State attorney general John Kroger discusses agenda at PSU

Recently sworn-in Oregon Attorney General John Kroger spoke to a room of students, faculty and community members on Wednesday afternoon in the Portland State Urban Center building to announce his agenda for the upcoming legislative session.

The Attorney General said he chose PSU to announce his agenda because of the potential help he would need from students and scholars to lobby the legislature for proposals.

The Attorney General discussed five new policy proposals that centered on the theme of law enforcement. “My main goal is to not change laws, but to enforce the laws we’ve got,” Kroger said.

In no particular order, Kroger went over the highlights of the five proposals, starting with his ambition to fight Internet sex predators by restoring funding to the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Program.

Kroger said that Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s budget does not provide adequate funding for ICAC, a program that has led to 65 convictions of sex predators in two years.

Kroger’s next proposal was in regards to protecting Oregon consumers against unfair collection practices by debt collectors. He explained that he is deeply troubled that debt collectors and lending institutions are exempt from the statutes of the Unfair Trade Practices Act.

He used examples of collectors harassing customers with obscenities and said, “We will not tolerate abusive collecting practices.” As a former prosecutor on the Enron scandal, Kroger said he takes consumer fraud very seriously and will not tolerate it in Oregon.

Kroger also said he wants to create a civil rights enforcement unit. With this unit, the Oregon Justice Department would have greater ability to prosecute discriminatory practices.

Kroger also proposed an increase in the Department of Justice’s organized crime unit to tackle Oregon’s crisis combating methamphetamines.

“About 90 percent of child abuse and neglect cases are related to meth,” Kroger said. “And about 80 percent of property crimes.”

He added that about 90 percent of the meth in Oregon originates in Mexico, and the increased funding to the organized crime unit would help prosecute major drug traffickers. Kroger also expressed his intention to work with the governor to improve drug treatment and prevention programs.

Rounding out the policy proposals was the attorney general’s ambition to create an environmental crimes unit to prosecute polluters. Holding polluters accountable was a main platform that Kroger based his campaign on, and he stated that he wanted Oregon to become the leader in environmental protection—unlike Alaska and Idaho, where he said that constituents care far less about environmental protection.

Currently, Oregon does not have a single full time environmental crimes prosecutor, which has allowed repeat polluters to get away with minimal consequences, Kroger said. He used an example of a company that had received 61 violations for pouring deadly chromium into Portland sewers.

The unnamed company got away with fines as low as $150. By working with the Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, Kroger said he wants the fines and penalties that come from prosecution to go to DEQ for better enforcement, instead of having the money go back to the general fund, which is the current practice.

Kroger said that his five policy proposals come with a price tag of less than $2 million a year, less than 1 percent of the Department of Justice’s biennial budget. He ended by stressing the importance of having students get involved in lobbying the legislature to help pass his agenda.

When asked by a student whether he believes his proposals will pass, Kroger responded, “I don’t know … I think I will succeed on some, but face some tough battles on others.”

He admitted he will be up against some powerful lobbyists who will like to see his agenda falter.

“I could not live with myself if I walked away from this,” Kroger said. “This is the right thing to do.”