Did Oregon First Lady Cylvia Hayes File a False Tax Return With the IRS?

Oregon First Lady Cylvia Hayes has been collecting private consulting fees while serving as an adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber—and that practice has put her under scrutiny by the state's ethics commission and has led to a criminal investigation by the FBI.

But revelations in a story by Hillary Borrud with the EO Media Group/Pamplin Media Group Capital Bureau could cause a new question about Hayes: Did she tell the Internal Revenue Service everything about the money she was earning?

Borrud reports that Hayes was paid $118,000 by an environmental non-profit based in Washington, D.C., called the Clean Economy Development Center. That's money above and beyond the consulting contracts worth $85,000 she collected in 2013, as WW has reported earlier.

Here's a key passage in Borrud's story:

In her 2012 tax return, Hayes declared only $27,361 in income—well below the $88,000 she told Borrund the Clean Economy Development Center paid her that year.

Honesty on her tax returns is an issue that has dogged Hayes before.

In 1997, for example, she was paid $5,000 for participating in an illegal sham marriage to a teenager from Ethiopian in order to help the young man establish immigration status.

In a press conference in October, Hayes acknowledged that she never reported the $5,000 as income to the IRS.

Here are some key passages from Borrud's story:

As WW and others have reported, Hayes used Mahonia Hall, the governor's mansion, for her private consulting work. Hayes refused to go along with ethics guidelines presented to her by Kitzhaber's staff that would have required her to stop using the governor's mansion.

Here's what Borrud adds to this issue:

WWeek 2015