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The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners agreed on how to proceed with an external investigation of its code of ethics on Thursday morning, clarifying its scope and transparency.
Among the clarifications: The external firm has the option to consider the case of former preschool and early learning director Leslee Barnes, who owned a preschool in Portland while directing the county’s Preschool for All program. That’s different from what the county’s chief operating officer had said in recent days.
That’s important because the county’s decision to examine its code of ethics stemmed from concerns about Barnes’ actions. Barnes’ preschool, Village Childcare Enterprises LLC, was flagged in a secretary of state audit for “wasteful” spending of Preschool Promise dollars, as WW first reported. (That state program is entirely separate from Preschool for All, and provides subsidized child care to low-income families.)
Barnes resigned July 31, but the incident raised concerns for County Commissioners Julia Brim-Edwards and Shannon Singleton. Specifically, there was some early back-and-forth with Chair Jessica Vega Pederson about whether an internal investigation would be sufficient. The two commissioners outlined their concerns that an internal investigation would affect public trust, and proposed a resolution Aug. 13 for an external investigation of compliance with the county’s conflict-of-interest and ethics policies, specifically for senior-level staff.
Just one day later, Vega Pederson’s team, under chief operating officer Chris Neal, announced its own external investigation. The law firm Beery, Elsner & Hammond LLP will be responsible for investigating how existing ethics-related policies and practices at the county align with “legal requirements under state law, best practices and organizational values,” the announcement reads.
But the county’s announcement notably mentioned that such an investigation would not examine Barnes’ individual case, leaving unaddressed significant questions about how she was able to own a private preschool without raising flags for her supervisors. It also did not mention much in the way of investigating individual employee compliance with the county code of ethics, which worried County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk.
In a series of questions to Neal at Thursday’s board meeting, Brim-Edwards clarified the scope of the firm’s investigation, trying to align her resolution with the external investigation now in place. “We don’t need to do two [investigations],” Singleton said. “So we’d like to get it pulled together into one process.”
Neal addressed a number of Brim-Edwards’ concerns, including whether the investigation would address individual compliance and not just policies and practices. “The scope’s not just limited to culture only,” Neal said, “but also…employee training and compliance both.”
Neal also clarified that the external firm will have access to ethics and conflict-of-interest cases currently and formerly before the county. That would, presumably, include Barnes’ case. “They’ll also have access to any document that they believe will help them in delivering their scope,” he said. “But I also suggest that we don’t try to suggest or influence how they use those documents.”
Most of the findings of that investigation—barring any confidentiality—will also be made public. Those clarifications appeared to satisfy Brim-Edwards and Singleton, and the board unanimously voted to table the pair’s resolution indefinitely.
“I appreciate your willingness to hear some of the feedback about the scope and make sure that it was including not just the independence but the processes that we have around compliance with our code of ethics,” Singleton told Neal.
