Gov. Tina Kotek (right, and Aimee Kotek Wilson before the governor’s inauguration at the Oregon Capitol in Salem on Jan. 9, 2023. Kotek has released a new document spelling out the role of the first spouse in Oregon. (Kristyna Wentz-Graff/OPB)
Gov. Tina Kotek has released a new guide to the role of first spouse in Oregon and how it interacts with the rest of the governor’s office. But the costly document answers few of the most pressing questions raised earlier this year, when first lady Aimee Kotek Wilson’s role led to a shakeup in the office.
More than four months after Kotek pledged to create the “first partner handbook” — and a couple days beyond a self-imposed deadline to release it by the end of summer — the manual unveiled Monday contains few clues into exactly what role her wife will play.
Nor does it offer any detailed insight into how Kotek’s office will handle staff concerns that arise because of Kotek Wilson’s role. That was a key issue raised in March, after the abrupt departures of three top aides who’d pushed back on Kotek Wilson’s expanding authority within the office. There has been little clarity about how the governor would create firm boundaries allowing staff to safely raise such workplace issues when it comes to her wife.
Instead, the 16-page document offers a look at how past Oregon first spouses have operated, and a glimpse at how other states have treated the position. It also gives a rundown of relevant laws that apply to the first lady’s dual role of public official and unpaid volunteer, and a description and history of the governor’s residence, Mahonia Hall.
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.
This story was originally published by Oregon Public Broadcasting, a Capital Chronicle news partner.