Gordon Smith: Demanded Tax Breaks For Company While Giving Sweetheart Mortgages For Executives.
Smith Stands For Giveaways for Special Interests, Low Wages for Workers
Gordon Smith was keeping wages low for his workers and opposing an increase in the minimum wage for workers across the country, while he was doling out sweetheart mortgage deals for his company’s top executives.
In 2001, Smith Frozen Foods was in such dire straits – according to the company – that it petitioned to cut its property taxes. That move ultimately cost the town of Weston $300,000. But strangely the company was doing well enough that it could afford to give a mortgage to a top executive.
On January 27, 2001, the company’s acting president, Kelly Brown, took out a $65,000 mortgage from Smith Food Sales for a lot at the Langdon Lake Resort.
“Gordon Smith always puts the executives in the corner office before the workers on the line,” DPO Chair Meredith Wood Smith said. “Just like the financial titans on Wall Street, Smith expects hand outs from taxpayers, while he doles out Cadillac deals for his executives. Simultaneously, he has been an enemy for working people – opposing the minimum wage, denying his workers health care benefits and living wages, and firing his workers when cheaper labor is available.”
This wasn’t the first time, or the last, that Smith has helped his executives out:
• On June 15, 2003, Smith Food Sales extended a $17,000 mortgage for “agricultural purposes” to Kent and Tracey Perkes.
• On July 1, 1994, Smith Frozen Foods extended a $75,000 mortgage to Nicholas A. Smith, Garrett Packing executive, for property in Milton Freewater.
• On June 6, 1991, Kent Perkes received a $30,000 mortgage from Smith Frozen Foods for a lot in the West Hills Addition of Pendleton.
• On February 21, 1990, the executive Vice President of Smith Frozen Foods, David Jensen, took out a mortgage for an undisclosed sum from Smith Frozen Foods.
The stark contrast in Smith’s priorities are of no surprise to Oregonians – in the Senate, he voted repeatedly against raising the minimum wage while he was giving hundreds of billions in handouts to the largest multinational corporations in the world.
After promising to favor a hike in the minimum wage, Smith voted 10 times against increasing the minimum wage.
[CQ; Vote 278, 9/2/98; Vote 94, 4/28/99; Vote 239, 7/30/99; Vote 356, 11/9/99; Vote 75, 7/7/00; Vote 76, 7/7/00; Vote 26, 3/7/05; Vote 257, 10/19/05; Vote 179, 6/21/06; Vote 23, 1/24/07]
Instead Smith authored one of the biggest special interest giveaways in history. Smith brags about a tax giveaway he inserted into the JOBS Act that gave special interests more than $265 billion. Smith said the giveaway would create 650,000 new jobs. Instead, companies cut thousands of jobs in America. [Smith Press Release, 5/11/04; New York Times, 6/24/08; Slate.com, 4/13/06]
“Whether in Washington or Weston, Gordon Smith puts his own interest above that of working families,” Wood Smith said. “He scored a federal contract worth millions, his executives got mortgages, but families in Weston paid the price. Just like in Washington where he stands up for special interests on Wall Street while taxpayers are left holding the bag. Gordon Smith has just got it wrong.”
Posted October 20, 2008 Smith Frozen Foods 2 comments
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Oregon deserves the best of three, not the least-worst of two. http://www.DaveBrownlow.com
Oregon deserves the best of three, not the least-worst of two. Why is it the best of three was excluded from Oregon's televised debates??
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