Penalty triples for former head of Oregon's Liquor and Cannabis Commission over bourbon scandal
The former head of Oregon's Liquor and Cannabis Commission will pay a $1,500 fine for using his state position to divert and obtain rare bourbon for himself.
In a 7-1 vote Friday, eight of the nine present members of Oregon's Government Ethics Commission approved the penalty for Steve Marks, former state liquor and cannabis director, after rejecting a much smaller $500 fine proposed in May.
Marks, who resigned from his position in February of 2023 after 10 years leading the agency, was one of six high-level liquor and cannabis employees implicated in a long-running scheme to divert rare bottles of liquor to stores where the employees could obtain them. All have either resigned or been fired. The others are also facing ethics penalties.
Commissioner Iván Resendiz Gutierrez, the only member to vote against the $1,500 penalty, said he wanted Marks to pay either $5,000 — the maximum civil penalty — or no less than $3,600.
'I think the penalty should be significantly higher, and the reason for that is that he was an agency director,' Resendiz Gutierrez said.
Commissioner Jonathan Thompson countered that, 'There's no fine that we can impose greater than what they went through in the press and losing their jobs.'
Robert Steringer, Marks' lawyer, said his client is prepared to accept the fine.
The Oregonian first reported on the years of diversions of rare liquors by Marks and employees on Feb. 8, 2023, following a records request that included an interagency personnel investigation.
An investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice that wrapped up in 2024, however, brought little to support a potential criminal case and agency lawyers opted not to pursue charges. In their investigation, they detailed challenges in tracing and proving who bought which bottles where, because of a convoluted distribution system for inventory and point-of-sale record keeping.
The Oregon Ethics Commission based their own investigation and fine on the evidence it had from an interview with Marks where he admitted to diverting and purchasing a single $329.99-bottle of rare Pappy Van Winkle 23 bourbon.
Susan Myers, executive director of the Government Ethics Commission, said the $1,500 fine is an 'appropriate resolution.'
'It's five times the amount he paid for the bottle, three times more than what the prior settlements of others involved were,' she said. 'It is an appropriate resolution given its one bottle, and recognizing that he was the director and, as you say, is held to a higher standard.'
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