Cylvia Hayes: new records show First Lady used Kitzhaber staff for mundane tasks
Gov. John Kitzhaber's office Monday released select email records showing his fiancé, Cylvia Hayes, tasked his staff with mundane personal responsibilities ranging from helping sneak cats into a hotel room to complaining over a delayed flight.
The 500 pages of records capture communications between Hayes on her personal email accounts and a scheduler in Kitzhaber's office. They were released as the governor's office continues to whittle away at a months-long backlog of public records requests.
The emails, spanning 2013 and part of 2014, are largely routine. In many of the emails, Hayes signs as first lady but also included her company name and contact information.
Earlier records have shown Hayes blurred the line between her public and private roles, such as claiming reimbursement for expenses that appear related to her private business. The records have also suggested that Kitzhaber's office has relaxed its ethical guidelines to allow Hayes more freedom to pursue her work in ways that the governor's attorney, Liani Reeves, considered questionable, such as the use of state-owned Mahonia Hall for Hayes' personal business meetings.
The new correspondence sheds little light on the controversy over whether Hayes used her position as first lady to enhance her private contracting work. The Oregon Government Ethics Commission is investigating possible conflicts of interest and other possible ethics violations for using her public position for personal gain.
The emails make clear Hayes often communicated as first lady, a honorary position with no salary. Oregon's ethics laws consider volunteers to be public officials when working for the government, experts say.
One email exchange illustrates the interwoven strands of Hayes' public work and paid consulting. She operated a company called 3E Strategies, which focused on environmental initiatives.
On Feb. 4, 2013, as CEO of 3E Strategies, she invited local environmental leaders to dinner with Lew Daly of the nonprofit Demos. The email, which Hayes copied to governor's staffers, said Daly was in town to evaluate Kitzhaber's education reforms.
Hayes mentioned Daly's work on "Genuine Progress Indicators" – an effort to measure government programs in ways that capture environmental and other values.
She subsequently got a $25,000 consulting agreement with Demos to be an "active and strategic" liaison between the nonprofit and Oregon government officials and business leaders on the GPI initiative, documents show. The contract was later revised to delete Oregon-centric tasks.
Hayes and Kitzhaber have since made the GPI a focus of his administration, trying to make it a part of state budgeting.
In an April 17, 2013 email, Hayes asked Mary Rowinski, her staff assistant in the governor's office, to book her a hotel room in Medford.
"I will have Tessa (and probably the cats – don't tell the hotel that part..." she wrote, adding a smiley-face emoticon to the sentence.
Rowinski responded that she had arranged a Medford hotel room.
"I called them to find out if you had to walk through the main lobby to get to your room (kitties). She said no, there's a side door, but I'm wondering if I should look for a place like a motel that you can basically drive up to your room." Rowinski wrote. "Your thoughts? Also, are the kitties taken care of during your Bhutan trip?"
"Smart woman!!" responded Hayes. "This sounds fine." She said that during the Bhutan trip – taken with Daly, Kitzhaber and others for more than a week -- her friends in Bend would probably pick up Hayes' two cats to take care of them. If not, both would remain at Mahonia and "I would ask you to check on them and clean the litter boxes..."
In a July 18, 2013 email, she complained a late flight returning from New York might mean she would miss a connecting flight in San Francisco. She asked Jan Murdock, personal assistant to the governor, to see if the airline would delay the next flight.
Murdock wrote back that United couldn't promise a delay, so she negotiated with the airline for a hotel if the flight was missed.
"They tried to tell me that they wouldn't cover your hotel. That conversation was over extremely quickly & now they will provide a hotel voucher!" Murdock wrote.
When Hayes wanted to complain to the airline, Murdock stepped in again. She reached out to an assistant to the director of the Port of Portland, a longtime Kitzhaber associate.
"I had a long conversation with Pam, Bill Wyatt's assistant, explaining what occurred with United last night," Murdock wrote. "She's going to get back to me with information on where best to send a letter of complaint that actually gets read and into the hands of the proper person."
In April 2013, Hayes asked Murdock and Rowinski to recommend good Salem hotels although she lives in Salem part time. They recommended three.
"Will you please get me contact info for those?" Hayes responded.
The emails between Hayes and Rowinski were requested in October. The governor's office has yet to release many key records sought through public records requests, such as ethics files kept by Kitzhaber's attorney, Reeves.
However, Kitzhaber's office appeared to increase the pace of records releases as the year drew to a close, promising Tuesday to provide Hayes' calendar for the first time this year.
--Nick Budnick
The 500 pages of records capture communications between Hayes on her personal email accounts and a scheduler in Kitzhaber's office. They were released as the governor's office continues to whittle away at a months-long backlog of public records requests.
The emails, spanning 2013 and part of 2014, are largely routine. In many of the emails, Hayes signs as first lady but also included her company name and contact information.
Earlier records have shown Hayes blurred the line between her public and private roles, such as claiming reimbursement for expenses that appear related to her private business. The records have also suggested that Kitzhaber's office has relaxed its ethical guidelines to allow Hayes more freedom to pursue her work in ways that the governor's attorney, Liani Reeves, considered questionable, such as the use of state-owned Mahonia Hall for Hayes' personal business meetings.
The new correspondence sheds little light on the controversy over whether Hayes used her position as first lady to enhance her private contracting work. The Oregon Government Ethics Commission is investigating possible conflicts of interest and other possible ethics violations for using her public position for personal gain.
The emails make clear Hayes often communicated as first lady, a honorary position with no salary. Oregon's ethics laws consider volunteers to be public officials when working for the government, experts say.
One email exchange illustrates the interwoven strands of Hayes' public work and paid consulting. She operated a company called 3E Strategies, which focused on environmental initiatives.
On Feb. 4, 2013, as CEO of 3E Strategies, she invited local environmental leaders to dinner with Lew Daly of the nonprofit Demos. The email, which Hayes copied to governor's staffers, said Daly was in town to evaluate Kitzhaber's education reforms.
Hayes mentioned Daly's work on "Genuine Progress Indicators" – an effort to measure government programs in ways that capture environmental and other values.
She subsequently got a $25,000 consulting agreement with Demos to be an "active and strategic" liaison between the nonprofit and Oregon government officials and business leaders on the GPI initiative, documents show. The contract was later revised to delete Oregon-centric tasks.
Hayes and Kitzhaber have since made the GPI a focus of his administration, trying to make it a part of state budgeting.
In an April 17, 2013 email, Hayes asked Mary Rowinski, her staff assistant in the governor's office, to book her a hotel room in Medford.
"I will have Tessa (and probably the cats – don't tell the hotel that part..." she wrote, adding a smiley-face emoticon to the sentence.
Rowinski responded that she had arranged a Medford hotel room.
"I called them to find out if you had to walk through the main lobby to get to your room (kitties). She said no, there's a side door, but I'm wondering if I should look for a place like a motel that you can basically drive up to your room." Rowinski wrote. "Your thoughts? Also, are the kitties taken care of during your Bhutan trip?"
"Smart woman!!" responded Hayes. "This sounds fine." She said that during the Bhutan trip – taken with Daly, Kitzhaber and others for more than a week -- her friends in Bend would probably pick up Hayes' two cats to take care of them. If not, both would remain at Mahonia and "I would ask you to check on them and clean the litter boxes..."
In a July 18, 2013 email, she complained a late flight returning from New York might mean she would miss a connecting flight in San Francisco. She asked Jan Murdock, personal assistant to the governor, to see if the airline would delay the next flight.
Murdock wrote back that United couldn't promise a delay, so she negotiated with the airline for a hotel if the flight was missed.
"They tried to tell me that they wouldn't cover your hotel. That conversation was over extremely quickly & now they will provide a hotel voucher!" Murdock wrote.
When Hayes wanted to complain to the airline, Murdock stepped in again. She reached out to an assistant to the director of the Port of Portland, a longtime Kitzhaber associate.
"I had a long conversation with Pam, Bill Wyatt's assistant, explaining what occurred with United last night," Murdock wrote. "She's going to get back to me with information on where best to send a letter of complaint that actually gets read and into the hands of the proper person."
In April 2013, Hayes asked Murdock and Rowinski to recommend good Salem hotels although she lives in Salem part time. They recommended three.
"Will you please get me contact info for those?" Hayes responded.
The emails between Hayes and Rowinski were requested in October. The governor's office has yet to release many key records sought through public records requests, such as ethics files kept by Kitzhaber's attorney, Reeves.
However, Kitzhaber's office appeared to increase the pace of records releases as the year drew to a close, promising Tuesday to provide Hayes' calendar for the first time this year.
--Nick Budnick
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