Low $ 500 fine for the top -Olcc

The state ethics committee rejected a proposed agreement of $ 500 against the former executive director of the Oregon Liquor and the Cannabis Commission because of its role in the deflection of search engine candy.

At the same time, an examination of another manager of the spirits agency revealed new details about the program that sent additional bottles of Pappy van Winkle Bourbon in a Milwaukie Spirituos business as a “reward” to put bottles with a close bourbon into the hands of OLCC employees.

The Ethics Commission of the government of Oregon voted on Friday with 7: 1 for rejection of the fine as an insufficient for the former OLCC Executive Director Steve Marks.

Marks had agreed to the civil penalty that he had used his position to get a coveted bottle of Pappy van Winkle Bourbon. According to the Liquor Commission records, Marks said that he bought Pappy Van Winkle for 23 years between 2019 and 2022 and said that he paid 329.99 US dollars, the list price.

A internet search shows this special bourbon's special year, which is sold online for thousands of dollars.

Ethics commissioners pushed back the proposed fine, with several argued that it was too low in view of the leadership role of the markings.

“I think a state agency leader, like other high -ranking civil servants, has a higher duty to comply with Oregon's ethics laws than that of them,” said the chairman of the Commission, David Fiskum, during the meeting.

Member Dan Mason agreed and said that the ethics committee should “go back to the drawing board” with brands and his lawyer Robert Stinger.

Stinger reached on Monday, Stinger said that Marks “would continue to work with the ethics committee in good faith” in order to solve this matter.

The voice of the ethics committee means that its employees will resume negotiations with brands and his lawyer on the amount of the civil penalty.

In the meantime, the ethics authority has completed an investigation by Boba Subasic, the former Chief Information Officer of the Liquor Commission.

Subasic and markings were part of half a dozen managers who had organized a state personnel examination found to buy bourbons that were difficult to find, which were produced by the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky and thus distract them from the general public.

The ethics committee achieved settlements with two commission executives – Bill Schuette, the former business manager, and Kai Nakashima, director of information services. Everyone agreed to pay $ 500 for the use of their positions in order to access the sought-after bourbons, such as recordings.

Cases in which the former deputy director Will Higlin and Chris Mayton, the director of the distilled spirits program, are still out of the question.

The ethics report on subasic shows how the managers used their access to closely guarded information about the inventory of the state inventory of coveted alcohol.

The report stated that Rich Evans, Senior Director of License and Compliance for the Spiritors Agency, said the Ethics Commission in an interview in July 2024 about the state's popular chance-to-Buy program. The drawing gives the public a shot, as is almost impossible to buy alcohol in the Oregon stores.

As part of the reserve stock program, the agency put aside – bottles that were held back as an insurance form against fracture or loss.

The information about the reserve inventory was not generally known in the agency, said Evans of the Ethics Commission. He said that employees of the spirits agency “in the connoisseur” would request certain bottles in the reserve, which “meant that the bottle was taken out of the system and that no one is available to anyone”.

The bottles would then go to a spirits business so that the OLCC employee can buy, Evans said.

In some cases, the bottles have never made it into the store, said Evans. A Milwaukie Spirituos business “would know that he would calculate the employee and still receive 7% for the sale, but the employee would simply pick up the bottle in the warehouse,” he said.

Evans did not identify which spirits business the employee bottles would master. The report contains an interview with Patty Bumbarger, the former owner of a business, about six minutes from the Liquor Commission's offices at the Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard.

Bumbarger informed the ethics investigator that the Liquor Commission staff would send them to bottles by their employees. The employees paid the state's list price for the bottles.

She said the agency would send a few additional bottles of Pappy van Winkle that could sell it to her customers. She said she had a waiting list of customers after a bottle of Pappy van Winkle.

“We have never made a request for these bottles, the OLCC has just offered us,” she told the ethics investigator. “We believed that this was a” reward “for dealing with the OLCC employee with bottles.”

The Ethics Commission refers to Subasic's interview with a human resource investigator from the alcohol commission. In this interview, Subasic said that he acquired four or five bottles of Pappy van Winkle and Elmer T. Lee.

“And since the existence and availability of these bottles were confidential information, there is a predominance of evidence in this case that Boba Subasic promotes his personal gain through the use of confidential information, which he gained through the reason for his position at OLCC,” says the ethics report.

According to the report, which was an answer from his lawyers, Janet Hoffman and Rachael Burch, contained Subasic, which contains an answer.

“Mr. Subasic's decision to participate in a frequent and widely recognized practice, while an OLCC employee was not an ethics violation. At no time at the OLCC he used confidential information on his advantage. Use his position as a state employee to avoid and make a financial disadvantages and fail to reveal a conflict,” she told the Ethics Commission.

Susan Myers, Executive Director of the Ethics Commission, said on Monday that she would expect employees to take advantage of Subasic at his meeting in July. She said that the Commission would either check the examination at this point or agree with a proposed agreement.

– Noelle Crombie is a company reporter with a focus on punitive justice. Reach them at 503-276-7184; ncrombie@oregonian.com