Boiler Bay Beacon
WALDPORT — Waldport’s city manager says Oregon’s ethics agency opened a case on a city volunteer and voted to investigate her before she even knew a complaint existed.
Dann Cutter put that in a July 20 letter to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. The letter is in the packet for the commission’s meeting Friday in Salem. He also sent it to the secretary of state.
The volunteer is Jan Hansen, a member of the city’s budget committee. Cutter says she is not a city employee. Someone named Karun Olson filed a complaint about her. On July 10, the commission voted to investigate whether she had failed to disclose a conflict of interest.
Hansen’s first notice, Cutter writes, was a letter dated July 13 from the agency’s director, Susan Myers. That was three days after the vote.
“She received no notice that a complaint had been filed against her, no notice of the preliminary review, and no notice of the July 10, 2026 session at which the Commission acted,” Cutter wrote.
State law says the ethics commission has to tell the person named in a complaint within two business days, say what they are accused of, and send the paperwork. Cutter says that never happened, so Hansen never got a chance to speak before the commissioners voted.
He also says the agency kept mailing the case to City Hall even though Hansen is a volunteer, not staff.
Myers told her own commissioners a week later that she has a conflict. The complaint is about how she handled the case. She asked them to take it out of her hands or tell her how to proceed. That is on Friday’s agenda too.
Staff already wrote back. In an Aug. 7 letter in the same packet, compliance coordinator Casey Fenstermaker said the agency reads Cutter’s letter as a complaint about Myers’ handling of the case, not a standard ethics charge. Staff’s recommendation is to take no action on it while Hansen’s case is still under investigation.
The commission’s meeting packet does not include a reply from Hansen or from Olson. The meeting is set for 9 a.m. in Salem.
