Breaking: The smoking gun on Val Hoyle corruption

August 16, 2023

Breaking overnight: Willamette Week obtained text messages and records revealing vulnerable Democrat Val Hoyle’s leading role in securing a $555,000 taxpayer grant for her La Mota donors’ shady non-profit.

“Val Hoyle colluded with her La Mota campaign donors, then lobbied furiously to send their shady non-profit $555,000 in taxpayer dollars. Hoyle’s corruption was so brazen, she did it over dinner paid for by La Mota’s CEO and in text messages.” – NRCC Spokesperson Ben Petersen

In case you missed it…

Val Hoyle Dined With La Mota CEO Rosa Cazares a Year Before Her Agency Awarded Key Grant
Willamette Week
Sophie Peel
August 15, 2023

U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) left her position as Oregon Labor Commissioner at the beginning of the year to assume a congressional seat. But questions from Hoyle’s time at Bureau of Labor and Industries continue to follow her—including her relationship with the charismatic co-founders of the embattled La Mota dispensary chain, Aaron Mitchell and Rosa Cazares.

[…]

Most notable is a $554,000 grant BOLI awarded to a nonprofit co-founded by Cazares last fall called ENDVR. While a council housed under BOLI called the Oregon State Apprenticeship and Training Council ultimately approved the grant, Hoyle personally vouched for the nonprofit and its leadership. After it was clear at a July 27, 2022 meeting that the council would not vote to give ENDVR the grant, Hoyle postponed the vote for a month and directed ENDVR to answer questions and come back with a stronger proposal. At the next meeting, the council approved the grant.

ENDVR had no track record of work, and had less than two weeks before applying had received 501c3 status. (WW later reported that the grant was never legally viable.)

When WW asked Hoyle in a spring interview if she had met with Cazares at any point about the grant, Hoyle said: “I don’t recall. I might have. I’m not saying I did or didn’t.”

Records obtained by WW, however, show that Hoyle met with Cazares and director of the apprenticeship and training division for BOLI, Lisa Ransom, at Portland City Grill on March 24, 2021. The topic of the meeting, according to a calendar invite: “Rosa Cazara, La Mota re: Cannabis Apprenticeship.”

A spokeswoman for Hoyle, Marissa Sandgren, says Hoyle believes Cazares paid for her meal that night, but that it was under $50. “If we knew then what we know now,” Sandgren said, “that dinner wouldn’t have happened.”

On June 11, 2021, Mitchell donated $20,000 to Hoyle’s political action committee. The donation, according to Sandgren, was made in cash—the typical way the cannabis couple made political donations. That was the second largest donation Hoyle received that year from an individual. (The first was a New York-based venture capitalist named Bradley Tusk.)

[…]

It was not until the following spring, after Hoyle announced that she would be running for U.S. Congress, that Mitchell and Cazares would donate to her campaign again. This time, the two collectively donated $5,800 to Hoyle’s congressional campaign. They did so on April 30—just two days before the application opened for BOLI’s grant program that ENDVR would apply to.

Hoyle told WW this spring that Mitchell and Cazares’ political support had nothing to do with her support for the grant.

“Are you asking if they bought their access into this apprenticeship program for $6,000?” Hoyle said at the time. “No.”

On July 27, the Training Council housed under BOLI that approved apprenticeship grants convened to hear proposals that had made it through initial vetting stages. ENDVR was one of them. That was the meeting where council members expressed reservations about ENDVR’s proposal, and Hoyle postponed the discussion.

Throughout that meeting, records obtained by WW show, Hoyle—from a personal phone, not her state-issued phone—texted Ransom about the ENDVR proposal.

When ENDVR president Laura Vega explained that the grant would only train four apprentices, Hoyle texted Ransom: “Is it really just 4 apprentices?”

Ransom responded that it was. (Vega had explained, at this point, that because it was a new apprenticeship program much of the money would go toward building the program so that it could train more people in the future.)

Hoyle texted back to Ransom: “There needs to be an explanation of how this will be more than 4.” Three minutes later she said in another text: “I’m going to clarify, people didn’t hear it in the way she said it.” Hoyle did, in fact, speak up at the meeting and reiterate that the program was a novel one that would require high start-up costs.

Ransom texted Hoyle shortly after: “Reminder the funding is intended to expand Apprenticeship and showing demonstrated value.”

Hoyle responded: “I understand.” In immediate subsequent texts Hoyle wrote: “You don’t need to convince me” and “It’s the board.”

Hoyle shortly after instructed ENDVR to take a month to answer Council’s questions and return with a fuller proposal. Then, she said, the council would take a vote.

Ransom then texted Hoyle: “There’s no meeting a month from now.”

Hoyle responded: “Well we will need to schedule one.”

The agency, now under new commissioner Christina Stephenson, terminated the grant this spring after WW’s March 29 report revealing La Mota’s tax delinquencies and fraught relationship with vendors.

Read more here.