OR-Gov: Dudley's basic math, or lack thereof

Carla Axtman

Yesterday morning, Republican Chris Dudley held a slapped together press conference at Sunset Transit Center in Beaverton. Presumably, the conference was to tamp down press reports of Dudley's bailing out on Oregon income taxes--along with an attempt to answer questions about the murkiness of his actual legal residency. This event also followed an odd Saturday conference call with Oregon Republicans who claimed that the stories about Dudley were "false and misleading", but they could never actually refute any of the facts in those new pieces.

Nigel Jaquiss, Willamette Week:

1. He (Dudley) insists he moved to Camas in December 1994 and after that spent “not much” time in his Portland home. He could not explain, however, why there was food in the refrigerator when he sold the Forest Heights home. He said the sporting equipment and clothes in the Portland house were simply left over from the 15 months he did live there. In answer to why he only sold the Portland home in May 1997 after his stint with the Trail Blazers ended rather than when he claims he moved to Camas, Dudley says he previously tried to rent the home and listed it for sale “for a while,” but it took time to sell.

2. Dudley gave an equivocal response to WW’s request that he make public his tax returns for the years 1994 to 1998. He says he’s unsure he has the returns and is not enthusiastic about providing them if he does. “That was 17 years ago,” he says. Asked how his campaign was able to generate such specific totals for the amount of Oregon taxes he paid during those years (the campaign has said he paid about $463,000) if he lacked his returns, Dudley’s said “that was an estimated figure.” Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber agreed last week to make his tax returns for the same period public.

3. Dudley clarified an important point: as a Washington resident, he would pay Oregon income tax on Oregon-source income only. Last week’s WW story got that point wrong, asserting that he paid Oregon taxes on his entire Trail Blazer salary. In fact, as tax professionals have said subsequently, Dudley would owe Oregon taxes only on the 41 home games played in Portland, not his entire salary. For the 41 road games, he would pay income taxes to those states which have such taxes. In that period, there were six NBA cities (Seattle, Miami, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio) located in states with no income tax; while many others were located in states with lower taxes than Oregon’s then-top rate of 9 percent. Dudley says his earnings from interest and capital gains (which would be tax free to a Washington resident) were “negligible” during that period but “where you do save money is games played in other states.”

4. In response to questions about various indicators that tax authorities use to determine where somebody is domiciled, Dudley provided mixed responses. He says he attended the Lifepoint Church in Camas and gave the names of restaurants and the locations of two movie theaters he frequented. He also noted he celebrated his 30th birthday in Camas in February 1995 and says he spent much of his time there after proposing to his wife in December 1996. But he conceded he never established a bank account in Washington; never registered to vote there and took more than a year after allegedly moving to Washington to register his car there.

So basically, all the new information Dudley's added simply makes his hole deeper.

The dollar figure that Dudley's campaign has been citing as the amount he paid in Oregon income taxes is something they appear to have ballparked at best, made up at worst. They've never actually checked how much he paid. So until these tax records are released, even Dudley himself isn't sure of the amount.

Dudley either can't tell us or is refusing to tell us how much time he spent in the Portland house when he was allegedly a Washington resident. He spent enough time there for neighbors to say he was "there a lot" and can't seem to explain the food in the refrigerator or the clothes in the closet. Apparently he liked us enough to stay in the PDX house, just not enough to actually pay his share in income taxes like his Blazer counterparts Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter. Certainly Porter and Drexler (and 20+ other Blazers that played with Dudley) had accountants who may have advised them to bail on our state. Yet they managed to keep their claim to Oregon residency and pay our income taxes.

They'd certainly be more qualified under the circumstances to be Governor than Dudley.

Another puzzler: Dudley says his earnings and interest in capital gains were negligible during this period. Dudley played six years in the NBA before he came to Portland. He had to have been making six figures, if not seven, per year. He never did any serious investing during this time? Seriously? Dudley's day job is a "wealth strategist" at a high-end money management firm. So we're now to believe that he sucked so bad at investing his 6-7 figure per year NBA salary that his investment and capital gains interest were "negligible" but a cushy firm will hire him to manage other people's money?

By Carla Axtman Sept. 14, 2010