Elvis Clark is the candidate for Oregon representative -HD41

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When I turned 14 years old, I changed and became a serious, studious student.  This became my drive through much of the next ten years of my life.

My fascination, passion for the field of economic analysis took root when I am a Junior at Tigard Highschool in Mr. Rod Monroe's Social Studies class.  (Side note:  A few years later, Rod Monroe ran and won political office and for several years was an Oregon State Senator.)

I studied the U.S. Great Depression (years 1929-1940) and how John Maynard Keynes, a British Economist, offered a monetary and government solution for refloating economies, such as that of the United States.  To this day, much of the world uses these Keynesian economic prescriptions for boosting economies that have fallen into recession or depression.

So, by the time I am a Junior in High School I knew I wanted to be an economist for my life's work.  I carried the belief at the time that social sciences such as economics could solve most every problem in the world.

Much of the post world war 2 period has been under the thumb of social sciences applied to governmental policy.  That is, until this last month June 2024, when the U.S Supreme Court finally ruled that the social sciences are rather subjective - the U.S Supreme Court rules at the end of June 2024 that government bureaucrats are not entitled to deference, as their use of social science is corruptible and can easily be manipulated.

I biked to Highway 99 in Tigard from my home and caught the number 12 TriMet bus into downtown Portland through much of the 1970s - these being my years attending Portland State University (PSU).

I am fond of my years riding the TriMet bus back and forth between Tigard and Downtown Portland, attending PSU.  I used my time on the bus to read my textbooks, preparing for the morning or next morning classroom sessions.

(TriMet in recent decades has lost its shine because of cycles where fare enforcement is let go and bad behavior on the bus and especially the MAX light rail system crops up to give riders a less than safe feeling about riding TriMet public transit.)

PSU had a highly respected economics department in the 1970s.  Professor Harold Vatter taught a series on Amercian Economic History that was superb.  Professor John Walker taught public finance economics.  Professor Tuscher taught monetary theory.

I also took several mathematics and statistics courses, like calculus, while earning my Master's of Science.  Economic Analysis uses quite a bit of statistical methods, although the pervasive problem for economics when trying to apply it - as with other social sciences - is a lack of accurate data to be had for analyzing and building an economic model construct.

In the 1970s, demand for electricity is increasing rapidly, and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is contemplating building as many as five new nuclear power plants to meet growing demand.

But the estimated cost of building 5 new nuclear plants at once gave pause to BPA decision makers as to whether or not to actually pull the trigger on building them.  So, that is when the BPA hired a bunch of economists, including myself, to help forecast the actual need for the proposed nuclear plants and whether other less costly electric supplies could be secured.

It took about 5 years of study and public relations to defend Bonneville for shelving the proposed nuclear plants.  As it turns out, Bonneville's wholesale rate for electricity increased sharply, from near zero, up towards 3 cents per Kwh in the early 1980s.

The hike in electricity rates caused the demand for electricity to slow dramatically such that there is no need to build the proposed nuclear plants, as once envisioned in the mid-to-late 1970s.

For the next 20 years at Bonneville, I attempted to forecast the cost of natural gas and other input prices for generating electric power.  Try as we might to forecast the future of such things as commodity prices, it really is impossible to do with any useful degree of accuracy.  But you get a paycheck for convincing your managers that this or that is the future.

I guess the best way to forecast a price of a commodity is just to go with the most recent price and look to history if the commodity price has a tendency to revert to a mean - and most do.

But if you were to do the latter, you are not really needed as a so-called "expert."  But rather than carry on as a pretend expert, I jumped at the opportunity when Bonneville offered an early retirement package that could help sustain me through the rest of my life.

In the two years I worked as a senior economist for the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC), I learned the ropes of how investor-owned utilities like PGE and Northwest Natural are regulated - the state's attempt to minimize utility rates.

Truth be told, rate regulation is in large part a game.  The utilities like PGE and Northwest Natural propose higher rate increases than need be, as a starting position for negotiating with the PUC.  What quite often happens is the utilities bid high, but in the back of their strategy, they hope to settle for half, or more, of their proposed rate increase.  And this indeed is what happens, typically.  The artificially high-rate increase proposals are halved by the PUC, typically, and rate payers end up being charged half of the initially proposed rate increases (just as the utilities had actually hoped). 

But in the interim between the rate increase proposal and settlement, PUC staff and Utility company staff spend many hours objecting to each other.  

After a couple of years of experiencing this rate regulatory gamesmanship, I am ready to leave the PUC and retire for good.

Since I left the PUC:

The PUC seems to have become even more of a political pawn since my last year at the PUC in 2010.  Governor Kate Brown in the mid 2010s, went around the PUC and negotiated a deal between the investor-owned electric utilities operating in Oregon (PGE and PacifiCorp) and environmental interest groups - having the investor-owned utilities agree to a plan of Net Zero.

Several of the PUC Board of Commissioners felt blindsided by the Governor, and in the aftermath of Brown's backroom deal, resigned from their seats of rate making power.

Since retiring from the big guy (government with a capital G) in the year 2010, I have been helping slow the growth of the big guy by volunteering for the Taxpayer Association of Oregon.  I provide the Taxpayer Association with economic analysis from time to time when requested and sometimes upon my own initiation.

In the above photo, the Taxpayer Association is key in lobbying and organizing a thousand property owners like the one above to stop this year's attempt by some in the Oregon legislature to undo the state's property tax limits.  The legislature is continually trying to undo Oregon's property tax limits.

The property tax limits have some quirks but if not for these limits, property taxes would be double what they are currently - making owning a home less affordable and causing landlords to raise rents even higher.

So, the Taxpayer Association is vital to keeping down property tax bills.

The Taxpayer Association also help stop Metro from passing a sharp increase in property taxes for building a hugely expensive light rail line extension to a car centric, successful mall in Tualatin, Oregon.  All three counties, including the most liberal Multnomah County, voted against Metro's proposed expensive light rail tax.

The Taxpayer Association has also successfully help stop several city urban renewal proposals - urban renewal is a hidden tax on basic city services as it redirects a portion of peoples' property taxes into slush fund accounts that cities use to pay for pet projects.  

At a certain point, after bleeding monies away from city services such as police, fire, parks and libraries; cities with urban renewal tend to come back asking voters for increases in property taxes.  Some cities require a public vote on urban renewal while others don't ask their voters for approval of their City leaders urban renewal schemes.

Since moving to Milwaukie in the year 2016, I have been active in my Neighborhood Association, Ardenwald-Johnson Creek.

I represent the Ardenwald-Johnson Creek Neighborhood Association on the City Advisory Committee - Public Safety Advisory Committee.

Milwaukie's Public Safety Advisory Committee works with Milwaukie's City engineering staff to prioritize road improvements, including adding bicycling and walking public improvements.

Improving multi-modal mobility is a top priority of mine and that of Milwaukie's Public Safety Advisory Committee.

I become somewhat keen on building out a bicycle transportation network, as the advent of electric bicycles is a bit of game changer in increasing mobility.  It is very difficult to get new road capacity built in Oregon these days, except that building new bicycle and walking paths is currently acceptable.

So, the Zen of mobility is saying go with building more bicycle pathways and hope new technology such as electric bicycles might speed Oregon's physical mobility.

Above are my (Elvis Clark's) four platform elements - framed in green border just above. 

 (1) Lower Utility Bills by waiting for the cost of some utility technologies to come down in cost before mandating them.  Great progress is being made in the invention of new low-to-no emission energy technologies, but they need to be affordable for electricity customers before they are mandated.

(2) Lower the cost of building new family-oriented housing by letting cities/counties access their land reserves just outside their urban growth boundaries - these lands being far cheaper than highly expensive inner-city lands.

(3) Allow children to access additional educational opportunities to bolster their knowledge, skills and abilities beyond their standard school coursework.

(4) Preserve and maximize medical care choice for Oregonians.

(posted by Elvis Clark on August 31, 2024)