Did a key staffer for Commissioner Chloe Eudaly violate city rules by being too cozy with lobbyists? An anonymous complainer said so. The city elections officers says no.
The issue at hand: Whether Jamey Duhamel, Eudaly’s policy director, had too much avocado toast at an impromptu Portland Tenants United (PTU) gathering at a Southeast Portland bar this summer. She was reported to the city by an unnamed landlord lobbyist accusing her of not disclosing the “gift” from the city.
City Elections Officer Deborah Scroggin, who runs the lobbyist registration program in the city auditor’s office, notified Duhamel this afternoon that she was cleared of violating the city code that requires city officials to disclose when the receive gifts, including meals, over $25 from lobbying entities.
“I confirmed that expenses for the event, hosted and partially paid for by registered lobbying entity Portland Tenants United, were under the amount per person requiring disclosure by City Officials,” Scroggin’s letter says.
Margot Black, head of PTU, tells the Mercury she and PTU supporters headed to the Space Room Lounge on Hawthorne Ave in July. They were there to celebrate an Oregon judge’s ruling against the landlord lobby in their push to dismantle the city’s new renter relocation ordinance, which was strongly pushed by Eudaly and backed by PTU. The complainer found a picture of Duhamel there with PTU on Black’s husband’s Facebook account.
They had avocado toast at the bar, Black says, as a jokey reference to an Austrialian millionaire blaming millennials inability to afford homes on their avocado toast habits.
“If this is the best you guys got…” Black says about the anonymous complainer.
Eudaly was the subject of another complaint this winter, alleging she was wrongly meeting with PTU, “which is not properly registered as a lobbyist entity despite meeting the definition.” After that, Black says, PTU registered as a lobbying entity with the city: “I didn’t know that was a thing” PTU needed to do. “We weren’t trying to break rules or sneak around, we just had no idea.”
Duhamel Letter 20171117 (PDF)
Duhamel Letter 20171117 (Text)
Eudaly’s job is to know what is allowed and isn’t. It’s the job of her staff to know what is allowed and isn’t and to keep each other in check & flag potential issues. It is exactly their job to also conduct themselves properly and follow lobbying reporting rules. They give every elected official and city staff a handbook and training when they start in office that includes a chapter on ethics, conduct, conflicts of interest and lobbying rules. Eudaly and Duhamel both got that handbook AND hands on city training regarding that handbook in Jan when they started. It is their job and legal responsibilitg to have read that handbook and know it.
So the excuse of “golly gee I had no idea we’d have to report any mingling with lobbyists” is BS. And Duhamal saying, “I get confused about what is personal and what is work related” shows she’s either spinning a load of avocados, or is totally unequipped to work in public policy in the public sector. If you work in the public sector around ussues if affordable housing and you are meeting with an affordable housing lobbying group made up of registered lobbyists, they are paying for your brunch, and both you and the lobbyists were already warned once by the city about your conduct? Hmmm let’s see what the obvious decision making here should have been…you report it. If you aren’t sure, you report it or ask the auditor. There, confusion over work vs personal solved.
Jamey Duhamel is a dumbass (or politico scumbag, jury’s out).
The city auditor already warned Eudaly and her staff and PTU at least once.
It’s not about avocado toast. That’s a comic banana peel distraction from the bigger problem: Eudaly, her staff & PTU either blow off ethics and lobbying law procedures and don’t care, or they are so arrogant and stupid they can’t even figure out a simple bullet pointed 4 page chapter where it’s clearly spelled out for them.
And the smug, let’s make fun of City ethics investigations and the City Auditor for doing what they are required to do and investigate complaints is the stuff of punk ass emotionally stunted teenagers, not serious professionals in charge of running the city, solving our housing crises, and PTU & city staff needing to be taken seriously to help get the support they need to assist struggling low income citizens and renters. Partying over avocado toast with look at me selfies and then feeding the Mercury onionesque news about it doesn’t help PTU or Eudaly’s office with much needed reputations as astute, tempered, serious public policy makers. It just makes them look like trite, petty buffoons More interested in FU snarky snark.
Grow up Chloe & Jamey. You a make a mockery of the importance of the democratic process in governent ethics. Shame on both of you. SHAME
Also, you are both shooting yourselves in the foot by trying to manipulate the media and story along with your BFFs in PTU. In case you missed that memo too: you are all failing spectacularly.
Which is a shame. Renters, the homeless, and low income Portlanders deserve better than your clown car of “civic leadership”
These are the people in charge of running our city and advocating for renters rights?
Wow Portland, we are screwed.
I’ve seen 12 year olds at the school I teach conduct themselves with more maturity and diplomacy.
Standing ovation for AleshaBB, for both the substance and so I didn’t have to type it out to say the same things!
The same Chloe Eudaly and Jamey Duhamel who lambast landlords for not knowing and following every last detail of housing law.
BTW, and maybe the Merc can do a little blurb on this in a future article – Jamey Duhamel is a fucking transplant who literally – go read her bio – moved to Portland for “more resources” and didn’t realize housing would be expensive because she did no research on that point before relocating her entire family here. I’m not making this up, it’s literally in her fucking bio: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/eudaly/ar…
It’s like the universe created the absolute worst stereotype of a person, and then made her the staff member of the absolute worst City Commissioner we’ve had in a long time, which is a seriously low bar when you consider who she just replaced.
I think the real problem is both Chloe and Jamey aren’t very educated people and lack strong professional experience, Eudaly has no professional work experience in an office other than a travel agency or something when she was in her early 20s. Jamey is from bumfoot Alaska with an online diploma mill college degree from late night tv commercial U of Phoenix. Her work experience is working for a grass roots non-profit in dingleberry Alaska and running an unsuccesful low level position political campaign for herself. I’ve seen 20 years old interns at the City with better and more education and experience than those two women.
These two have no idea the importance of reading and following HR handbooks and ethics rules given to them when they started work in January. Jamey is pretty weak on policy overall and mis-steps all the time on missing big legal issues when proposing new initiatives (city owned bank hahaha, and the one on requiring home owners to sell their properties to the city was a rookie mistake. Ted Wheeler’s office pretty much re drafted the rent relocation ordinance for them before it went to Counil because Jamey’s had so many mistakes in it) The only education she’s had is some online diploma mill university. And Chloe is a proud high school dropout with her highest educational attainment a GED, so…
I’m not saying uneducated people are dumb or that you need college to succeed. But City Hall work and legal rules are very complicated. Even people with Masters Degrees in Public Administration and law degrees have to be on their toes and really read and study and ask questions and verify what’s in front of them and pay attention. If you have little to no experience in a profession as complex as policy, city government and law and in working in a large HR system of legal rules to follow, it’s going to be in over your head. I think they are both nice people but totally in over their heads with regards to the rules of their jobs.
That, or Chloe and Jamey think they are above the law and the rules don’t apply to them and they are just claiming ignorance. Who knows. Either way, they both look stupid here.