The former deputy director of the Oregon Lottery harassed and intimidated subordinates, tried to get his boss overthrown and repeatedly misled an investigator about his conduct, according to an official summary of an investigative report.
Roland Iparraguirre was investigated after an employee claimed he had harassed and intimidated her. At the time, Iparraguirre served as the lottery's deputy director, earning $170,000 a year. He was placed on paid leave in April 2016 by then Lottery Director Jack Roberts.
Iparraguirre, a lawyer and former deputy Portland city attorney, fought back, stating that he was a wronged whistleblower. His pushback helped prompt Gov. Kate Brown to summarily fire Roberts.
The lottery's new director, Barry Pack, kept Iparraguire on leave nevertheless.
An investigation by Barran Liebman attorney Kyle Abraham, which launched in May and ran through late August, found evidence that Iparraguirre had indeed intimidated the employee and also had done significantly more to harm other subordinates and agency functioning.
Iparraguirre, who started at the lottery in December 2013, disputes most of the particular findings of the investigation, along with what he thinks is an incorrect portrayal of him as an untrustworthy and temperamental workplace bully. "The investigation was very slight and imbalanced and incomplete," he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
As one example, he said, the investigator dinged him for helping a buddy get a lottery job -- and for downplaying to the investigator how close he and the man actually were. Iparraguirre does not dispute that he frequently commuted from Portland to Salem with Trinh Tran, sometimes stopped for drinks with him on the drive home and played pingpong with him at the lottery office.
But, Iparraguire said, all those patterns developed after Tran was hired to a lottery procurement position. Before they began working in Salem together, Iparraguire said, they were distant work acquaintances who had once grabbed coffee together and no more.
He acknowledges he went to Roberts' bosses -- on the lottery commission and in the governor's office -- when he disagreed with a few of Roberts' personnel decisions, but he defends those moves. And he rebuffs the investigator's report that he himself badly treated several subordinates.
In retrospect, "There is absolutely nothing that I could have or would have done different," Iparraguire said. "I had an ethical obligation to act the way I did."
Iparraguirre resigned from the lottery in late August, effective Aug. 31, without citing a reason. The lottery paid him his full salary for the 18 weeks he was on leave.
Iparraguirre is back on the state payroll, however. Brown's Department of Administrative Services hired him Sept. 6 for a $97,000-a-year position as a procurement policy analyst. Bret West, the agency's chief administrative officer, needed some short-term expertise to help the department implement a sweeping new public contracting law and keep up with legislative work, agency spokesman Matt Shelby said. The job runs through June 30, Shelby said.
West said Tuesday he knew vaguely about the harassment allegations at the time he hired Iparraguirre. But he said Iparraguirre had a strong legal and procurement background that was sorely needed by the state. West said he consciously hired him for a position that entails no management or supervisory role.
West said Iparraguirre has performed wonderfully in the job and no co-workers have raised concerns about his operating style.
Although the lottery personnel investigation was completed in August, its findings were not released to The Oregonian/OregonLive until Friday, after the news outlet prevailed in a public records appeal to the Oregon Department of Justice. The state deemed Abraham's entire report confidential, citing attorney-client privilege. But Deputy Attorney General Frederick Boss ruled that state public records law required the lottery to make public a summary of the investigation report's significant facts.
The 12 pages of excerpts from Abraham's report that the agency provided portray Iparraguirre as a meddling and threatening force at the lottery. They show he went to individual lottery commissioners and even the governor's office to try to get his way. They also expose Iparraguirre's tendency to give a different account of his own conduct than that given by multiple other employees at the lottery.
Iparraguirre said some exculpatory information was excluded from the summary.
Pack declined to say why he did not discipline or fire Iparraguire based on the investigation reports, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters.
According to the investigator's report:
> Iparraguirre pressured and intimidated one mid-level lottery employee not to use the family and medical leave she was guaranteed under state and federal law, the worker and her supervisor told the investigator. Iparraguirre was not in the worker's direct chain-of-command, but he told both her and her supervisor that her husband, not the lottery worker, should take some leave to care for their sick child.
Iparraguirre initially denied to the investigator that he had ever spoken to the woman about taking family or medical leave. Later, however, he said, "I was always very supportive of any leave she had to take," especially family and medical leave. This led the investigator to conclude Iparraguirre had spoken to the employee about her leave.
Roland Iparraguirre's highest priority at the Oregon Lottery was to get the state's video lottery operating system modernized well and on time.
In an interview Monday, Iparraguirre said the worker did not specifically indicate to him that she was taking family or medical leave on the days she was away from the office. Her presence at the office was crucial to the successful implementation of a $225 million video lottery operating system upgrade that was the agency's top priority, Iparraguirre said.
> Iparraguirre helped an employee, identified by The Oregonian/OregonLive as Tran, get hired as a procurement officer at the lottery without the job being posted or anyone else being considered. Roberts told The Oregonian/OregonLive he filled the position in that manner, and chose Tran to fill it, at the repeated urging of Iparraguirre.
> Iparraguirre chastised to the point of tears the agency's human resources director, Janell Simmons, for providing Roberts with advice that Iparraguirre opposed, Simmons told the investigator. She told the investigator that the threats he made to her, including that officials in the governor's office were about to "take over" the lottery and would "dig deep and they may not like some of the things they hear," left her with the belief she was going to be fired.
Iparraguirre told the investigator he did not discuss with Simmons the advice she gave Roberts and that his meeting with Simmons was "basically her venting to me" about her displeasure with Roberts' actions. He said he and Simmons had a good working relationship.
> Iparraguirre was viewed by many subordinates as autocratic and intimidating to a degree it harmed the agency's work. A July 2015 employee survey closed with the open-ended question, "What one or two suggestions do you have to help the lottery improve?" In response, 10 employees specifically named Iparraguirre as an impediment. According to the investigative report, they wrote suggestions including: "I think [Iparraguirre] has created an environment of fear, is unapproachable, and makes too many emotional decisions"; "Unfortunately, I find the deputy director's management style intimidating and autocratic"; "Please do something about the behavior of the Deputy Director. He is condescending and treats people unfairly"; "It's demeaning and totally deflating to hear the Deputy Director criticize mid-level and executive employees..."; "It seems that [Iparraguirre] prefers to lead through instilling fear in others and has inserted himself in areas of the organization that are outside the scope of his role."
Iparraguirre said Monday he was seen as autocratic and threatening because he pushed so hard to get the operating system upgrade done well and on time -- an approach he said was new at the lottery and held accountable some inefficient bureaucrats who worked there.
Roberts, a Republican and former state labor commissioner, was appointed lottery chief by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber. Kitzhaber's top lawyer, Liani Reeves, urged Roberts to pick Iparraguirre as his deputy and, after meeting him, Roberts did. Both men started work at lottery headquarters on Dec. 2, 2013.
In separate interviews, both men at times highly praised each other's work and said they frequently worked as a strong and mutually respectful team. Iparraguirre said he remains fiercely proud of the way the two of them led the video lottery modernization project.
"I am very proud of the work that Jack and I did," he said. "I think we did the right thing for the state and the agency, and I am completely disappointed in the investigation."
In his final months and days at the lottery, Iparraguirre was upset with Roberts over at least two personnel moves. He opposed Roberts' choice for a high-level position at the lottery and Roberts' move to pay an employee who had submitted his retirement plans to leave two months early.
So Iparraguirre contacted most of Roberts' bosses -- members of the five-person commission that oversees lottery operations. He urged them to oppose Roberts' choice for the high-level position and to consider ousting him because of it, and he took those same concerns to Brown's public safety policy adviser and her top lawyer.
When Roberts' put him on leave over the harassment allegation, that was the final straw for Iparraguirre, and he urged the governor's staffers to reinstate him and oust Roberts.
Through her chief of staff, Brown did ask Roberts to reinstate Iparraguirre, but Roberts refused. Brown fired Roberts the next day without ever discussing the matter with him.
-- Betsy Hammond