Washington County’s Clean Water Services and Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program both have work to do in shoring up public trust. But first, their leaders apparently need a refresher course on what exactly that means.
Let’s start with Clean Water Services, the sewer agency for more than 600,000 Washington County residents. As The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Jamie Goldberg has reported, agency officials freely used ratepayer money, either directly or indirectly, to fund five-star hotel rooms, first-class airfare to Hawaii and tens of thousands of dollars on meals at local restaurants.
These revelations came only after extensive requests by Goldberg for public records – many of which have yet to be turned over. And following her reporting, the Washington County chair and commissioners, who oversee the sewer agency as a separate board, had little to say. They dismissed the findings – Commissioner Jason Snider, a newcomer to the board, said he did not think the reporting on the Hawaii trips “was particularly accurate or balanced” although he gave no specifics why. Others didn’t comment at all.
Fast forward after three weeks of angry feedback from Washington County constituents, and commissioners were singing a different tune. Or at least humming one. In a public meeting last week, they outlined a proposal to commission an audit; call for tighter travel guidelines; revoke executives’ purchasing cards and hire a consultant to review the sewer agency’s decision to incorporate its insurance subsidiary in Hawaii. Notably, the proposal lays out the need for “a plan to restore the trust of our community.”
Unfortunately, board members don’t seem to know how. The proposal, as we wrote last week, falls short in many ways. Rather than ask the independent county auditor to handle the audit, the board is directing the sewer agency to hire an auditor who will be overseen by the agency’s attorney – who coincidentally serves on the insurance subsidiary’s board. A resident who testified at the meeting highlighted other weaknesses, including measures that leave discretion to Clean Water Services CEO Diane Taniguchi-Dennis, whose spending led the list of eyepopping expenses.
But rather than debate ways to improve the proposal at the meeting, the commissioners simply offered up some comments and were ready to move on. They provided bland acknowledgment that public trust must be restored without actually asking anyone to be held accountable or to apologize to ratepayers. Taniguchi-Dennis, who attended the meeting but said nothing, was never called up to answer questions or offer a public statement explaining her actions.
That lack of questioning, unfortunately, seems to be a recurring theme.
Moving goalposts, the sequel: Last year, we wrote an editorial calling out Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program for claiming in a quarterly newsletter that it had exceeded its goals for how many preschoolers were served in its first two years.
As we wrote then, the program was actually falling short of the number of seats that officials had promised to voters who authorized the program in November 2020. But in 2022, Preschool for All officials quietly lowered those targets without alerting the public. Suddenly, when measured against those new goals, the program was overachieving.
After being asked about the lack of transparency, county communications staffers promptly responded, clarifying the press release and newsletter to explicitly note that the goals had been revised from the original targets given to voters.
That should have been the end of it. But it’s not.
In her most recent quarterly newsletter, Preschool for All Director Leslee Barnes recycled the claim, boasting that “since its inception, PFA has exceeded goals for the number of children served.” Those are bold words for a program that, since its inception, had to readjust expectations, lowering yearly targets by as much as 33%. A similar assertion appears later in the update.
This blunder may seem minor – and in the grand scheme of things, it is. It doesn’t indicate the value of or need for the program. The underlying decision to revise the goals is also understandable, reflecting the reality that many preschools had closed due to the pandemic.
But transparency means resisting the urge to pump up results and being straight with the public – even as the program has come under scrutiny for the enormous sum of tax dollars it receives and whether the program is meeting voters’ expectations. Suggesting to people, again, that this new program exceeded goals from the very start misstates the facts, confuses the public and complicates any review of what is promised to voters and what is delivered. At least one news organization has picked up this embellished narrative, which does not foster a fact-based discussion about how this program is performing.
Coupled with officials’ failure to share their decision to lower goals in the first place, the misleading wording raises questions about the importance of transparency for program officials.
That failure to communicate clearly or proactively about the program’s new goals was one of several weaknesses listed in a recent report from Multnomah County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk. Not only can that weaken public trust, the audit said, but it’s a decision with real impacts. Those reductions may result in 7,500 fewer kids being served by 2030 than originally promised, the audit found.
In an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board, Barnes pushed back on the idea that the newsletter was misleading. While she acknowledged that the revised goals “could have been shared more broadly” when they were adopted in 2022, she said the program has since worked to “rectify this oversight” and will continue to improve communications.
Here’s one suggestion for improving communications: Don’t keep making the same mistake. We look forward to the next newsletter offering updates without the spin.
-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board
Updated: The editorial was updated to correct that the attorney for Clean Water Services will be overseeing the outside audit of the agency.