House Of Gain?

[October 18th, 2006] University of Oregon president Dave Frohnmayer faces bar and ethics complaints from a professor at the school.

The complaints, filed last month by William Harbaugh, a tenured associate professor of economics, allege that Frohnmayer's financial disclosure form for 2005 "did not accurately document his economic interests" and also raise potential conflict-of-interest charges.

Frohnmayer says the complaints—the first filed against him in his 12-year tenure as school president—are without merit.

"I'm astonished," Frohnmayer says. "These complaints are completely unfounded."

State law requires elected officials and most senior public officials to file verified statements of economic interest annually with Oregon's Government Standards and Practices Commission, more commonly known as the ethics commission.

Although the six-page economic-interest forms are far from comprehensive, they at least provide a glimpse into public officials' assets, income and business relationships.

Disclosure practices have recently made headlines in The Oregonian, which reported the failure of several state legislators to document lobbyist-paid travel on their forms.

In his nearly identical complaints to the Oregon State Bar and the ethics commission (go to wweek.com to view the complaints), Harbaugh says Frohnmayer should have disclosed a series of property transactions that he and his wife, Lynn, completed in 2005. (The form requires disclosure of property transactions involving "you or a member of your household.")

In his complaints, Harbaugh says Frohnmayer's failure to disclose certain property transactions may violate state laws against "false swearing" and perjury.

Harbaugh cites property records that show in 2004 Frohnmayer transferred his interest in a Eugene house to his wife. Lynn Frohnmayer then sold the home in 2005 for $405,000. Harbaugh argues that since the couple had owned the home for more than two decades, the sale probably resulted in a substantial profit that should have been disclosed. Frohnmayer, a former law professor who also served as Oregon's attorney general from 1981 to 1991, says he didn't disclose the transaction because the home is his primary residence and not within the university's jurisdiction.

That's important because the disclosure form exempts transactions involving a filer's "primary residence." Harbaugh counters that such an exemption should not apply in this instance since Frohnmayer lists his university-provided home as his mailing address and voting address and has lived there for 12 years.

Harbaugh notes a second transaction he believes Frohnmayer should have reported. In that deal, Lynn Frohnmayer bought a $700,000 house in Eugene in mid-2005 from Tom Williams, a former longtime member of the University of Oregon Foundation board.

Prior to that transaction, in February 2005, the university paid $22 million for a piece of property known as the "Williams Bakery site" for expansion of the campus. In 1991, Tom Williams sold Williams Bakery to U.S. Bakery of Portland and remained on the board of the acquiring company.

Harbaugh acknowledges not knowing whether Williams retained any financial interest in the bakery, but says the circumstances "involve at least a potential conflict of interest." Frohnmayer says that's not the case, and that Williams will give the bar and ethics commission an affidavit saying he's had no interest in the bakery since 2001.

As for Harbaugh, he traces his distrust of Frohnmayer to a series of exchanges earlier this year over a new university diversity program in which he says Frohnmayer stonewalled his requests for information. Frohnmayer's wife says if Harbaugh was interested in learning more, he could have called and asked about the transactions.

"We've always gone out of our way to over-disclose,'' she says.

Frohnmayer's response to the bar is due Friday, Oct. 20. And the ethics commission is scheduled to complete its staff review by the end of the year.