The scandal in a nutshell: One party rule results in corruption. Again. A governor in search of a legacy reportedly cooks the books, lies to lawmakers and gives out millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to shaky companies when taxpayers are being asked to shoulder the highest spending and highest tax burden in the history of the state.
As Lord Acton said,

The Governor, through his spokeswoman, Anna Richtor Taylor, denies he cooked the books to lowball the numbers for all the energy tax credits he wanted to give out. But apparently the Zero found otherwise:

State officials deliberately underestimated the cost of Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s plan to lure green energy companies to Oregon with big taxpayer subsidies, resulting in a program that cost 40 times more than unsuspecting lawmakers were told, an investigation by The Oregonian shows. Emphasis added.

 “Unsuspecting” Democrats? I’m having difficulty believing that one. Now they’re hoping to avoid being part of the scandal and have skedaddled like cockroaches when the light’s turned on. They now claim they didn’t know the game and now they’re backpedaling. I guess they were hoping the newspaper of record would do the usual and ignore the corruption filled state house.Again.

Rep. Phil Barnhart of Eugene, who was chairman of the House Revenue Committee in 2007, said he and his fellow Democrats were skeptical about handing out more tax breaks to businesses when other needs were going unmet. But they wanted to encourage what he calls the “green revolution” and Kulongoski’s goal of providing jobs while boosting the state’s energy independence.

How much did the Governor lie?

 According to documents obtained under Oregon’s public records law, agency officials estimated in a Nov. 16, 2006, spreadsheet that expanding the tax credits would cost taxpayers an additional $13 million in 2007-09. But after a series of scratch-outs and scribbled notes, a new spreadsheet pared the cost to $1.8 million. And when energy officials handed their final estimate to the Legislature in February 2007, they pegged the added cost at just $1.2 million for the first two years and $4.1 million for 2009-11. 

 The Governor made sure the books were cooked by one of his apparatchiks according to the Zero again:

Dave Barker, an analyst who is still with the agency, told The Oregonian that the initial cost estimates started high but got lower after he was told by his superiors to plug in smaller figures. (Emphasis added)

“What I would hear pretty consistently was, ‘We want to keep it conservative,'” Barker said.

And which companies got the tax breaks? Companies that promptly went out of business or which didn’t provide the number of “green jobs” as promised (surprise!). One company broke up its windmill proposal into nine parts in order to apply for nine tax breaks. So instead of getting just a $10 million dollar tax break, it applied for a $90 million tax break. The company almost got it. The head of the Energy Agency, Mike Grainey, was pressured into giving the company MORE than it should have gotten. He compromised at $40 million. He was later ousted by Governor Kulogoski, the same Governor who threw George Taylor out of his job as state climatologist (Kulongoski considered Taylor a man made global warming ‘denier.’ See here, here, here)
According to the Oregonian

Records also show that the program, a favorite of Kulongoski’s known as the Business Energy Tax Credit, has given millions of dollars to failed companies while voters are being asked to raise income taxes because the state budget doesn’t have enough to pay for schools and other programs.

Among them: 

• A wind energy project received four separate $10 million tax credits even though it will generate less electricity than projects getting one-tenth the $40 million subsidy.

• A Clatskanie ethanol plant got $12 million in tax subsidies plus a $20 million state energy loan, then promptly went bankrupt and stopped operating. The plant, Cascade Grains, claims it’s still owed $10 million in tax credits, and it may sue to try to get them.

• A Boardman tire recycling plant got $3.4 million even though, after more than two years, it has yet to recycle tires. Investors are suing founders of Reklaim Technologies, now known as McKinstry-Reklaim, alleging they were misled about the project’s solvency.

• Thirty-five companies that had applied for smaller tax breaks under the old rules were granted the higher subsidies — essentially giving them windfalls that cost taxpayers $2.1 million.

d what did some of the companies do with these tax credits? Sold them. For cash.   Gee, can’t wait for the corruption of the Cap and Tax. What could possibly go wrong?
Don’t worry Democrats, the Zero will feature another story soon which will try to downplay the corruption in state government. As a matter of fact, this story was followed up by one the next day which bought the state’s claim of more than 6,000 federal stimulus jobs. So you see, Democrats, the Zero will make up for outing you on this one.