Oregon child care regulators have yet to inform the public that a baby died more than six months ago after he stopped breathing at a Lane County day care previously cited for violating safety rules.

Federal regulations require states to disclose any death of a child at a licensed child care. In recent years, Oregon officials routinely did so within days or weeks. That changed when the Lane County baby died in August.

Safety at Oregon child care facilities had become a defining issue of the state’s contentious race for governor. The decision not to disclose the death came at a pivotal moment during the campaign. A political ad attacking Gov. Kate Brown’s record on child care and other issues began running Aug. 17. Three days later, her campaign demanded, without success, that local stations stop airing the ad, titled “Scary Story.”

The 9-month-old boy was found unconscious at his Eugene day care Aug. 22, a relative said. He died two days later at OHSU Hospital.

In response to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive, state regulators declined for the past four business days to confirm the death. On Tuesday, the Office of Child Care finally confirmed that a baby attending Little Big Blessings day care in Eugene died.

The day care owner relinquished her license Aug. 23 in “lieu of legal action,” officials said. The owner could not be reached for comment.

Melanie Mesaros, a spokeswoman for the Office of Child Care, initially told The Oregonian/OregonLive she could not acknowledge any death because “partner agencies” had not authorized disclosure. She cited an internal policy as the basis to withhold the information from the public. Records show state regulators revised those policies on Aug. 27, the first work day after the baby died.

Mesaros denied that agency officials violated federal rules requiring states to tell the public how many children die at licensed child cares each year. As of Tuesday afternoon, the state’s website still did not list the August death.

Mesaros acknowledged that state officials must disclose a death “in a timely manner” but said “there’s no date for how soon we have to do that.”

Although the public has been left in the dark about the baby’s death, the governor’s office was not. On the day the boy died, the Office of Child Care sent Brown’s office a proposed public statement “they had drafted about the tragedy,” said Lisa Morawski, a spokeswoman for Brown.

Three emails provided Tuesday show the Office of Child Care was prepared to acknowledge the boy’s death the day it occurred, if asked. The records also indicate the agency’s statement was pared back at the request of an unnamed detective.

Morawski said the decision not to disclose the boy’s death was not politically motivated and the governor’s office played no role.

The draft statement was never released.

It’s not uncommon to prepare official statements that never receive the light of day, Mesaros said. “We prepare things in the event that we may need them,” she said.

The Oregonian/OregonLive was unable to find a working phone number for the boy’s parents to share their views.

State officials have an obligation to disclose to the public that a child has died in a day care, said Jenn Roemer, whose 10-month-old son died in 2017 after receiving care at a Northeast Portland facility.

“We need transparency,” she said. “The purpose is to be protecting children, not anyone else. It’s not to protect politicians. It’s not to protect child care providers. It’s to make sure kids are in a safe place.”

Governor Kate Brown, left, and Director of Oregon's Early Learning Division Miriam Calderon, right, pledged fixes to the state's oversight of daycares. The Oregonian/Courtesy photo.

False sense of security

Brown and her hand-picked day care administrator, Miriam Calderon, pledged sweeping reforms in 2017 in the wake of reporting by The Oregonian/OregonLive that exposed safety gaps and lax enforcement at Oregon day cares.

Officials promised to hire more regulators, increase penalties against bad operators and provide parents with far more information on a revamped website.

But the state’s actions haven’t prevented all deaths. Since Calderon’s pledge in October 2017, at least four children have died at licensed or unlicensed day cares previously cited for safety violations or inadequate staff training.

Most egregiously, an Office of Child Care employee was charged with official misconduct after one of the deaths, in May, for allegedly enabling a Hood River day care that lost its license to continue operating. Agency officials never disclosed details of the case or the employee’s involvement. Court records exposed the information.

Deaths at licensed child care facilities are relatively rare in Oregon. From 2007 through 2017, state officials reported a total of eight. Under federal rules, state regulators at a minimum must disclose the aggregate number of deaths each year at licensed day cares.

Oregon typically provides even more information online or in response to media inquiries.

It took the agency one day to confirm the first death of 2017, when a 5-month-old boy died at his Gresham day care. It took six days to publicize the death of Roemer’s son.

Calderon took the unusual step of issuing a press release after the latter death, the second in two years at Broadway Children’s Center in Portland. Regulators ultimately forced the facility to close. A medical examiner later determined that the baby boy died of natural causes.

Calderon rolled out a list of six steps she would take to improve practices at the agency, including better communication with parents.

“We must act immediately and decisively whenever a tragedy like this happens,” Calderon said. “We and our partnering agencies must bring our full resources to bear to conduct timely and thorough investigations to ensure all children are safe.”

Until Tuesday, her office had disclosed only one death in 2018, from March. An 11-month-old boy was found blue and unresponsive at a different Eugene day care and died at a hospital. Regulators said they found no violations when they investigated the death.

The public notice for that death took no more than seven weeks. But 27 weeks have passed since the baby was found unresponsive at Little Big Blessings.

Child Care Aware of America, a national advocacy group that helped advocate for various federal rule changes finalized in 2016, declined to comment directly on how Oregon handles its federal requirements to report on deaths of children in day care.

But Ami Gadhia, chief of policy, programs and research for the group, said all of the federal requirements “are important in providing information to parents.”

Roemer said the state for too long has failed to share appropriate information with parents.

Roemer said she searched for information about the 2016 death at Broadway Children’s Center before her son, Reno Morrow-Roemer, attended the facility.

But Roemer said she couldn’t find anything online. She had to rely on workers to explain the circumstances of the previous death. She didn’t know about past serious injuries associated with the center. And she didn’t know that workers had been ordered to create a safe-sleep policy in 2016, after the first baby died.

Had the state disclosed that information, Roemer said, she and her husband would not have sent their son to the center.

“The website, and the office and the licensing process, create a false sense of security,” Roemer said, adding that she’s not surprised regulators failed to disclose the latest death in Eugene.

Mesaros, the Oregon child care agency spokeswoman, said her agency’s written procedures require officials to obtain approval from law enforcement agencies before disclosing a child’s day care death.

She said the agency updated its rules Aug. 27, after the baby died, to say that employees should not update a public database of injuries and fatalities until “after clearance is received” from public agencies such as police.

She said she did not know whether the changes were directly tied to the Eugene baby’s death.

Past police investigations have not prevented the agency from releasing information about a child’s death. After Reno died in 2017, officials quickly confirmed his death and provided copies of actions taken against the facility, even as they acknowledged “the investigation remains ongoing.”

Mesaros said every death is different and involves different law enforcement agencies that the Office of Child Care has decided must approve disclosure. She said she could not immediately identify which agency asked the death not be disclosed in August.

The Lane County District Attorney gave clearance late Monday to confirm the Eugene baby’s death, but not to provide any details about what happened, Mesaros said.

District Attorney Patricia Perlow had already confirmed the death to The Oregonian/OregonLive and said her office is looking into what happened.

“There was no investigation until after the child died, and my understanding is that no manner of death was determined,” she said. The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office declined to release information about the death.

Past problems

State regulators cited Little Big Blessings for unsafe sleep practices just four months before the baby died.

Inspectors who visited the Eugene day care in April saw a sleeping baby propped on a pillow inside a bassinet. State rules require day care providers to put infants to sleep on a flat surface, with no objects such as pillows that might block their airways.

Regulators gave the owner a handout on safe-sleep practices and asked her to move the three-month old to a flat surface. She did.

They returned the next month after learning that the provider and an employee had let their background checks, which must be kept current, lapse. The office placed the day care on “pending status” until the background checks were updated.

The provider reassured inspectors in a June 12 email that it wouldn’t happen again.

“I have certainly learned a valuable lesson from this situation and the consequences that have followed,” she told the state in a response letter.

Two months later, on Aug. 22, the baby was found unconscious at the day care, according to the relative who spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive and asked not to be named.

That evening, Brown’s spokeswoman Kate Kondayen received an after-hours text from her counterpart at the Department of Human Services, Christy Sinatra. The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained the messages in September through a public records request. Sinatra’s agency is regularly notified of unexpected child deaths, and case workers there belong to county-based teams that look into the circumstances of each fatality.

The records showed the agency regularly consulted with the governor’s office about the release of public information. Likewise, it is not uncommon for the Office of Child Care to notify the governor’s office about sensitive matters.

Brown’s office would not disclose what Sinatra texted Kondayen at 6:43 p.m. the day the baby stopped breathing. Staffers redacted the entire message.

A lawyer in Brown’s office said at the time that redacted messages contained child-welfare records, attorney-client information or personal information, which she contended are exempt from disclosure.

Sinatra texted Kondayen again at 7:12 a.m. the next morning. “Can we do our checkin by phone today? Also, I have two staff messages that I want you to see. Thx.”

In a statement provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Morawski did not say what the redacted message from Sinatra said. Morawski indicated leaders at the state’s Early Learning Division, which oversees the Office of Child Care, made the decision to stay mum about the baby’s death.

“The decision to not disclose the baby’s death was not in any way politically motivated nor did the Governor’s Office direct ELD in any way regarding the disclosure of the death,” she wrote.

The ad targeting Brown, funded by the shadowy political group Priority Oregon, was first posted to YouTube Aug. 17 and featured a mother reading a “scary” bedtime story to a young boy and girl. The accompanying book, complete with cartoon images, said that in “Kate Brown’s Oregon” there are homeless camps everywhere, foster care children don’t get enough to eat and seniors are abused in nursing homes.

“And you can sell drugs while running a day care,” the mother says, prompting the young girl to respond, “That is scary.”

Brown’s political team fought the ad. In an Aug. 20 letter, an attorney for Brown’s re-election campaign demanded that TV stations stop running the clip, claiming it “contained numerous false statements of fact.”

Four days later, the boy died.

Hillary Borrud of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to the report.

-- Molly Young

myoung@oregonian.com

-- Brad Schmidt

bschmidt@oregonian.com