A retired Portland administrator earned more than $22,500 a month this past fall through no-bid contracts with the
and
.
Officials said they generally prefer competitive contracting -- which helps make sure taxpayers get the best deal -- but made exceptions for Yvonne Deckard.
No one else, they said, offered her expertise.
The contracts didn't violate any policies, and the pay wasn't out of line for specialized work. But the circumstances are unusual:
- Deckard, 58, was one of the city's top-paid employees, earning the equivalent of about $86 an hour when she
- The Portland School District
- Both contracts were awarded without a bidding process, uncommon for the city and district for high-end professional services.
- Neither the city nor district explicitly required Deckard to provide any written, tangible product.
The deals raise questions about competition among contractors -- particularly when a former employee is involved. A
concluded that Portland needs stronger monitoring to ensure that Portland doesn't contract with current employees or their family members, but no one has tackled the revolving-door issue of employees-turned-consultants.
"In general, I think this is not a good idea,"
, the city auditor, wrote in an email from out of town. "It gives the appearance of cronyism and unfairness, and it probably lacks the transparency the City professes to value. That said, clearly the City believes there are special circumstances where doing so is called for. That's where the need for monitoring comes into play."
Deckard, for her part, said she agreed to the work only after being pursued by
and
.
"No matter how uniquely qualified I am, I don't need this," Deckard said of having to answer questions from The Oregonian. "I have the professional experience and expertise to do the jobs I'm doing."
Coaching for city
Deckard earned a reputation during her 30-year career with Portland, including 13 as human resources director, as a straight-talking negotiator and problem-solver.
After retiring, with a public-employee pension now paying $10,843 a month, she formed YLD Consulting in July. She charges hourly rates of $300 to $350 for public agencies, $400 to $500 for private companies. Portland's other no-bid contracts for expert services run $125 to $360 an hour.
Graham sought out Deckard to coach
, whom he hired in February to run the Internal Business Services Bureau at $146,972 a year. Deckard, who like Graham and Enge is African American, was also brought in to help Enge navigate issues involving race.
Enge told The Oregonian that his can-do attitude drew resistance. He said that he and other city leaders received anonymous letters alleging that he won his job because of his race and that at least one contained a racial epithet. The city has yet to provide the letters, requested by The Oregonian in December under the state's public records law.
"I was trying to bring them (staffers) together around several key values that I had," Enge said. "There was some pushback. And there was some racial overtones associated with that pushback."
Graham said the situation was "going south very rapidly" and that "it was in the best interest of that division that I brought Yvonne in."
"I think she could relate to issues that Bryant was dealing with," he said.
But Graham didn't mention race when he
in September for hiring Deckard without a bidding process. Instead, he cited her role in helping create the bureau in 2009: "No other firms possess the expertise in organizational development and workforce development, as well as the in-depth knowledge of the organization."
Graham also wrote that another consulting firm that had done work for the city, AKT of Lake Oswego, "would not have the familiarity with the workforce development issues and challenges for the bureau." Yet that same day, he
a
to do "team building" at the bureau at $300 an hour.
According to invoices, Deckard worked 76.5 hours from
, billing $22,950. The city
work completed by Deckard only after
.
It shows that Deckard reviewed copies of Enge's written communications and "letters of complaints." She discussed her assessment of Enge with Graham, coached Enge on effective communication and relationship building, including through role-playing, active listening and reading body language, and assigned him to read the book "Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High."
In her
, Deckard wrote that goals had been met because Enge "has developed skills and insights that will support him as an effective leader."
Deckard appears to be the only former city employee awarded a no-bid city contract in the past year, but officials said they couldn't say for sure because they don't track contracts that way. Overall, the city hired 152 companies for expert services over the past year, 10 percent without a bidding process.
How did officials settle on Deckard's $300 hourly rate? Graham said he ran it by city contracting officials. "Once I understood what the rate was and they said that was a reasonable rate, I was fine with that," he said.
But Christine Moody, the city's chief procurement officer who wrote the contract, said it's not up to her or her office to decide. "They should know and understand from industry standards whether that's a reasonable cost or not," she said generally of bureau officials.
The contract itself doesn't include the rate. "It was an oversight on my part," Moody said. Did she know the rate? "I don't think that I did know that."
"Ideal" candidate
At the Portland School District, meanwhile, policy allows direct negotiation for personal-services contracts over $50,000 if the work "is not Project-driven, but requires an ongoing, long-term relationship of knowledge and trust."
"Yvonne was someone who knows the environment, knows the issues, has worked extensively in the public sector and could step in and provide crucial support," said Robb Cowie, a school district spokesman.
Deckard was the "ideal" -- and only -- candidate when she was hired July 30 to help district leaders prepare for union negotiations and to advise Smith, the superintendent, on political strategy, Cowie said.
The district was "operating from a place of diminished capacity," he said, having lost its human resources director in 2011 and Smith's chief of staff in August. Deckard is also providing "on-boarding support" for the district's new human resources director, Sean Murray, who started in November.
The district agreed to pay Deckard $90,000 over six months, ending Jan. 31, but has no documentation showing any effort to gauge appropriate costs. In line with district policy, the contract was reported to the Portland School Board in September but did not require board approval.
Amanda Whalen, a Smith adviser, noted on a district form only that Deckard is
Deckard said she's offering a steep discount, telling The Oregonian she's spending "somewhere around 30 to 35 hours a week on the district." Given her $300-an-hour base rate, she said, "I'm doing much more than what the original agreement was."
Elaine Holt, the purchasing director who reviewed the contract, said she never asked Whalen about Deckard's rates. Neither does the district have any record of Deckard's hours. Deckard's invoices
and
but not how long they lasted.
Holt said she couldn't give an average amount the district pays consultants because it employs such a wide range. Of the 156 personal-services contracts over $50,000 issued in 2012, only 17 were noncompetitive.
She said, however, that "price can be a very small factor."
"We have an obligation to get the best value," Holt said, "and the best value is not limited to just price."
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