HD-49: Dems accuse Nelsen of fiscal mismanagement in campaign, school board

House Democrats are questioning state House candidate John Nelsen’s fiscal management skills after his campaign has run up a debt in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and the school board that he sits on reported it would have to freeze its budget.

Michele Rossolo, the executive director of the Democrats' FuturePAC, said that Nelsen’s campaign figures, coupled with the Reynolds School District budget crisis, should make voters think twice about sending Nelsen (R-Wood Village) to Salem. On Thursday, Nelsen’s campaign had a balance deficit of $429,205.56, according to the latest ORESTAR figures.

"Now as we see him handle his campaign money, we see the same overspending; we see the same lack of accountability we saw on the school board. This is not the guy voters want to send to Salem in a budget crisis," Rossolo said in a statement. "It appears Nelsen is using the same accounting techniques in his campaign as he did as chair of the Reynolds School Board. And look, both of them are in a mess."

Nelsen’s campaign manager Rebecca Tweed said that their current ORESTAR numbers were inaccurate. ORESTAR figures can be off on a minute by minute basis because a campaign can wait up to seven days before reporting a change in finance figures. Nelsen’s ORESTAR transactions also seemed to be missing a couple transactions outside of that seven-day period, including contributions from Oregon Concrete & Aggregate Producers Assn PAC and the Oregon Farm Bureau Political Action Committee, which both came on October 2.

Tweed said that she and several campaigns had been dealing with technical difficulties with the ORESTAR system, but state election officials said the system has been running smoothly.

Tweed also said the campaign had incurred some debt, but she seemed unconcerned about it.

“We don’t run up any debt that we can’t pay back,” Tweed said Tuesday.

Nelsen has been trying to compete dollar-for-dollar with his campaign rival, Nick Kahl (D-Portland). Kahl has received extensive support from FuturePAC and other organizations. Kahl’s in-kind support totals $297,133.13, while Nelsen’s in-kind support has totaled $67,637.55. Kahl has also taken in $142,608.34 worth of contributions, while Nelsen has raised $90,527.60.

As for the school board, Tweed cautioned that the Democrats were simply looking to use the issue against Nelsen, who is a volunteer on the school board.

An article in the Gresham Outlook published Wednesday reported that the school board, of which Nelsen is the chair, was pointing the finger at former superintendent Terry Kneisler of the Reynolds School District fiscal mismanagement, whose budget was off between $3 and $4 million. According to the Outlook, Nelsen said he and other board members were misled on the school district’s budgeting practices.

“I led in establishing of a set of measurable goals around fiscal management and student achievement (a first for our district). In January 2008 we brought in a Certified Public Accountant to report to the board on what we needed to know, not what the administration wanted us to hear,” Nelsen said in the Outlook. “By the end of the school year it was clear that the administration had failed to accomplish its student achievement and fiscal management goals.”