move to Maine!