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The St. Louis Business Journal named 88th District state representative candidate Shamed Dogan as a 30 Under 30 honoree for 2007. The following profile appeared in the print edition for the week of July 13-19, 2007.

Shamed Dogan, 28
Higher education coordinator, Regional Business Council

Next year Shamed Dogan may be looking for advice from his old boss, former U.S. Sen. Jim Talent.

Dogan announced in June that he is running next year for the Missouri House seat currently occupied by Rep. Neal St. Onge, R-Ellisville.

Dogan worked in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2006, serving three years on Talent’s staff. As Talent’s legislative assistant, he not only helped pass federal highway safety legislation but also helped draft a constitutional amendment that put the line-item veto back on the national agenda.

Upon his return to St. Louis last year, Dogan organized the Missouri Republican Party’s statewide minority and small-business outreach efforts.

Now he works as the higher education coordinator for the Regional Business Council, a consortium of executives from 100 of the region’s largest midcap companies, where he oversees the RBC’s mentoring program.

What has been your biggest accomplishment?

My biggest professional accomplishment was the small but satisfying part I played in Republicans taking back the U.S. Senate in 2002.

What charitable/volunteer activities are you involved in?

I volunteer through both the Urban League Young Professionals and the West County Jaycees.

What’s on your iPod?

Lots and lots of 80’s music and hip-hop, a healthy dose of Stevie Wonder, and a dash of classic rock.

What’s on your summer reading list?

The Missouri Revised Statutes. I wish I was kidding.

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As documented elsewhere on the Interwebs, Peter Kinder hosted a conference call for bloggers yesterday afternoon. If memory serves, he’s the first serious candidate in Missouri to do anything of the sort.

Conventional wisdom tells us that most, if not all, statewide candidates will hold open Q&As with bloggers this cycle. Common sense tells us something else.

The people who tell candidates what to “believe” and how to say it have enough problems dealing with the real media, so who wants to open themselves up to questions from hyperpartisan bloggers?

A: Peter Kinder and any other candidate with nothing to hide.

Let’s face it: The toughest questions Democrats can ask the Lt. Gov. right now involve Paul McKee. Which is, ironically, exactly what Peter wants to talk about this week. And next week. And the week after that. Every open and honest answer about McKee’s contributions segues nicely into riffs on Northside redevelopment and Peter’s work in St. Louis City.

Glasnost? Da!

When it comes to providing access to bloggers, we’re a long way from letting the Hancock kids read questions to Jay Nixon about the Second Injury Fund, and we’ll never hear Matt Blunt ask Howard Beale if he’d like to know more about fee office management. Still, Kinder’s approach to opposition bloggers — and the questions they ask — sets an exemplary example.

Related:

Live Blogging the Peter Kinder Blogger Conference Call [Missouri Politics]

Peter Kinder Conference Call: Liveblogging [24th State - Jim Durbin]

Kinder hopes for EcoDevo restart [CDT Politics Blog]

Kinder unveils new high-tech campaign site [SE Missourian]

TeamKinder.com

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The following op-ed from Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder will appear in this week’s print edition of the St. Louis Business Journal.

Gov. Matt Blunt would do the St. Louis area and the entire state of Missouri a great service by signing HB 327, the 2007 Economic Development Bill, which some critics have been urging him to veto.

The bill would extend and expand the Missouri Quality Jobs Program, the landmark legislation that in two short years has proved to be precisely what the Governor himself called it in his 2007 State of the State address – “the most important economic development tool we have ever had.”

It also would create a tax credit for land assembly in distressed areas, a feature that has received considerable misleading attention in the St. Louis media. The reality is that this credit would bring hope to portions of the St. Louis area that have been largely hopeless for half a century or more. And it would do the same in other depressed areas of our state.

Both initiatives are under attack from legislators inclined to view all tax breaks as bad. Such formulaic thinking flies in the face of the facts.

The Quality Jobs Program is artfully constructed to provide tax credits only after new jobs are in place. The state is never, therefore, betting on the come. It is, instead, rewarding companies after the fact for creating jobs featuring above-average wages and health insurance.

Since its inception in 2005, this program has helped cinch some of the biggest economic development projects in the St. Louis area, including Express Scripts’ move to North County, Pfizer’s expansion at Chesterfield, and Chrysler’s potentially $1 billion expansion at Fenton. In fact, between September 2005 and February 2007, 19 companies in the St. Louis area alone used the program to create 100 or more jobs each. More than a dozen other companies in every corner of the state have done the same.

This success, however, has created a problem. The $12 million in credits provided under the 2005 legislation are expended. The bill on the governor’s desk would provide for $30 million more. With studies showing that each dollar of incentives creates $3.18 in new state tax dollars, the money would clearly be well spent.

So too would the incentives provided under the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit.

One reason distressed urban areas have proved so difficult to redevelop over the decades has been a complete lack of interest from major developers. Because of the crazy quilt of land ownership, acquiring large, useable tracts would require not only Confucian-style patience, but the extraordinary expense of carrying property cost on their books for a long period of time.

In recent years, small developers have, to their great credit, produced progress in several under-invested neighborhoods. But real, sustainable progress requires development of scale, which in turn requires large developers.

These developers are not going to work, however, in a field where they can’t make an adequate return. Something must be done to lower their interest and land acquisition costs so they can reasonably choose work in a distressed area rather than a suburban greenfield.

More than 50 years of bitter experience shows us how the present system “works.” It doesn’t. It’s a disaster. If Gov. Blunt will sign HB 327, he’ll give us a fighting chance at success.

Peter Kinder is the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri.

From Paul:

I wanted to let you know about the exciting next chapter in my long career in elections: I have joined the technology-savvy company Everyone Counts, Inc. as their new Chief Operating Officer . Everyone Counts is a California-based enterprise, with offices in Australia and the U.K., that is a world leader in utilizing the Internet and new technology to serve voters. I’ll be still living in St. Louis, but doing a lot of travel (that’s not new!).

I am actually sending this from Australia, where Kerry and I have been since June 27 to meet the Everyone Counts development team. We’ve really enjoyed our visit. Today we took a train from Canberra to Sydney and saw lot of kangaroos and 5 different rainbows.

After my term on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission ended in March, I took several months to focus on my future and determine how I could best utilize my passion for the best managed elections possible, with maximum voter access and participation. I also wanted to continue to advance the cause of democracy throughout the world. In May and June I did some work for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and spent a month in Europe assessing elections in Belgium & Ireland.

In the spring I had the opportunity to focus on Internet voting in other countries and assessed first-hand how voters in the Netherlands, Estonia and Switzerland have used the Internet to cast their ballots. I witnessed a blind voter from Estonia casting his ballot privately and independently for the first time in his life.

Intrigued by the progress that had been made in this important field, in May I was offered the opportunity by the CEO of Everyone Counts, Lori Steele, to assess the company’s innovative work in England, where their eLect system had been selected to conduct a comprehensive pilot project for local elections in Swindon.

And what an election it was.

Most of you know that I have witnessed many elections in my 22 years as an election professional working in over 20 countries, including quite a few in the USA. But I had never seen anything like the Everyone Counts solution in England. Imagine giving voters the choice to cast their ballot over the telephone or by the Internet in four different languages; or the opportunity to cast their ballot at a public library, by mail, or on any one of 300 laptops located at 65 voting centers on election day; or, if they wanted, to cast a paper ballot. Then imagine that a voter can go on the Internet to verify that their own vote had been received and counted. Those are the kind of choices voters were given in Swindon. The election and the use of the eLect system was quite a success thanks to the Everyone Counts team, including their brilliant Chief Technology Officer and founder, Craig Burton. From the moment I witnessed this historic election, I was convinced that my future belonged with Everyone Counts and its accomplished team of professionals.

Everyone Counts is exactly what the name means: Every voter and every vote counts. Our mission is to provide access for voters and trust in elections. Everyone Counts has developed transparent, secure and verifiable Internet Voting software that is second to none. The software has been specifically developed to comply with both the global Internet Voting Technical Standards and the Geneva Convention standards for fair and open elections. Because they believe in complete transparency and trust, their software is open to the highest scrutiny and security audits.

The eLect software platform developed by Everyone Counts, Inc. has been providing high integrity elections over the Internet for over a decade for private and public clients, including political parties , labor unions, schools and corporations. eLect has been used for governmental elections in the United Kingdom since 2003 and by the Australian Department of Defence.

The United States has an estimated 6 million Americans, including nearly 2 million military men and women and their dependents, who live and work overseas. Study after study has shown that these voters are being disenfranchised at an alarming rate. The solution that Everyone Counts offers can provide these voters�and others�with the opportunity to have their voices heard. The increased access can certainly help improve the dismal turnouts we see in so many elections.

Just like there has been in electronic voting, I realize some will be skeptical about an Internet approach and that there will be legitimate concerns over security and transparency issues. I can tell you from experience that while there will always be critics of voting systems, the truth is always found by those who take the time to truly understand the end-to-end process of any election system. I have done that scrutiny with the eLect system and can tell you that it uses the highest standards possible to ensure complete integrity and security.

I invite you to check out our website to learn more about our services, this way you’ll know what I am getting into. You can go to this link to view my video and to hear more about the company (please do!).

Thanks.

All the best,

Paul S. DeGregorio
Chief Operating Officer
Everyone Counts, Inc.
www.everyonecounts.com
858.427.4673
866.843.4668

U.S. Offices

1804 Garnet Avenue, Ste 408
San Diego, CA 92109 USA

Paul {at} everyonecounts {dot} com