Turning the Tables on a Rogue Manager

State Report Affirms Members’ Roles in Exposing Scandal at DAS

A state report released to the Oregonian (pdf download) affirms that SEIU 503 members seeking a better way to balance the budget played critical roles in uncovering a private contracting scandal that led to the dismissal of a high-level manager.  

And, irony of ironies, the diligence of workers she had targeted for elimination led to her exposure.

Not that state officials were quick to thank the alert workers whose revelations exposed the scandal—Conda Walsh and Vernon Coberly. When officials fired Director of Facilities Services Robin Harpster and demoted and transferred her deputy, Scott Young in May, they took credit for investigating a contract that channeled more than $400,000 in state funds to Valerie McBride-Cater, a former state manager who had retired.

“But the contract wasn't canceled and the two managers were not put on leave until after a legislative budget hearing [in March] where Conda Walsh, an accounts payable coordinator and member of the Service Employees International Union Local 503, shared her concerns about the agency paying for consultants when regular employees could do the job.” the Oregonian reported.  

Walsh’s appearance at the subcommittee hearing was coordinated by SEIU 503 staffers working with members to promote efficiencies described in “Moving Oregon Forward: A Better Way: A Roadmap to a Balanced Solution to Our Budget Crisis Drawn from the Suggestions of Frontline State Workers.” (pdf download)

Rep. Nancy Nathanson, the subcommittee chair, has told the press she was so taken with Walsh’s revelations that she alerted the state’s newly appointed Director of Administrative Services, Michael Jordan, suggesting that Jordan view a tape of Walsh’s testimony. Jordan subsequently suspended Harpster and Young and launched the probe, later expanded it to include an audit of all similar state contracts.

Walsh, whose own position had been slated for elimination in the 2011-13 Facilities Division budget proposal prepared by Harpster, was unassuming about her role.

"I just opened the door to the closet," she told the Oregonian. "Front-line workers know where cost savings will come from. Now I think there will be a lot more freedom to speak up about those savings."

Enter Coberly, one of 69 Salem-based custodians also targeted for layoff by Harpster, who proposed outsourcing the work. Shortly after starting his shift Monday, April 11, he noticed a huge assortment of paper files—enough to fill 13 cartons it turned out—in a basement trash bin. McBride-Cater's contract had been terminated three days earlier.

According to the state report released June 3, Coberly was so upset that someone would dump so much paper in the trash rather than recycle it that he complained to (of all people) Scott Young. Other members of the SEIU 503 bargaining unit retrieved the files and put them under lock and key. The report notes that records show both Harpster and McBride used their security access cards to enter the building the day before.

“SEIU has been urging the state to cut costs by eliminating unnecessary and expensive private contracts,” the Salem Statesman-Journal noted in reporting Harpster’s dismissal May 25.

"’This may be a more dramatic example than most, but we believe that it is but one of many, many private contracts the state can and should do without in these tough economic times," said SEIU Local 503 President Linda Burgin.”