Chief Operating Officer Christopher Neal today announced an independent, outside investigation into Multnomah County’s policies and practices around employees’ conflicts of interest and ethics.
Neal, who met with an outside law firm Beery, Elsner & Hammond, LLP on Aug. 6, said he has retained the outside counsel to review how the County collects information, evaluates and trains employees and managers in matters where they could potentially personally benefit from their official position or be unduly influenced by an outside interest.
The action follows a July 2025 Oregon Secretary of State’s Office audit that reviewed grant spending by the state’s Preschool Promise program from 2020 to 2023. Subsequent media reports of the audit, citing separate state financial documents, revealed that one of the preschools highlighted was owned by the then-director of Multnomah County’s Preschool and Early Learning Division, which manages the voter-approved Preschool for All program.
The County’s Preschool for All program is not related to the state program that was under scrutiny. The former director’s preschool never received any funding from Preschool for All.
But amid questions over a potential conflict of interest, Chair Jessica Vega Pederson asked Neal to conduct a review of County policies and practices developed and implemented under previous County chairs. Their concerns aligned with Commissioners Shannon Singleton and Julia Brim-Edwards, who called for an outside investigation into what the County does to assure employees follow County ethics and conflict of interest policies.
The investigation will evaluate and align the County’s existing ethics-related policies and practices with legal requirements under state law, best practices and organizational values. It will also identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement in the ethics framework. And it will provide actionable recommendations to strengthen policies, procedures, and the overall culture of integrity, accountability, and ethical conduct expectations. The investigators will not examine the individual case of the director, who resigned July 31.
Currently, it is up to each public employee to comply with County human resource rules around conflicts of interest and ethics, in accordance with state law. All employees, for example, are required to annually declare any conflicts of interest and comply with the County’s code of ethics. Managers are required to collect and review any declarations of conflicts, and take appropriate action.
The review will focus on policies established before Neal’s tenure as chief operating officer began in March 2025.
“The community needs to know they can trust public employees and that the decisions we’re making are for the public good,” said Neal. “We’re going to take a hard look at how we’ve been doing things, and take action everywhere we can to improve.”
###