Ever heard of something called the ‘Oregon Small Business Council?’ Neither had I, until just the last few weeks. Supporters of the proposed tax increases under Measures 66 & 67 often try to beef up their argument by saying “but the Oregon Small Business Council even backs the measures, how could they possibly be bad for Oregon business?”

I’ve got a surprise for you folks: the ‘Oregon Small Business Council’ is nothing more than a sham.

What got me investigating was their web site. In an age where 13 year olds can create web sites that look just as good as that of a Fortune 500 company, the ‘Oregon Small Business Council’ has a web site that screams 1997.

I wanted to see who was behind the web site, but they publish no information about founders, employees or directors. Not only that, they list no members or membership numbers. So are they a 1,000 member small business organization or a 1 member small business organization?

Oh, and there is something else about their web site. The domain name, OregonSmallBusiness.org, was first set up in October of 2009. That’s right, less than 4 months ago. In fact, this organization was set up more than a month after measures 66 & 67 were referred to voters.

You might think that this council could have been around before they set up their current web site, maybe that explains things. Not so fast. According to Google, the earliest known reference to the ‘Oregon Small Business Council’ was Nov. 4th, 2009. It has only been mentioned 3 times by news organizations indexed by Google and only 35 times in the entire blogosphere.

The web address was registered by one Andrew Plambeck. His LinkedIn profile says that his only current title is “Organizer for the Oregon Small Business Council” (I’d link to it but he has not made it publicly available). His past jobs include interning at an environmental organization, working in student government at the University of Oregon and again interning for Congressman David Wu.

Yup, far from a small business owner.

Don’t bother visiting their offices either. They don’t list an address on their web site but they did on their Facebook fan page. Too bad Google Maps says that “6601 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd” is not a real address in Portland.

So why should anyone care that the so called ‘Oregon Small Business Council’ backs Measures 66 & 67? You shouldn’t, because they are non-existent, meaningless at best.