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NO REGRETS FROM WALKER.

Article Excerpt
Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

Vicki Walker had barely settled in as a freshman legislator in early 1999 when she was warned to steer clear of the thorny politics that enmesh the State Accident Insurance Fund.

"I was told to leave it alone," the Democratic state senator recalled. "I even got a note from (then-Gov. John) Kitzhaber's staff at one point saying, 'You're treading into difficult ground.' '

Walker said she has no regrets about disregarding such advice. However, the outspoken Eugene lawmaker concedes that she's paid a price - emotional and perhaps political - for opposing SAIF and its former consultant, ex-Gov. Neil Goldschmidt.

The one-term Democratic governor gave up public life earlier this year after Walker helped expose that he repeatedly had sex with a 14-year-old girl in the 1970s, while he was mayor of Portland.

Walker filed an ethics complaint on Dec. 8 against SAIF, accusing it of underreporting its lobbying expenditures, later terming it "an agency that is out of control."

Her crusade against SAIF has helped its chief rival in the insurance industry, the private insurer Liberty Northwest, by generating public distrust of SAIF while Liberty pushed an initiative - state Ballot Measure 38 - that proposes to abolish the state-owned, tax-exempt SAIF corporation. The measure is on the Nov. 2 general election ballot.

Sen. Ben Westlund, R-Bend, called Walker gutsy as well as passionately zealous in her campaign to hold SAIF and Goldschmidt accountable. But he said she's gone too far in associating the two.

Westlund worries that by fueling a public perception that SAIF is "running amok," Walker is playing into the hands of SAIF's marketplace rival...

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