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Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announced this morning she is appointing LaVonne Griffin-Valade, a former elected auditor for the city of Portland, to replace Secretary of State Shemia Fagan.
Fagan, a rising star of the state’s Democratic Party, abruptly resigned May 2 after WW revealed she had taken a lucrative consulting contract moonlighting for the troubled cannabis company La Mota, even as she shaped a state audit of cannabis regulation to suit the company.
Since then, Fagan’s deputy, Cheryl Myers, has served as interim secretary of state, overseeing elections, audits, the Corporation Division and State Archives.
Griffin-Valade, 70, joined Multnomah County as an auditor in 1998, later winning election as county auditor. She won election as auditor for the city of Portland in 2009 and served through 2014.
As city auditor, Griffin-Valade, who was born in John Day and survived a bout with breast cancer in the 1990s, showed herself to be a flinty truth-teller. She produced scathing audits, including on the Water Bureau’s discretionary use of ratepayer funds for purposes other than those for which they were dedicated (the city would ultimately pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of ratepayers). She was also a persistent and harsh critic of some of the tactics of the Portland Police Bureau and its command staff, taking a more public stance than is typical for auditors, and successfully pushed for more authority for the Independent Police Review board.
When Griffin-Valade decided not to seek re-election in 2014, The Oregonian editorial board issued what amounted to a glowing recommendation. “Griffin-Valade’s popularity was strongest outside of City Hall,” the daily wrote. “In fact, her work and fundamental belief that a government should be accountable to the public even generated a small write-in campaign on her behalf during the 2012 mayoral race.”
After leaving office, Griffin-Valade earned a master of fine arts degree from Portland State and began writing mystery novels, completing a series of four books about an Oregon State Police sergeant named Maggie Blackthorne. She is not expected to seek election in 2024.
In Oregon, unlike most states, the secretary of state is second in command to the governor. According to the Oregon Constitution, whoever holds the office takes over as governor if the state’s top executive leaves office. That happened as recently as 2015, when Secretary of State Kate Brown succeeded Gov. John Kitzhaber when Kitzhaber resigned amid an influence-peddling scandal. In the current circumstance, however, the line of succession is different: Because Griffin-Valade is appointed rather than elected, the next in line for succession is State Treasurer Tobias Read.
Although the secretary of state’s position pays poorly—just $77,000 a year—the proximity to power makes it attractive to ambitious politicians. And since former President Donald Trump made election integrity a front-page issue, the formerly low-profile post has assumed a higher level of prominence.
All that made Kotek’s decision challenging. Some people urged her to elevate a potential successor, which would have meant conferring an enormous advantage of incumbency for the secretary of state’s race next year. Others advised Kotek to select a competent placeholder who could oversees next year’s elections but would not seek election. She made the latter choice.
“I told Oregonians in May that the primary objective of our next secretary of state was to restore confidence in the office,” Kotek said today. “LaVonne Griffin-Valade has the professional background and ethical judgment to rise above politics and lead the important work of the agency forward.”
In a nod to the scandal that ended Fagan’s promising career and is now the subject of state and federal investigations, Kotek laid out what she wants from her new appointee.
“Accountability and transparency are exactly what this role demands in this moment after the scandal in this office,” Kotek said during a Wednesday press conference. The governor had strong words for Fagan, saying the public had lost confidence “because of the actions of one person.”
Griffin-Valade will be sworn in on Friday.