The Willamette Week obtained messages the former governor wanted deleted.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber resigned Friday in the wake of a report that he asked state employees to erase emails from the government server.
On Wednesday, the Willamette Week published a story by Nigel Jaquiss — the same writer who has been reporting on the scandal that brought down Kitzhaber from its advent — revealed the contents of those messages.
The emails show that Kitzhaber’s staff was especially alarmed by Hayes’ role in the governor’s office after she signed at least $85,000 worth of private consulting contracts with three nonprofit advocacy groups in 2013. The contracts prompted Kitzhaber’s then-chief of staff Curtis Robinhold in July and August of that year to get Hayes to sign conflict-of-interest forms that required her to abide by state ethics laws.
Those guidelines would have forced Hayes to change some of the ways she conducted her private business, including prohibiting her from using the title “first lady” when doing private work, and from holding client meetings at Mahonia Hall, the governor’s mansion. Hayes pushed back. As WW has previously reported, Hayes wouldn’t go along with those guidelines until they were rewritten to allow her to continue operating as she had been.
The emails indicate that Kitzhaber, Hayes and Robinhold were aware of several conflicts of interest, but the former first lady persisted on maintaining income. Read the full report here.
To make matters worse for Kitzhaber, a congressional panel recently told the resigned governor not to destroy documents related to the now-defunct Cover Oregon health care exchange.
The Portland Business Journal’s Elizabeth Hayes reported on the story:
Four Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform submitted a letter, embedded below, to Kitzhaber on Friday. They asked for documents to help determine whether campaign advisers played a role in the decision to switch to HealthCare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange. While Cover Oregon’s top technology official said the switch was policy driven, subsequent reports “indicated that the decision to close Cover Oregon may have been based on politics, not policy, and campaign advisors working on your re-election campaign may have coordinated the State’s response to the Cover Oregon rollout,” the letter states.
The letter also warns the governor’s office to preserve all documents and communications related to Cover Oregon: “If it is the routine practice of any state employee or contractor to destroy or otherwise alter such records, halt that practice.”
Find the letter in its entirety here.
