By Hasso Hering
Albany Democrat-Herald | Posted: Thursday, July 3, 2008 12:00 am
As an engineer and an idea man, Allen Alley thinks problems have solutions.
That's why, he's generally optimistic about Oregon and its economy.
He ticks off Oregon's access to the Pacific, the weather, ports and air travel, natural resources like wind and solar.
"We are asset-rich," he said.
As for the price of energy and especially fuel, it can be handled by making vehicles more efficient.
For instance: A vehicle weighing more than 4,000 pounds is only about 4 percent efficient in terms of transportation if it carries one person. Most of its fuel is spent moving the vehicle rather than the driver. Solution: Make the vehicle much lighter and you can vastly increase the fuel efficiency.
Yes, but doesn't making a vehicle very light also make it hazardous?
An Indy car, he points out, weighs 1,000 pounds and can hit a wall at 100 mph without necessarily killing the driver.
Alley, 53, of Lake Oswego, talks about things like that while he's running for state treasurer as a Republican, facing Democrat Ben Westlund, a state senator from Bend.
He says that someone with his background - Purdue engineering degree, working on air bags for Ford in the 1970s, then on flight controls for Boeing, followed by business success as a venture capitalist and then chief executive of successful Oregon high-tech companies, capped by a stint in the administration of Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski - someone like that is ideally suited to be Oregon's treasurer.
The office, he points out, is responsible for the management of Oregon's money, including the $65 billion public employees' pension fund, ranking 41st in size among all the public and private pension funds in the world.
"It's a staggering amount of money," he says. And: "Actually, it's been managed pretty well."
Alley stopped in Albany this week for an interview and talk before the Monday Rotary Club.
He says he's traveling about the state now mostly to get acquainted. In an hour-long interview, politics came up only once.
Asked about his chances in a Democratic-leaning state, he said he was a successful venture capitalist and not a gambler and liked his chances of winning the office in November.
In 2007 he served as Kulongoski's deputy chief of staff, working in economic development, and he said four of the dozen people working on his campaign are Democrats.
He says it was his question - What do solar-cell makers need more than money? Polysilicon! - that resulted in the recruitment of Peak Sun, a manufacturer now building a plant in Millersburg.