Greg Smith is at odds with at least some members of his board for the Columbia Development Authority over his move to backdate a salary increase for himself.
During a public CDA board meeting Friday afternoon, Sept. 20, at the Nixyaawii Governance Center, Mission, board members Kelly Doherty and J.D. Tovey harshly criticized Smith, Republican state representative for House District 57, for what he calls a mistake, going so far as to mention removing Smith from his position as executive director as a possible recourse for what happened.
The board in June approved a grant application to the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation that, in part, requested funding for a “significant board-approved increase salary adjustment” beginning April 1.
It increased Smith’s salary to $195,000, up from $129,000 last year and gave him retroactive pay. The request also covered an increase for Debbie Pedro, executive assistant and economic development manager for the CDA.
However, the board never approved any salary increase through any official means. By the end of the Sept. 20 meeting, the board had decided nothing about Smith’s future in his role, though the board did make a plan to evaluate his performance by the end of October.
Additionally, Tovey made a motion, which Doherty seconded, to have Smith return the retroactive pay and return to his previous salary. Just as the board was voting on the motion, Smith said he would return the money voluntarily. By then, the board had passed the motion.
Board members cite lack of trust
Still, the approval for the application, including the false details, went through, with board member Jeff Wenholz making the motion and Doherty seconding it, according to the meeting minutes from June 25. Doherty said during the Sept. 20 meeting she had felt rushed during the vote, and having only joined the board in March, believed what was written in the application packet.
“I made my vote according to what you wrote,” Doherty told Smith during the meeting. “This is a falsified statement that we made a vote on, and I feel like there’s no trust here.”
Tovey, who took on his membership in January, said he felt the inaccuracy was either “willful or incompetent” and told Smith he felt it reflected poorly on Smith, himself and the whole CDA board. Neither Doherty nor Tovey seemed interested in taking responsibility for the vote they had made.
“It feels like you buried something into a document you slid across our desk under an emergency meeting that needed to be approved immediately because it was a run of the mill document,” Tovey said. “In our trust of our executive director, we approved it, and now our fingerprints are all over it, when you’ve got something that’s been slid through there. It feels gross. It really feels like it’s wrong.”
Smith, for his part, repeatedly said he did not write the line in the document saying it had been board-approved, but also said he would take responsibility since he is the executive director and CEO. It was unclear what he believed taking responsibility meant beyond saying he “owns” the incorrect statements.
He went on to explain he’d undergone an evaluation by an appointed committee — made up of Chair Kim Puzey and the vice chair at the time, Lisa Mittelsdorf — who directed him to negotiate a salary increase through the grant, as that makes up much of the CDA’s funding. It was only recently, then, that it came to light that the salary increase was never officially approved in a public discussion and vote.
Smith said he has since contacted the grantor and has had the language changed so it’s accurate.
“All I can tell you is that I own this statement. A lot of people have had their fingers on this,” Smith said to the board. “At the end of the day, I should have read that, I should have (seen) that, I should have circled it and I should have corrected it.”
Concerns about public perception
One of the concerns Tovey and Smith raised was how this debacle would affect the CDA’s business relationships and perception. Tovey placed at least some blame for a lack of development on Smith’s leadership, citing a meeting he’d had with a potential developer.
“It feels like weaponized incompetence in order to get the organization so dysfunctional,” Tovey said, “that it makes sense for it to actually be dissolved and sent off to the ports, as some backwards justification.”
Puzey is the general manager of the Port of Umatilla, and Doherty is a Port of Morrow commissioner. They along with Wenholz, Morrow County commissioner, voted in March to give control of the CDA’s industrial land to the two ports against the votes of Umatilla County Commissioner John Shafer and Tovey, who represents the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
In response, Smith pointed the finger at the board, saying if the board stepped back and let its employees do their job, development would come.
“You would have, like, four different Fortune 500 companies breaking ground,” he said. “Instead, I’m sitting here dinking around with a bunch of folks who can’t get along.”
He named strained relationships between board members, such as Doherty and David Sykes — a Morrow County commissioner and alternate who sat in for Wenholz to represent his county — or Shafer and Puzey, who represent two of the entities locked in litigation over the CDA’s land distribution.
“I’m dealing with this, trying to get a dysfunctional board to work together for the benefit of this region,” Smith said. “And I will take the bullets. I own it all, I’m the director, but you guys better look at yourself and ask what’s going on.”
Although the meeting is over, there is more to come as the board evaluates Smith’s performance as CEO and executive director and decides how to move forward. The board is tentatively scheduled to meet Oct. 1 to decide the evaluation process and Oct. 22 to review the evaluations.
