LudlowMM

CLACKAMAS, OREGON -- November 06, 2012 -- Republican winners John Ludlow and Tootie Smith thank their supporters after they found out their projected victory at Monarch Hotel. (Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian)

The chairman of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners repeatedly orchestrated county business from a personal email account that he insisted he didn't use for such matters, emails obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show.

County Chairman John Ludlow also later hired a private attorney to keep his personal emails from public light, and got the county to cover his legal bills using taxpayer money.

The long-hidden emails provide fresh details to the dramatic change in county politics over the past few years. In January 2013, the board of commissioners flipped from a Democratic to a Republican majority more resistant to "Portland creep," a phrase proponents associated with housing density, crime and light rail. The influential Oregon Transformation Project political action committee, which plastered that sentiment on billboards around the county, was the biggest contributor to that election's candidates and at the time received credit for swinging the board.

Thousands of pages produced during the discovery process of an unrelated lawsuit against the county include about 20 of Ludlow's personal emails between Jan. 18 and Feb. 25, after he took elected office, likely produced because they involve the plaintiff in the case, former assistant county attorney Scot Sideras. It is not known how many more, if any, emails concerning county business are on Ludlow's personal account because the discovery request only includes that selection of his emails along with a wider range of documents related to the lawsuit.

Though limited in scope, the newly released emails show Ludlow privately collaborated with powerful political players attempting to stop Portland-Milwaukie light rail progress in its tracks. He worked behind the scenes to remove the county's top official. And in at least two instances, Ludlow relied on an outside adviser to ghostwrite communication for him or the board related to the county's light rail policy.

The emails show Ludlow primarily communicated with two men -- Eric Winters, a Wilsonville attorney, and Steve Schopp, a Tualatin-based conservative activist who pushed anti-light rail measures sponsored by the Oregon Transformation Project, the conservative political group Ludlow has partially credited with recruiting him to run for commissioner. The group's political action committee donated more than $167,000 cash and in-kind to Ludlow's campaign.

The emails reveal the activist pair, along with the county's strategic policy adviser, Dan Chandler, were kept informed on the shake-up that rocked the county the day Ludlow and running mate Tootie Smith took office as Clackamas County commissioners in January 2013. Smith received $91,000 in cash and in-kind campaign donations from the transformation project.

A billboard along Interstate 205 near Gladstone urges Clackamas County voters to support Tootie Smith, John Ludlow and Jim Knapp, candidates for the Clackamas County commission. The billboard was paid for by the conservative group Oregon Transformation Project PAC. (Everton Bailey Jr./The Oregonian)

A half-hour after they were sworn in, Ludlow and Smith delivered a letter to then-county administrator Steve Wheeler, calling for his resignation. They did so without first consulting the three other commissioners.

The letter accused Wheeler of several improprieties, including diverting funds to construct a county building, but Ludlow said that March he did not plan to pursue legal action or investigations into any of the letter's allegations. The state Department of Justice ultimately exonerated Wheeler.

Wheeler resigned in February 2013 with a settlement involving about $120,000 in severance pay and benefits.

That Monday may have signaled the end for Wheeler, but it was the first public sign of a private interest group's behind-the-scenes influence over Clackamas County.

***

Ludlow has long insisted that the emails on his personal computer were not public records.

In February 2013, attorney Matt Wand filed a public records request on behalf of former state representative Patrick Sheehan for Ludlow's personal emails with certain campaign supporters. Ludlow refused to release the emails. When Sheehan finally dropped the request in June, The Oregonian/OregonLive filed a similar one. The county ended up paying nearly $2,000 to fight that request.

In a county business meeting on July 11, 2013, Ludlow said he did not conduct "commission business" on his private email.

"There isn't anything on my computer that has to do with county business," Ludlow said. "Certainly I take input from people, and that includes some people in this room. ... I do not conduct exchanges with them about what I will or won't do, or even correspond with them about their ideas. They have a right to send it to me and, in my opinion, their opinion is private and not county business."

In an interview this month, he stood by that claim. When read emails sent from his personal account regarding county agenda items and TriMet relations, Ludlow said they didn't qualify as "county business."

"County business is county business," Ludlow said. "I guess that's your interpretation."

Under Oregon law, a public record includes any writing in possession of a public agency that contains information relating to the conduct of the public's business.

The selection of Ludlow's personal emails obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show him privately seeking the opinions of Chandler and Sideras on county agendas; passing along information about employment evaluations to Winters, Schopp, and others; and continuing to consult with Sideras after Sideras' boss fired him.

On Feb. 2, 2013, Ludlow emailed Wheeler from his county address asking the administrator to put a resolution opposing the Columbia River Crossing on the agenda for the next business meeting. Wheeler replied by email, citing his concerns about the resolution. That same day, Ludlow forwarded the email to his personal account, from which he sent Chandler and Sideras a message outlining Wheeler's concerns.

"I also told [Wheeler] that I would not knuckle under to what most people would view as blackmail," Ludlow wrote from his personal account.

The conversation about the proposed county resolution continued to unfold in personal emails among the three.

As chairman, Ludlow also sent emails from his personal account regarding the progress of written evaluations he asked county department heads to fill out for Sideras after Sideras' boss, Stephen Madkour, fired the junior attorney. Ludlow privately kept Sideras in the loop on a public records request for Ludlow's personal emails the county had been fighting, although Madkour advised Ludlow to turn the emails over.

"Madkour has decided to throw me under the bus," Ludlow

from his personal email account.

Now that Ludlow's emails have been released, three other county commissioners - Paul Savas, Martha Schrader and Jim Bernard - said they don't think the county should have to pay for the earlier legal fight.

"What we have before us at this date and time clearly indicates these [personal emails] are public records," Savas said. "I think the county should be reimbursed."

Schrader called the legal fees "an egregious misuse of limited county resources."

"The people of Clackamas County place great trust in us to be good stewards of their hard-earned tax dollars," Schrader said. "I do not believe this is how they intended it to be used."

County spokesman Tim Heider said he couldn't immediately answer whether the county is considering attempts to recover legal expenses from Ludlow in light of the recently released emails.

Steven Berman, a Portland-based litigator with Stoll Berne whose specialties include Oregon elections law, said Ludlow's personal email use could be "quite problematic," especially if he misrepresented his usage for personal gain -- paid legal fees.

"If he said he wasn't using his personal email for county business when he was, he could be in a lot of trouble," Berman said. "I think you could see potential ethics law violations, criminal law violations and civil liability."

Ethics and civil law violations could depend on whether Ludlow knowingly made misrepresentations for personal gain, Berman said. A criminal offense would depend on whether Ludlow had made the misrepresentations in writing or in a statement under oath, and what his knowledge was at that time, Berman said.

"I think it's a situation that warrants investigation by the county commission, by the ethics commission and potentially by local law enforcement," Berman said.

Any of these are possible, but an ethics investigation is more likely than a civil or criminal violation, in part because intent would be so hard to prove, said Jim Moore, director of Pacific University's Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation and an expert in state and local government.

Moore outlined one outcome he thinks most likely: Ludlow's political opposition could start a recall effort by petition. This likelihood is especially fascinating considering that political conservatives have driven most recall efforts in the state's recent history, Moore said.

State law accepts that people, including public officials, can't control who emails them, and doesn't prohibit the receipt of emails on personal computers or provide clear guidance for how those emails should be handled. When an elected official receives an email ata personal account related to public business, the appropriate response is to forward that to a work email account, then reply to the sender from the work account, Berman said.

Moore recommended a similar procedure: The recipient should immediately tell the sender to only communicate using the official email address, he said. Another option is for the recipient to forward all official emails from the private account to the public account, but that's not optimal, Moore said.

"It is clearly up to the recipient to initiate either of these options," Moore said. "Practice is much more loose, however."

For example, former Gov. John Kitzhaber wanted all his private and public accounts in the same place so that he could log on to one account to read his email. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, did much of her official work with her private account, also for the sake of convenience, Moore said.

"Given that this has been an issue for public officials for the best part of 20 years now, it is amazing that email differentiation is not one of the main points that public officials learn about and are reminded of by their legal staffs," Moore said.

Sometimes, when Ludlow received emails to his personal account related to county affairs, he responded directly, the private emails released to The Oregonian/OregonLive show. Other times, he forwarded emails or information from his county address to his personal one, only to pass that along to people, including Winters and Schopp, and to the personal addresses of Chandler, Smith and Sideras.

***

Ludlow said in December 2011 that he was recruited to run for office in part by the Oregon Transformation Project.

Ludlow's campaign focused on three big issues facing Clackamas County: The Sellwood Bridge vehicle licensing fee, urban renewal tax usage and light-rail financing.

The Oregon Transformation Project paid for an anti-light rail billboard and supported Ludlow for chairman, plus Smith and Jim Knapp for the other two open commission seats in the 2012 general election. (Knapp lost to Schrader.)

Together, Ludlow and Smith received more than $200,000 from the transformation project's political action committee. The same committee hired Winters to help put measures on Clackamas County ballots in 2012 and Tigard ballots in 2014, requiring voter approval for any government spending related to light-rail projects. Ludlow advocated for the Clackamas County measure, which passed with a 20 percent margin that September.

A few months later, Ludlow was conferring about Portland-Milwaukie light rail (PMLR) and other perceived issues with Chandler, Smith, Winters and Schopp, all using their personal email accounts.

"We need a council of war asap on PMLR issues," Chandler wrote to Ludlow, copying Smith and others on Jan. 5, 2013, days before the two commissioners asked Wheeler to resign. "I want to stay one step ahead of TriMet."

About a month after Ludlow and Smith took office, Winters sent Sideras a draft letter from the Board of Commissioners to TriMet. Winters told him he planned to forward the letter to Ludlow later that night as a starting draft for the board to consider.

"It is framed as a polite request from the Board ... to postpone taking steps that might unnecessarily inflate TM's potential damages in the event of a breach," Winters wrote. "My goal was to keep it to one page and to avoid anything that could be characterized as unnecessarily provocative."

"I can't think of a better way to say it," Sideras replied. "My compliments on a well written letter."

Ludlow presented the letter Winters drafted to his fellow commissioners, who sent an edited and expanded version, signed by the chair, to TriMet.

Later, the four other commissioners said they didn't know Winters had drafted the letter. Had they known, Savas said, they would probably have reacted differently. Submissions or suggestions from outside sources are one thing when commissioners are transparent about them, he said.

"When it's legal stuff from a group like that, it's problematic politically," Savas said. "Obviously."

Chandler, however, said it's not uncommon for an outsider to send commissioners letters or resolutions to present the board on their behalf, and it's not always transparent where these documents originate.

Read the TriMet letters

Compare the

with the one Ludlow signed and commissioners

.

Regardless, Schrader argued, presenting Winters' letter as his own was disingenuous.

"It seems obvious from the emails that [outside] people were helping to frame policy," Schrader said. "It is our job to frame policy with the help of professional staff. I think the lines were crossed.

Winters and Schopp have declined to answer questions related to the content of the emails.

****

The emails also reveal that the TriMet letter wasn't the first written for Ludlow by a member of the group. The first was the letter demanding Wheeler's resignation as county administrator.

Documents previously obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request showed that Sideras and employment law specialist Lester V. Smith helped draft the letter. And the newly released private emails reveal that they had help -- from Winters, Schopp and Chandler, the county's strategic policy adviser.

On Jan. 5, 2013, Chandler sent to Ludlow a draft version of a letter calling for Wheeler's resignation. Chandler told Ludlow he had an idea -- "might even call it a plan," Chandler wrote -- to secure a third commissioner's vote on the Wheeler ousting.

In an interview, Chandler described his role in the plan as minor.

Emails also show Sideras shooting for Wheeler's job. Ludlow at one point promised Sideras an "upgraded future," although Ludlow said in an interview that it would only have been on an interim basis.

Getting rid of Wheeler was part of what the group called a "seven-point plan."

"There are 7 important steps that need to be taken in order to achieve our objective," Sideras wrote to Ludlow and Smith's private accounts on Jan. 3, 2013. "One of the things I need is a copy of Mr. Wheeler's contract. I don't necessarily need it today, but it's important."

It wasn't just Wheeler that Ludlow and the others were interested in. As far back as November 2012, the group was looking at contracts for County Counsel Madkour, Commission Policy Coordinator Emily Klepper, Deputy County Administrator Nancy Newton, Water Environment Services Director Mike Kuenzi, Family Court Services Director Lauren MacNeill and Public and Government Affairs Director Gary Schmidt.

Smith forwarded the contracts to Ludlow, Schopp, Winters and former Oregon Republican Party treasurer Rob Kremer, a former director of the Oregon Transformation Project's political action committee.

In an interview, Smith denied knowing of concrete plans to ask for any resignations besides Wheeler, except maybe for Madkour.

"In the course of discussion at a party maybe so, but not specifically," Smith said. "It was two and a half years ago."

Savas said he'd heard rumors about "heads rolling" on county staff that winter, but nothing directly from Smith or Ludlow about wanting anyone other than Wheeler to resign.

"Clearly, someone did," Savas said.

Ludlow said he didn't remember why he would have wanted each contract but didn't think it was unusual as incoming chair.

Wheeler declined to be interviewed for this article. Neither Sideras nor his attorney has responded to multiple interview requests.

FULL CIRCLE

After Ludlow and Smith asked for Wheeler's resignation, Madkour made it clear to Sideras that he didn't like how his assistant had worked privately with Ludlow, Smith and the others prior to the election.

Madkour fired Sideras in February 2013. That March, Madkour filed an ethics complaint about Sideras with the Oregon State Bar. The bar dismissed the complaint in September 2014.

Sideras filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year against Clackamas County and Madkour, seeking up to $850,000 in economic and noneconomic damages, plus attorney fees. Sideras is suing the county for wrongful termination and failure to provide him a name-clearing hearing before firing him and publicly disclosing information from the bar complaint. He's suing Madkour for filing the bar complaint without the county's consent.

Documents turned over to the county as a result of the lawsuit included the formerly private emails. The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained them through a public records request.

Those emails show that at least for the first half of 2013, Ludlow continued to use his personal email for county business. Then he got taxpayers to pay for a private attorney to fight a public records request for those emails.

Currently, Ludlow says, he does not use his personal email to conduct public business. In fact, the chairman maintains, he never has.

-- Hannah Leone

503-294-4001; @HannahMLeone