Email: OLCC public safety director received rare bourbon
Kotek demanded and received the firing of some, but not all, Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission officials who cut in line to get bourbon
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A longtime Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission compliance officer picked up a bottle of rare bourbon in January 2020 from a Portland liquor store manager, a transaction arranged by an OLCC manager now on leave, according to an email released yesterday by the OLCC in response to public records requests from media outlets including Oregon Roundup.
Shannon Hoffeditz, a 29-year OLCC compliance veteran, was promoted in 2017 to be the agency’s Public Safety Director, a position in which she would “work with licensees, law enforcement and community stakeholders to support businesses, public safety and community livability through education and the enforcement of liquor and marijuana laws,” according to a Milwaukie Review about the promotion. The OLCC’s website currently describes Hoffeditz as the agency’s marijuana compliance director. It is not clear which compliance and enforcement position Hoffeditz occupied in January 2020.
In a January 27, 2020, email, Brian Flemming, then the OLCC’s Director of Retail Services, emailed Portland’s Menlo Park Liquor Store,
Customer will be in tomorrow January 28th to pick up bottle of Weller 107 Antique. Customer name is Steve Hoffeditz. Thanks for helping out this customer.
Someone named Bobby using the liquor store’s email address responded the next day,
Steve and Shannon came and picked the bottle.
Steve Hoffeditz, a former Clackamas Fire District employee, was married to Shannon Hoffeditz as recently as 2017, according to available online records. No records suggest a change in marital status by January 2020 or after.
Weller 107 Antique, is a rare bourbon that is part of the OLCC’s restricted purchase list, for which Oregonians must enter a lottery for a chance to buy. A year before Hoffeditz picked up her bottle, Portland TV news station KGW tested whether it could obtain Weller 107 Antique from Portland liquor stores:
KGW visited five different liquor stores to inquire about purchasing a bottle of Weller 107. Every store told us there were no bottles available for sale even though the online inventory indicated there was some in stock.
Flemming, who is now on something called “protected leave” from the OLCC, also reportedly arranged for unnamed “executives at OLCC” to receive rare bourbon in 2018, according to The Oregonian.
Hoffeditz, both in her role as OLCC’s public safety director and her current position of marijuana compliance director, reported to Richard Evans, the agency’s Senior Director of Licensing and Compliance, wrote a series of memos in December 2022, in which he found that then-executive director Steve Marks and a handful of other agency managers had violated Oregon law by using their positions to obtain rare bourbon largely unavailable to other Oregonians. Evans did not address Hoffeditz.
In February 2023, when The Oregonian broke the story about the OLCC’s practice of setting aside rare bourbon for purchase by OLCC employees and others, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek demanded the firing of managers who had engaged in the practice. Marks and five other managers were in fact terminated, with at least one of them filing a wrongful termination lawsuit against the state. Hoffeditz remains employed by the OLCC, according to its website.
As reported by Oregon Roundup, former OLCC chairman Martin Revoal requested rare bottles while on the Commission. After Revoal’s bourbon request was made public, Kotek praised Revoal for guiding the “OLCC through some of the most challenging moments of its history.”
The email was among documents produced by the OLCC to the Oregon Department of Justice pursuant to DOJ’s probe into the bourbon scandal. Kotek requested the probe in February 2023. DOJ said this week it would pursue no criminal charges related to the scandal in part because it said it could not identify specific transactions.
I will update this story if the Governor’s office responds to my request for a statement regarding why the Governor has demanded and received the firing of some, but not all, of the OLCC officials who were involved in the rare bourbon set-aside practice.
"Marijuana Compliance Director?"
That is even more ludicrous than Kotek's plan to shoo out the door political appointees like former OLCC Director Steve Marks (a longtime Demo political hack).
Just consider, for a moment, how "secure" the legal marijuana business has been? The Secretary of State was being overtly bribed while holding office and virtually every member of ruling Democratic cabal (my party BTW) was given paper bags containing thousands in cash from the (likely to be indicted) pair that runs LA MOTA.
And that is just the LEGAL weed business. Southern Oregon is awash in illicit marijuana plantations, many run by Mexican cartels who are essentially enslaving what the "progressives" usually call "vulnerable populations." In addition to which, Oregon's illicit shipment of weed to states where it is NOT legal, have continued to soar.
Back in 2017, Hoffeditz, who appears to have no law enforcement background outside OLCC was promoted. The CAPITAL PRESS then reported " Hoffeditz's promotion was a big deal for the cannabis industry. Her promotion was featured in an article in the online publication, "Weed News."
I don't get the fascination for brown liquor, but it is pretty clear the misdemeanor of Official Misconduct in the First degree is committed if a public employee seeks to use their position to obtain a benefit that they would not otherwise receive. But Ellen Rosenblum's Criminal Justice Division (which did not have original jurisdiction) took over a year to announce nobody could be charged.
One might almost think this is a good, old-fashioned, Soviet-style purge, not unlike when western reporters would notice high Kremlin officials would vanish from the reviewing stand during Mayday in Moscow in the 60s and 70s.
it will be interesting to see how our dear governor (nothing-to-see-here-just-move-on-Kotek) will reply to your request, if, indeed, she does. Big Brother could have learned a lot from her responses to pointed questions. think what George Orwell could have done with her quotes: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
don't give up, the journey of many miles starts with a single step (or in this case, more than a few).