These Are the Questions a County Ethics Investigation Should Ask

For more than four years, Leslee Barnes oversaw Multnomah County’s taxpayer-subsidized child care program Preschool for All while also owning a preschool of her own in Northeast Portland.

That overlap ended July 31, when Barnes resigned as the county’s director of preschool and early learning. Barnes’ resignation came less than two days after a WW story reported that her preschool, Village Childcare Enterprises LLC, was one of four singled out in a secretary of state audit finding “wasteful spending” of public dollars distributed by the state’s Preschool Promise program. Barnes’ school collected hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve just a handful of the children it was supposed to.

Barnes did not receive county money for her preschool. Preschool Promise, which funded Village Childcare, is a state program, separate from Preschool for All. (The central difference: It subsidizes child care only for low-income children across Oregon, while Preschool for All doesn’t consider the economic status of parents and operates only in Multnomah County.)

Nevertheless, in the days after WW’s story, two county commissioners said Barnes should resign—not because her preschool wasted state dollars, but because simply owning Village Childcare presented a conflict of interest. Shannon Singleton and Julia Brim-Edwards told WW that Barnes’ school could benefit financially from the choices she made as director.

Barnes’ role directing Oregon’s largest universal preschool initiative meant she had significant power to shift the local preschool landscape, directly affecting providers competing with her preschool. By recruiting other Portland-area schools to the Preschool for All program, for example, she could decrease competition for state dollars and programs.

The two commissioners also introduced a resolution calling for an external investigation of compliance with the county’s conflict-of-interest and ethics policies, specifically for senior-level staff.

After weighing the pros and cons of an internal investigation, County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson got on board last week with the idea of hiring an independent, outside investigator. The county’s chief operating officer, Chris Neal, hired the law firm Beery, Elsner & Hammond LLP to look into the county’s conflict-of-interest and ethics policies.

Notably, however, the investigation will not examine Barnes’ individual case. The county is also not conducting an internal investigation of Barnes, given that she is no longer employed there.

That leaves several questions unanswered—and the county’s top leaders seemingly incurious about them. The most crucial center on Vega Pederson, who championed the creation of Preschool for All and heralded the hiring of Barnes to run it. What did the chair know about Barnes’ stake in Village Childcare, and when did she know it?

At least some officials have known about Barnes’ role with her preschool for the duration of her tenure at the county, which began in April 2021. Barnes herself told WW in July that she had signed some form of conflict-of-interest agreement with the county that barred Village Childcare from participating in Preschool for All during her tenure.

The law firm the county hired could resolve who received, and presumably retains, that disclosure. Here are some additional questions an external investigation could help answer:

What role did Vega Pederson play in Barnes’ hiring and retention?

Since Barnes’ resignation, Vega Pederson has been quick to distance herself from the former director, issuing a public statement in which she noted Barnes was hired under the previous administration, that of County Chair Deborah Kafoury.

But Vega Pederson touted Barnes’ hiring in the county’s formal announcement on March 4, 2021. That press release indicated both Kafoury and Vega Pederson had explicit knowledge of Barnes’ status as a provider. “As a preschool provider, a small business owner, a woman of color, and a public employee, Leslee will be instrumental in leading the rollout of Preschool for All,” Vega Pederson said then.

Indeed, Barnes’ relationship with Preschool for All, a program Vega Pederson championed and holds dear, means it’s likely the two worked closely together.

Barnes helped craft both the program’s vision and its structure as Vega Pederson compiled her July 2020 “Preschool for All Plan,” a document meant to guide the program’s development. Barnes was on a policy and program work group with a number of other child care providers to ensure the program’s vision was “detailed and comprehensive.” After that, she was part of a technical advisory committee to develop “a timeline for the program to grow to scale and a plan to implement Task Force recommendations,” according to that document. In both cases, her name was listed beside the name of her preschool.

The chair’s spokeswoman, Sara Guest, says Vega Pederson was one of several people who attended a virtual meet and greet with Barnes during her candidacy for the job in February 2021. But she adds—and this is a crucial point—that Vega Pederson did not know Barnes kept an ownership stake in the preschool after her hiring.

“Director Barnes was a part of the original planning and advocacy around Preschool for All as it was being contemplated as a ballot measure, and the chair knew her in that capacity,” Guest says. “She was aware that Director Barnes had owned a child care center from that work but was unaware of her ongoing relationship after that.”

What conflicts was Barnes required to disclose, and who was aware of them?

Upon her hiring, Barnes, like all county employees, should have been required to declare any actual or potential conflicts of interest, or situations that might give the appearance of a conflict of interest through the Code of Ethics Disclosure Form. The ethics code requires county employees to fill this out annually, or more often if new situations arise that require disclosure.

Barnes tells WW she filled out a conflict-of-interest agreement that barred her preschool from participating in the Preschool for All program. “I had to sign a conflict of interest that Village would not participate in Preschool for All while I was in my role at the county,” she told WW in July.

In follow-up answers to WW, county spokeswoman Julie Sullivan-Springhetti said any notification that Barnes was still involved with her preschool would have gone to Kafoury. The former chair did not immediately respond to WW’s requests for comment.

But at least one county official isn’t so sure Barnes’ involvement was a big secret. County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk, whose team released results of an audit on Preschool for All in April, says there were “various notices” of Barnes’ continued stake in her preschool. Those “indicated to me that her preschool ownership was probably well known at the county,” McGuirk says.

Brim-Edwards adds that any hiring decisions at the divisional level would have involved the chair and the director of the specific department, in this case Mohammad Bader, director of the Department of County Human Services.

“If the chair is the chief personnel officer, it’s her responsibility to ensure that, as you move into the county structure, that there’s processes and policies in place [around ethics and conflicts of interest] that are enforced,” Brim-Edwards says. “There should be expectations from the county chair that flow down.”

Vega Pederson started her term as chair in January 2023, about a year and a half after Barnes’ hiring. Her spokesperson says that in the following two years, she never became aware of Barnes’ “ongoing relationship” with a preschool, until WW reported it. Then, she “immediately called for further investigation,” Sullivan-Springhetti says.

During that time, Barnes’ direct supervisor was human services director Bader, Sullivan-Springhetti says. If Barnes indeed filled out a conflict-of-interest form listing her preschool ownership, Bader would have reviewed it and any subsequent declarations in consultation with HR and the county attorney, she adds. Whether he shared its contents with Vega Pederson is unclear, however.

The county declined to comment further on whether this was a matter of inaccurate disclosure by Barnes, or if Vega Pederson and other officials failed to see a broader conflict of interest outside of Village Childcare participating in Preschool for All. “It is the responsibility of each individual employee to accurately reflect their conflicts of interest to Multnomah County,” Sullivan-Springhetti says.

Both Brim-Edwards and Singleton, who pushed for Barnes’ resignation on the grounds that she owned a preschool, say they had no idea of her conflict ahead of WW’s story in July. The chair is the chief personnel officer at the county, and Brim-Edwards says the County Board of Commissioners is not privy to offer letters or hiring at the divisional director level, where Barnes was.

McGuirk says Barnes’ ownership of a preschool raised a red flag for her office during its audit of Preschool for All, but she did not pursue whether that was a conflict of interest because the county’s ethics code is narrowly written. In an Aug. 1 email to county commissioners, McGuirk wrote that “the county may wish to clarify that a person cannot oversee a line of business if they also operate a business within that same business ecosystem.”

Why isn’t there an ongoing internal or external investigation of Barnes?

The external investigation Vega Pederson and Neal launched Aug. 14 centers on how existing ethics-related policies and practices at the county align with “legal requirements under state law, best practices and organizational values.”

In the Aug. 14 announcement of the investigation, the county made it clear that it would not examine Barnes’ “individual case,” even though it was the catalyst of the investigation.

“Ms. Barnes is no longer a county employee,” Sullivan-Springhetti says. “But county policies governing ethics and potential conflicts are in place and affect every single employee today and going forward.”

Both Brim-Edwards and Singleton say that the external investigation should weigh the circumstances that spurred it. Brim-Edwards says while it shouldn’t be the subject of an HR investigation, the case offers an example of what happens when ethics rules aren’t sufficiently enforced. How county officials apparently overlooked Barnes’ conflict-of-interest declaration remains a mystery.

“Part of what I want to see in the scope is that the findings of [an investigation of Barnes] are a part of this next step,” Singleton says. “Clearly, there was a breakdown in some part of our process for employee compliance with the code of ethics policy in the case of Director Barnes, and those findings are relevant to this broader investigation.”

McGuirk sent her own note of concern to Vega Pederson and Neal after they announced their investigation, pointing out it would duplicate efforts her office has already made to flag employee concerns around the county’s code of ethics.

“I really hope the work they’re looking to do is new and not a rehash of work that’s been done for years now,” McGuirk tells WW. “That would be a disservice.”

Since 2017, the auditor has led an ethical culture survey. In 2024, that survey found that just 1 in 3 employees believed ethics rules applied to everyone equally at the county and that less than half felt they could report unethical behavior without fear of retaliation.

She noted that the resolution Brim-Edwards and Singleton put forward speaks more directly to those concerns, as it calls for an investigation into senior county employees and their compliance with the code of ethics specifically. “Tone at the top is the driver of ethical culture,” McGuirk wrote.

“The outside review is not about how Multnomah County employees feel about ethics,” Sullivan-Springhetti said in response to the issue of duplication. “The outside counsel will review policies and practices around employees’ conflicts of interest and ethics, including the language and how the county collects information, evaluates and trains employees and managers.”

Brim-Edwards says she and Singleton still plan to introduce a draft resolution Aug. 21, but may modify it as they learn more details about the scope of the outside investigation and the firm conducting it. (Brim-Edwards says Neal told her he is not in charge of managing the probe’s scope.) She says there is still an interest in focusing on department directors and other senior leaders.

“There should be high ethics standards for all county employees, and senior leaders have an important role in setting standards for the county workforce,” she says. “They not only have significant financial decision-making authority, but also they are responsible for setting and ensuring compliance with the county’s ethics and conflict-of-interest policies with their employee groups.”