Get a piece of the OLCC warehouse action

I see that the State of Oregon is out borrowing money again this week. $995 million, in fact. Here's the sales document.

I came across this as I scoured the internet looking for financial information about the state's liquor store operations, which have recently been exposed as being at least slightly corrupt. And as is revealed on page 6 of the document, $23 million of the new state borrowing will go toward erecting the OLCC's obscenely overpriced new warehouse in Canby; another $2 million of the loan will go toward the technology in that building.

This comes on top of a first round of borrowing last spring, when the state went on the hook for roughly $52.5 million for the warehouse and another $8.5 million for the IT. You math majors can see that so far we're up to about $75.5 million borrowed for the building and $10.5 million for the tech. Last year's bonds are yielding a nice tax-exempt return of up to 3.51 percent for those who fronted the money. I assume that this year, interest rates will be higher.

The overall budget for the new booze palace was recently reported as more than $145.7 million.

In flipping around in the offering documents for the two bond issues, I did come across some revenue and asset figures for the OLCC operation. If you word-search the docs for "liquor," some numbers come up. Maybe someone with time and expertise can analyze them. You would hope that someone in the Secretary of State's office or state Attorney General's office is going over them with a fine-toothed comb, now that misdeeds at the agency have been uncovered. But this being Oregon, I wouldn't bet on it. It's just a few bottles of whiskey; nothing to see here, folks, move along.