Murmurs: Top Officials Depart Secretary of State’s Office

TOP OFFICIALS DEPART SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE: Two high-level officials at the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office resigned this week. Audits director Kip Memmott and elections director Molly Woon both told LaVonne Griffin-Valade they were leaving. It’s not unusual for top staff to depart when a new secretary takes over: Chief of staff Ben Morris and deputy secretary Cheryl Meyers, whose jobs are more politically oriented, already submitted their resignations. But Memmott and Woon led two of the agency’s key administrative functions. That work is less political, and leaders often stay on when their bosses leave. Memmott, for instance, led the Audits Division under four secretaries: Dennis Richardson appointed him in 2017, and he stayed under Richardson’s successor, Bev Clarno, Shemia Fagan, and Fagan’s replacement, Griffin-Valade. Memmott’s posture on Fagan’s controversial involvement with the troubled cannabis company La Mota raised eyebrows: First, he denied Fagan was involved, then, after records showed she was, defended a compromised audit of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission when an outside reviewer said it should be discarded. Woon, whom Fagan hired, came to her position from the Democratic Party of Oregon without experience in the nuts and bolts of elections oversight. Like Memmott, Woon submitted her resignation Dec. 16, with a brief editorial comment, noting she was resigning “in lieu of removal by the incoming administration.” Secretary-elect Tobias Read takes office Jan. 6.

AUDITOR WARNS PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS’ CENTER FOR BLACK STUDENT EXCELLENCE IS FALLING BEHIND: After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, local Black community leaders ushered a Center for Black Student Excellence into Portland Public Schools. Voters approved a November 2020 bond that allocated $60 million to the initiative, but CBSE’s functions have remained vague ever since. The center’s mission is to improve outcomes for Black students and to elevate the Black student experience, according to its website. In December 2022, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported the center’s board would gather community input and “bring forward a vision, a comprehensive plan, a facilities plan and an operations plan.” But an independent audit of bond spending last year found the center had not spent any of its earmarked funds and was two years behind schedule from baseline plans. The findings of the audit, conducted in 2023, were not made public until Dec. 16, when Cathy Brady, a principal at the auditing firm Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting, presented her concerns at a PPS audit committee meeting. Brady said community engagement and efforts to design the program had not yielded concrete details about the center or a solid timeline for its implementation. “The risk is that, from our perspective, CBSE will not be delivered on schedule or as intended,” she said. Portland School Board member Andrew Scott said the board has been aware of delays and a “lack of progress” with the center. “We need to keep a focus on CBSE,” he added.

RANCOROUS RESEARCHERS AT OHSU: One more of Phil Knight’s golden boys at Oregon Health & Science University says he’s fed up with the administration on Pill Hill. Dr. Sanjiv Kaul, 73, former head of the Knight Cardiovascular Institute, sued his employer Dec. 16, alleging OHSU brass unlawfully cut his salary, using a flawed reading of Oregon’s Equal Pay Act to do it. In a complaint filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Kaul said the university slashed his annual pay by a quarter to $370,000 from $500,000. The move was necessary, OHSU told him, because his salary was higher than what others earned for comparable work, a violation of the state’s 2017 law to equalize pay between men and women. But the act prohibits pay cuts to achieve parity, Kaul argues in his complaint. Moreover, Kaul has “unique additional duties” that make his work different from that of peers the university used for its salary comparison. Kaul’s suit comes just two weeks after Dr. Brian Druker, developer of the revolutionary cancer drug Gleevec, said he was stepping down as CEO of the Knight Cancer Institute because OHSU had “forgotten our mission” and is no longer a place to do cutting-edge research. Knight and his wife, Penny, have poured $600 million into Druker’s cancer research at OHSU and $125 million into Kaul’s cardiovascular work. The university declined to comment on Kaul’s complaint.

FEDS AND PAMPLIN MOVE FORWARD: Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr., the philanthropist and CEO of R.B. Pamplin Corp., indicated this week there may be a quick resolution to the lawsuit the U.S. Department of Labor filed against him in federal district court in Portland in September. That suit alleges the former owner of the state’s largest newspaper chain (24 papers, including the Portland Tribune) had bilked his company’s pension fund—over which he had exclusive control—out of tens of millions of dollars by improperly selling un- or underused Pamplin Corp. real estate to the fund at inflated prices. Until last week, when he was scheduled to respond to the feds’ complaint, Pamplin had made no official response to the lawsuit, nor issued a comment. In new filings, however, he disclosed having hired a Washington, D.C., pension lawyer and former Labor Department staffer, Kevin O’Brien, to represent him and his company in what the parties termed “highly complex” settlement negotiations. Pamplin and the feds asked the court to extend his response deadline by 30 days. “The Acting Secretary and the Pamplin defendants are hopeful that they will be able to reach a settlement agreement before the proposed January 13, 2025 deadline,” the parties wrote in a joint motion.