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The Mercury’s Jeremiah Hayden contributed to this story.
A former staffer in Portland City Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane’s office filed complaints with the city and state, alleging the councilor and her chief of staff, Mary Li, retaliated against her after she requested reasonable accommodations for a disability.
The former employee, Sprout Chinn, believes she was punished and ultimately fired from her job as a council aide because she requested workplace accommodations for a seizure disorder. On February 10, Chinn submitted separate complaints to the city’s Office of Equity and Human Rights and Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). In both complaints, Chinn alleges she was retaliated against at work after asking for accommodations protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In a statement to the Mercury, Koyama Lane said she can’t comment on personnel issues.
“My focus is making sure my team can effectively serve the constituents of District 3,” she said. “I am committed to protecting the privacy of employees and those directly involved.”
Li was not made available for comment through Koyama Lane’s office.
Chinn was hired as a council aide in Koyama Lane’s office last February. She was tasked with performing community outreach and engaging with Koyama Lane’s constituents in District 3. Chinn told the Mercury that the position was a dream job that felt perfectly aligned with her lifelong dedication to political activism.
But Chinn was fired last month, after what she describes as months of escalating tensions in the workplace. She said her supervisor chalked up her termination to an “inability to improve over several months,” but Chinn claims she was never provided with specific concerns about her work performance or given an opportunity to improve.
“I stayed at this job, despite it being a very difficult working environment, because I really thought the most important thing was to make Portland a better place,” Chinn said. “I realized that part of that meant making the workplace [in City Hall] safer, too.”
In general, Chinn believes her experience is symptomatic of a larger problem in City Hall, in which City Council staff have little recourse for concerns of retaliation or mistreatment. Council staff announced their intent to unionize in December, but without a labor contract, they’re not entitled to the same protections as other unionized city employees.
Chinn was an organizing member of the newly-formed Portland City Council staff labor union, represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901. The union has not asserted Chinn’s termination was related to her organizing role. However, CWA 7901 President Meg Ward told the Mercury the incident has had a “significant impact on the unit as a whole.”
Following Chinn’s termination, union members wore buttons to work showing support for her, as they had for Adam Murray, another Council staffer and union organizer, who was recently fired from his role in Councilor Loretta Smith’s office. In that case, the union does believe there was a causal relationship between Murray’s organizing efforts and his termination, and has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against Smith’s office.
“We believe it’s vital to get to the bargaining table as soon as possible and to negotiate for just cause and other protections,” Ward said.
In her complaint to the city, Chinn requested remedies including a formal apology from Koyama Lane’s office and reinstatement to her former position. Chinn also wants the city to ensure Council staff are granted the same ADA protections as other Portland employees.
Chinn’s complaints say she began to experience retaliatory behavior from Koyama Lane and Li last spring, after she went to Portland’s Bureau of Human Resources (BHR) to request accommodations for her seizure disorder. As Koyama Lane’s chief of staff, Li was Chinn’s direct supervisor, and Chinn’s accounts describe Li as the primary source of the alleged retaliation.
The claims in Chinn’s complaints have yet to be investigated.
Chinn said she disclosed her disability to Portland’s Interim BHR Director Ron Zito upon starting work last February, but did not ask for accommodations at that time. According to Chinn’s complaint, she experienced a seizure at work June 4, and asked to go home early.
“I was instructed by [Li] to go home and continue working, in this case on my computer to execute the Councilor’s weekly newsletter,” Chinn wrote in her complaint to the city. “This response made me feel uncomfortable discussing my disability related needs with my supervisor.”
Around that time, Chinn said she was to perform weekly rounds of door-to-door canvassing to ask District 3 residents what they thought about city policy issues. She noted feeling the weather was uncomfortably warm some of the days she was asked to canvas. After experiencing the June 4 seizure, as well as another one she says occurred the following day, Chinn was worried that canvassing in hot weather would exacerbate her condition. She says Li required her to complete the canvassing hours despite her concerns.
“I realized [then] that I would need to get a formal accommodation in place through HR,” Chinn stated in the complaint.
According to public records obtained by the Mercury, Chinn reached out to Zito on June 9 asking for accommodations to make the canvassing work more accessible. Specifically, she requested she be allowed to take a 10-minute break every two hours when canvassing outside on hot days. Zito granted the request on June 18, setting the temperature threshold at 80 degrees, and noting in an email to Chinn and Li that she could also adjust her canvassing hours to a cooler time of day or altogether limit the time she spent outside.
Chinn said at her next weekly check-in with Li, her boss told her she wished Chinn didn’t go to HR with her accommodation request.
“She shared with me that she wished I had come to her directly,” Chinn said. “Again, this response from my supervisor made me feel unsafe advocating for my legally protected rights.”
Chinn also raised concerns about safety, noting she was frequently expected to work alone in Koyama Lane’s District 3 office, which she felt left her vulnerable in the event of a medical emergency like a seizure.
Chinn said throughout the following months, she increasingly perceived a shift in Koyama Lane’s behavior toward her, alleging she was rarely able to speak with the councilor and felt she was being deliberately ignored. In her complaint, Chinn said this perceived behavior “made the duties of my job extremely difficult [and] was embarrassing, obvious to my colleagues, and dehumanizing.”
Eventually, Chinn was terminated, nearly a year after she started the job.
The Mercury attempted to contact Li for this story through her city email and Koyama Lane’s office, but was unable to speak with her directly. Li began her job as Koyama Lane’s chief of staff last March, about a month after her predecessor, Emory Mort, was terminated from the position. As recently reported in the Oregonian, Li began her job at the city of Portland before ending her employment at Multnomah County, where she worked since 1990. She held both positions for two months last spring, from the end of March to the end of May.
It may have been unusual for Li to keep working 32 hours a week at the county during her first two months at the city. Portland human resources officials told the Oregonian they were unaware of similar employment agreements in the past. But spokespeople from both governments said the arrangement was authorized.
Public records obtained by the Mercury show the Portland Auditor’s Office received two complaints about Li’s dual employment last spring. The complaints, submitted to the city’s fraud hotline on May 2 and June 3, alleged Li “frequently” performed duties for her Multnomah County job while on the clock at Portland City Hall.
Audit Services Director KC Jones responded to the second complaint on June 13, saying city code doesn’t allow the Auditor’s Office to investigate elected officials or their staff. Jones said he reached out to Zito, the city’s interim HR director, who determined Li’s dual employment was above board. The Auditor’s Office found Li provided written disclosure of her outside employment with the county and confirmed she was not performing outside work on city time.
A representative from Portland’s HR bureau declined to comment on personnel matters.
It’s unclear when a determination will be made on Chinn’s complaints. The city is expected to evaluate the basic facts of an ADA complaint within 15 work days of its submission. If the complaint is accepted, the city will “investigate the merits of the complaint and will attempt to resolve it,” according to the city’s website. Investigations are expected to be complete within 60 days after the city accepts the complaint. The city’s decision to accept a complaint would not, on its own, verify its claims. The city can dismiss a complaint for a number of reasons, including if it’s determined to be legally insufficient.
Complaints submitted to BOLI, on the other hand, take much longer to investigate. The state agency has long struggled with staffing and resources, and has an extensive backlog of worker complaints. According to BOLI, it may take up to a year to complete investigations after a complaint is submitted. The state agency has the power to award complainants lost wages and damages, if applicable, and mandate employers complete certain training, among other measures.
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Taylor Griggs
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