Skip to main content
The chair of the council that governs Multnomah County’s vast system of federally qualified health centers was impeached this week in a majority vote of her fellow board members, the latest sign of discord on a small, all-volunteer group charged with overseeing the deployment of tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.
Brenda Chambers had served on the Multnomah County Community Health Center Board since late 2024 and became chair in January of this year. She tells WW her removal at last Monday’s meeting came after she made “missteps” regarding board bylaws early in her tenure. (At issue was her desire to join a certain committee, she says.) It was a mistake she says she quickly corrected. Nonetheless, she adds, “There were people who felt hurt by it and wanted to impeach me.”
Chambers says she did not think her removal was reasonable, though she acknowledges the matter is still raw. She also acknowledges there is a bigger story here. As The Oregonian reported last fall, the council has been hampered by resignations amid bullying complaints against the previous chair, Tamia Deary, who in turn argued that what was actually happening was Multnomah County staff were attacking the board’s independence.
Among those navigating this tempest was Chambers, a 63-year-old St. Helens woman who says she is studying for her bachelor’s degree in social work. She tells WW she was asked late last year to consider becoming board chair by the interim executive director of Multnomah County community health centers. “He thought that I might be a good fit,” she says.
She was duly elected, she says, but some on the committee felt she was a puppet of an interfering county staff—a suspicion that reflected deeper simmering grievances. “They accused me of having an outside actor acting through me to change things,” Chambers says.
This, she adds, wasn’t actually true, and she feels she made decisions independently. But now, her tenure on the board, which she says she had joined as a way to give back after appreciating care she received at a health center, appears to be over. She says another board member quit following her impeachment.
There is an additional wrinkle, board treasurer Bee Velasquez said in an email Friday after this story was initially published. The three board members responsible for planning the impeachment of Chambers were themselves facing a potential impeachment that same Monday evening, Velasquez wrote.
Instead, Velasquez wrote, those board members maneuvered to impeach Chambers.
Made up largely of patients and other everyday people, the Multnomah County Community Health Center Board is responsible for the governance and oversight of the county’s primary care, dental, specialty and pharmacy services, at stand-alone health centers and in schools.
The board is responsible for key tasks: selecting and dismissing the health centers’ executive director, setting a strategic plan, and approving an annual budget. In 2025, county documents indicated the budget eclipsed $200 million.
Deary, the past board chair, did not respond to a call and voicemail Monday, nor did the board’s listed vice chair, secretary. Reached by phone Thursday, one board member, Patrick Thomas, said, “I don’t want to talk to you,” before hanging up.
On Friday, Thomas told WW in an email that “the Board recently took action through its established governance process. At this point, my focus is on supporting the Board as it moves forward and continues its work serving the community. I don’t have additional comment at this time.”
Thomas also confirmed he authored a letter to Chambers, obtained by WW, which sheds more light on the concerns of those who voted to impeach her.
Thomas wrote that some members of the board felt targeted—and that these people happened to be people of color and the only transgender person on the board.
One concern, Thomas noted was that county staff were meddling to an inappropriate degree in the board’s efforts to hire someone for a job. “Being targeted because we are not operating the way they want us to, or because we are not interviewing the applicants they prefer, is inappropriate and undermines the integrity of the committee’s work,” Thomas wrote.
The county did not immediately make a recording of the Monday meeting available. The meeting agenda had said part of the meeting would take place in closed executive session to allow the board to “consider the dismissal or disciplining of, or hear complaints or charges brought against” a public officer.
This story has been updated with additional comments and information from board members.
