Three pages of the manual are made up of formal advice given earlier this year by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, which advised that nothing limits the role the first lady can play as long as she doesn’t seek to profit from her volunteer role.
And the manual makes clear that first spouses will get a state police detail and their own office space. While Kotek Wilson has used both, that hasn’t been a uniform approach by past governors.
“Each First Partner has their own choices to make when it comes to how involved they may choose to be during their partner’s tenure as Governor,” the manual says. “As the highest public office in the state, the Governor, the First Partner, and Governor’s Office are held to the highest standards of accountability and ethics.”
The manual didn’t come cheap. Kotek’s office has paid a temporary staffer, Meliah Masiba, nearly $12,000 a month for duties that include helping coordinate the first lady’s schedule and creating the first partner document. Among her directives, according to an official job description, was to “spell out policies and procedures related to that role, including protocols for addressing any staff concerns or complaints.”
That was a response to serious concerns raised in March, as Kotek Wilson’s role was becoming a flashpoint within Kotek’s office. In a scathing March 15 email, Abby Tibbs, one of the soon-to-depart aides, laid out a litany of steps that the governor’s office needed to take when it came to the first lady. Among them was creating ”an articulated plan to address power dynamics and reporting structure for a [first spouse].”
But if Kotek has created such a plan, it is nowhere to be found in the new handbook.
“Governor’s Office staff may have questions regarding the First Partner’s perceived influence and power within the office,” it says. “To address this, any official request from the First Partner to staff should be clear and consistent, and staff should have access to the Office’s human resources protocols should any issue arise.”
Kotek Wilson’s role went largely unnoticed during Kotek’s first year in office, but exploded into view in March, when three of the most influential figures in the governor’s office all departed.
Former chief of staff Andrea Cooper appears to have been fired. Tibbs, a former special adviser, returned to a previous role at Oregon Health & Science University. And former deputy chief of staff Lindsey O’Brien went on a monthslong paid leave that will end next month.
Public records showed that all three women had raised increasing concern about Kotek Wilson’s role, as Kotek and her wife took steps toward creating a formal office of the first spouse and hiring a chief of staff for Kotek Wilson.
While neither step is rare nationally, the revelations got immediate attention in Oregon because of a recent scandal. In 2015, then-Gov. John Kitzhaber stepped down, after his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, profited off of access she could offer to the state’s highest office. He’d won a historic fourth term as governor just months before.
Kotek Wilson, in contrast, does not have paid employment. Kotek earns $98,600 a year.
In response to outcry in the weeks after her aides left, Kotek apologized in May for how she’d handled the matter and walked back her plans to create a formal office for her wife. But the governor declined to say what else would change about Kotek Wilson’s role, saying she would await guidance from the ethics commission.
A former social worker, Kotek Wilson has taken a keen interest in the behavioral health policies her wife has pursued, and records show she has often sat in on meetings on the subject. But recent public schedules released by the governor’s office suggest the first lady is less involved than she once was, no longer sitting in on regular staff meetings.
Public records show that Kotek’s office was well on its way to creating a “process and procedure manual” for a first spouse’s office in early March. The manual unveiled Monday contains some very similar passages to that document. But the new handbook is much more general, containing far fewer specifics about how Kotek Wilson will interact with her wife’s employees.
