Murmurs: First Lady Hasn’t Signed Disclosure Forms

FIRST LADY HASN’T SIGNED DISCLOSURE FORMS: As WW has previously reported, Oregon first lady Aimee Kotek Wilson has played a central role in Gov. Tina Kotek’s administration, joining staff meetings on behavioral health, meeting with outside policymakers and state consultants, and even taking part in personnel decisions. But WW has now learned that, unlike any of Kotek’s staff, Kotek Wilson has failed to sign workplace policy documents affirming she is bound by state policies on workplace conduct and ethics laws, including conflict of interest disclosures. One example of a potential conflict: Last year, Kotek Wilson joined the steering committee of Pathways to Resilience, a group that seeks to “help states and communities advance trauma-responsive policies.” That sounds pretty benign, but according to Pathways’ website, it gets its funding from Aurrera Health Group, a national for-profit healthcare consulting firm based in Sacramento. Aurrera specializes in Medicaid and Medicare policies and programs, which are a huge part of state budgets. (Aurrera didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Kotek’s office says the first lady is awaiting guidance from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission before signing any documents. As for the Pathways affiliation, Kotek’s spokeswoman, Elisabeth Shepard, says it doesn’t present a potential conflict. “The first lady was invited along with other first spouses from across the country to participate. It is not evident that this would merit a disclosure as an actual or potential of conflict of interest.”

OHSU PULLS PSYCHIATRY FELLOWS FROM COUNTY’S TROUBLED JAILS: On April 30, the Multnomah County corrections medical director, Eleazor Lawson, announced to employees that Oregon Health & Science University was pulling its forensic psychiatry fellows out of the county’s jails. The fellowship’s program’s director, Dr. Stephanie Maya Lopez, felt “it was in the best interest of their program” to move its students elsewhere, Lawson wrote in an email to staff obtained by WW. “[I] registered my dismay over the impact this could have on our vulnerable population,” the email states. The Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship program has played an integral role in providing badly needed mental health care in the county’s jail, where an estimated one-third of inmates suffer from mental illness. The psychiatry students would rotate between various correctional facilities, spending one day a week doing rounds at Multnomah County’s downtown jail. The county got rid of its staff correctional psychiatrist years ago, and as WW has previously reported, no other psychiatrist besides the OHSU fellows has been working in the facilities since then. An OHSU spokesperson said the fellows’ last day at Multnomah County Detention Center will be in June. They’ll work in the state women’s prison, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, instead. “Corrections Health Medical Director Dr. Eleazar Lawson is actively reaching out to local psychiatry schools for opportunities to see if we can set up a similar fellowship,” a county spokesperson says. “We recently hired another psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and continue the recruitment process for our vacant positions.”

PAMPLIN FINANCIAL WOES CONTINUE: Indications of a cash squeeze affecting the R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its subsidiaries continue to mount. As WW has previously reported (“Walking on Water,” WW, Dec. 6, 2023), the company’s owner and chief executive, Dr. Robert Pamplin, has seen the inherited fortune that once placed him on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans dwindle to the point that he’s sold dozens of Pamplin Corp. and subsidiaries properties to the company’s defined benefit pension plan, often at prices that appear inflated. Late last month, a flurry of new public records show that one subsidiary, Ross Island Sand & Gravel, continues to struggle with paying its bills. The Multnomah County tax assessor filed liens showing $79,963 in unpaid taxes on RISG equipment. (RISG and affiliates also owe at least $223,000 to Multnomah County in delinquent property taxes.) And labor unions that work for RISG in California registered a $551,000 federal court judgment from the Central District of California here in April in an attempt to collect unpaid benefits. Pamplin officials did not respond to a request for comment.

PROVIDENCE ACCUSED OF RETALIATING AGAINST UNION DRIVE: Last month, the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association filed formal charges with federal regulators, accusing Providence Health & Services of firing a physician assistant in retaliation for helping to push a successful unionization drive among medical providers at the health system’s urgent care clinics. A Providence spokesperson declined to comment. The charging document, filed April 15 with the National Labor Relations Board, accuses the health system of having “discharged [the PA] because the employee joined or supported a labor organization and in order to discourage union activities.” It does not name the PA. A union spokesperson, Myrna Jensen, said the firing occurred in March and was in response to the PA’s involvement in a successful union drive that began last December and ended in February with 73 physicians, PAs, and nurse practitioners across Providence’s eight Oregon urgent care clinics joining the union. Providence’s Oregon employees have been unionizing at a remarkable rate in recent years, from 4,166 in 2020 to 5,765 as of early May, Jensen says. She attributed the rise to the health system’s failure to translate rapidly rising revenues into fair pay for rank-and-file employees.