SALEM — Oregon’s ethics watchdog says Secretary of State Bev Clarno cannot hire her son, or any other family member, to perform paid work for her office without running afoul of the state’s conflict of interest law.

The Statesman Journal reports the Oregon Government Ethics Commission released the advisory opinion in advance of the commission’s meeting on Thursday.

Questions of nepotism arose after Clarno appointed her son, Randy Hilderbrand, to an unpaid volunteer role when she took over the office. Gov. Kate Brown appointed Clarno, a Republican and former state lawmaker, to replace Dennis Richardson, who died in February of brain cancer.

Rich Vial, a spokesman for the office, said Hilderbrand has never worked for the office other than as a volunteer.

The request came from Tasha Petersen, the Secretary of State’s human resources director, who asked for the commission’s guidance regarding nepotism.

While that may be the guidance for the secretary of state, state legislators follow an entirely different rule. Oregon is one of the few states in the nation that allows lawmakers to hire family members. The Legislature passed a bill a decade ago providing lawmakers an exception to state anti-nepotism laws.

In fact, according to a 2017 investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one out of every four elected state legislators in Oregon had employed a family member at taxpayer expense, records show. The price tag for hiring spouses, children or in-laws that year was more than $547,000 so far, according to state salary data.

Oregon lawmakers defend the practice in 2017, noting that the exception has allowed hiring family members to become a time-honored tradition. Lawmakers argue that bringing on a family member can help make it possible to put their jobs -- and, of course, their full-time salaries -- on hold during sessions. Lawmakers who’ve done it for decades say it benefits them and their constituents.

“It’s just the way it’s been,” said Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, at the time. She’d employed her daughter as an aide for a year and a half.

The 2017 investigation into Capitol nepotism found that half of lawmakers had employed family as staff in the early 2000s. And while that number had fallen by 2017, nepotism was still prevalent among lawmakers, from the newly elected to career politicians.

-- The Associated Press using information from the Salem Statesman Journal contributed to this report.