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Records that Gov. John Kitzhaber's office released today show Kitzhaber fired his spokeswoman last summer right after she criticized First Lady Cylvia Hayes in a senior staff meeting.
A July 18, 2014, letter from Kitzhaber chief of staff Mike Bonetto to then-communications director Nkenge Harmon Johnson doesn't say precisely what Harmon Johnson said about Hayes. But it shows Kitzhaber objected enough to Harmon Johnson's comments to fire her.
Harmon Johnson had made the comments about Hayes at a staff meeting only three days earlier, on July 15.
In the letter, Bonetto told Harmon Johnson that she was an at-will employee and that he didn't need a reason to dismiss her.
Bonetto told Harmon Johnson that she was being fired "based on your work performance, including considerations of your performance with regard to developing a communications plan, your development of your professional relationships with media representatives, and your comments about the first lady at the July 15 weekly senior staff meeting, and what's in the best interests of the governor's office."
In the week before the Nov. 4 election, Harmon Johnson wrote an op-ed for The Oregonian expressing the view that the Kitzhaber administration had lost its way.
"Given the reasons the chief of staff wrote in that letter," she says "I think one stands out as most genuine."
Harmon Johnson declined to answer further questions about her tenure in Kitzhaber's office.
WWeek 2015