A new batch of emails released Friday show Cylvia Hayes directed state employees how to implement a new policy while she was being paid $25,000 by an advocacy group to promote it.

The emails appear to erase any doubt that, as first lady, Hayes was taking money in her private role and pushing the same policy in her public one. The governor's office has conceded only that Hayes' roles as first lady and policy adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber and as a private consultant put her in a gray area.

The emails, released by the Oregon Department of Administrative Services, also show a deeper involvement by Kitzhaber than state officials had previously described.

In one, the governor told a state agency director "we need to find a way" to hire a man named Sean McGuire -- a key expert on Hayes' policy who knew the first lady and who also had worked with the advocacy group paying her.

The emails are from Hayes' personal accounts to various state officials, and include emails to and from Kitzhaber.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his office could not immediately respond.

The records release came at the end of a bad week for Kitzhaber. The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board called on him to resign, legislative Republicans ratcheted up pressure for a full investigation, and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum broke her silence to call the allegations "very serious" and "troubling." Two groups also sought to start recall efforts.

In a dozen emails spanning April 2013 to April 2014 -- a time that covers the months Hayes was under contract with Demos, a New York advocacy group -- the first lady orchestrates work on the new policy, an alternative economic measure called the Genuine Progress Indicator.

Hayes sets the agenda for meetings with top state officials. She outlines the job description for the new policy's director. She spells out her own role, writing: "I expect to provide the following pieces to this effort myself."

That wording was in an Oct. 10, 2013 email to Michael Jordan, director of the Department of Administrative Services, at a time when Hayes was also being paid by Demos.

Hayes tells Jordan, one of the state's highest officials, she expects to "build stakeholder participation and support within and beyond state government and assist with communications" -- the same jobs she was doing for Demos.

Her contract with the advocacy group ran from June 1 to Nov. 30, 2013.

In another email to Jordan and other senior officials, Hayes calls a meeting on the Genuine Progress Indicator, or GPI, at Mahonia Hall, the state-owned governor's mansion.

Hayes set the meeting for May 13, 2013, three days after she signed her initial contract with Demos. The contract was later tweaked and the start date changed to June 1, but Hayes dated her first $8,333 invoice to Demos on May 10, 2013.

In the attached agenda, Hayes lists topics including "political and communications challenges and opportunities" as well as potential partners and "Where we should focus our attention over the next year."

Jordan responded that he couldn't attend. Hayes replied in less than an hour: "Not good. We went forward with this date because you had committed to attending."

Another document, attached to an email Hayes sent Jordan on Oct. 30, 2013, shows she saw herself as part of the ongoing GPI work. She submitted a proposal detailing the need for $125,000 to launch the program, and listed the "Oregon GPI Team": McGuire, Demos, Ecotrust -- and Hayes.

Document: The Oregon GPI Proposal

The emails also detail Kitzhaber's work to institute the GPI, an alternative measure for the state's economy that takes into account not just goods produced but citizens' well-being.

Through Demos, Hayes got to know McGuire, who instituted the GPI in Maryland. Last spring, the state of Oregon hired McGuire under a yearlong contract worth about $65,000 to bring the measure here.

In an interview last month, Jordan, the agency head, said the governor shared McGuire's name only as a possible hire -- mentioning that McGuire was in Oregon and needed a job.

Yet an email from Kitzhaber released Friday afternoon and dated Dec. 30, 2013, shows the governor all but directing Jordan to hire McGuire.

"The best person to do this work is Sean McGuire and we need to find a way to bring him on," Kitzhaber wrote. "I wonder if there is some FTE [full-time equivalent] available for the rest of this biennium given that Steve Marks has now gone to OLCC," the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

On Friday, Jordan maintained that it was still his decision. "I took that as a direction to look into him," he said in an interview, "but it took us several months to actually bring him on -- I did a lot of due diligence."

Kitzhaber, in his email to Jordan and also sent to Hayes and the governor's chief of staff, Mike Bonetto, also strategized about how to unveil the policy to win public support.

"The website can initially be an educational tool to introduce people to the concept of -- and need for -- a new way to measure economic success and its relationship to social and environmental well-being," Kitzhaber wrote. "We will need to be strategic about how and when we roll this out from both a policy standpoint and a political standpoint (both in terms of the legislature and the outside-the-building politics)."

In a press conference last Friday, Kitzhaber downplayed any connections among Hayes, her paid Demos contract and his office.

"We have taken steps to draw a clear separation," Kitzhaber said, going on to refer to an ongoing review of the issues by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. "That was our intent. The Ethics Commission will make a determination of whether or not we were successful."

Demos, meanwhile, issued a statement Friday night seeking to distance the group from Hayes.

"Although we were assured that the contract was reviewed by Oregon counsel, we now know that we should not have trusted Ms. Hayes to carefully monitor the balance between her public and private roles," the statement says. "Inasmuch as she and the governor have continued their commitment to new measures for progress in Oregon, it was and is outside the scope of Demos' 6-month contract."

The emails released Friday cover only those among Hayes, Kitzhaber and Jordan that use certain keywords such as Demos and GPI. The Administrative Services Department released the public records within two weeks -- in contrast to records requests the governor's office has yet to fulfill from months ago.

Reporters from The Oregonian/OregonLive first asked the governor's office for email logs for Hayes' personal accounts last October, and later asked for the emails themselves. In late December, they asked Hayes for the emails. She has not responded to The Oregonian.

Hayes does not have a state email account but instead uses two personal email accounts and a business account. Records previously disclosed by Kitzhaber's office show she conducts business as first lady through those accounts.

Attorneys for Hayes say she opposes an effort under the state public records law to force her to disclose emails she has sent in her public role.

The Oregonian/OregonLive is asking Rosenblum, the attorney general, for an order requiring Hayes to provide the records because she has not responded to the news organization's request within a reasonable time.

Jim McDermott of the Portland law firm Ball Janik notified Rosenblum on Monday that Hayes will contest a petition filed by The Oregonian/OregonLive compelling disclosure.

-- Laura Gunderson

503-221-8378

@lgunders