Kotek names key staff in governor’s office

• Chris Warner as deputy chief of staff for a newly created Office of Public Administration, which will give him wide latitude to oversee state agencies. Warner comes from the Portland Bureau of Transportation, where he became assistant director in 2016 and its director since June 2019. He has worked in government at all levels. From 2003 to 2010, he was legislative director and a top assistant to Gov. Ted Kulongoski. He helped shepherd passage of the 2009 Jobs and Transportation Act, which at $1 billion was the largest such spending plan until 2017.

He also worked for U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith, and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio.

• An Do as director of communications and public affairs, starting Jan. 19, which will enable her to speak for the governor. She has spent almost two years as executive director of Planned Parenthood Associates of Oregon, for which she was also its political director. She led the campaign against a 2018 ballot measure that would have barred public funds for abortions, except in specified instances. Oregon has used state money for abortions since a federal restriction took effect in 1976. (Voters rejected Measure 106.)

She also was a social worker in alternative high schools in Portland and Brooklyn, N.Y.

• Karin Power, who just completed three terms as a Democratic state representative from District 41 (Milwaukie), as a natural resources and climate adviser. She had taken leave from her job as interim director of Business for a Better Portland, where she was hired in July. Before she was elected to the Oregon House in 2016, Power was a Milwaukie city councilor and associate general counsel for the Freshwater Trust.

She was appointed to the governing board of Clackamas Community College last fall.

Other appointees

Most of the other appointees have some experience in state government. They are listed below.

• Vince Porter, adviser for economic development and workforce. He had been director of Regence Health Policy Center for eight months, director of government affairs at Cambia Health Solutions since 2017, and a vice president at Strategies 360 from 2016 to 2017.

• Kelly Scannell Brooks, transportation and infrastructure adviser. She has been assistant city manager in Milwaukie since 2017, and was an official in the Portland regional office of the Oregon Department of Transportation from 2011 to 2017.

• Geoff Huntington, senior natural resources adviser. Most recently he was Elliott State Forest project manager for the Department of State Lands. The 2022 Legislature kept the south coast forest in public ownership for research purposes, but severed a prior requirement for it to produce income from timber sales for the Common School Fund. He has taught in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, and was executive director of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and deputy director of the Oregon Department of Water Resources.

• Doug Grafe, wildfire and emergency response adviser. Grafe led state programs created by the 2021 Legislature to lessen the effects of severe wildfires and help communities plan to avert them. Gov. Brown named him to that job after 17 years at the Oregon Department of Forestry, where he was chief of fire protection.

• Rachel Currans-Henry, health and human services adviser. She has worked as strategic initiatives administrator in aging and disability services at the Department of Human Services, and in the COVID-19 response and recovery unit of the Oregon Health Authority.

• Maya Crawford Peacock, executive appointments director. She led the Lawyers Campaign for Justice, a nonprofit that aims to broaden access to legal representation.

• Constantin Severe, public safety adviser, the same job he had with Gov. Brown. Severe had been a lawyer with Metropolitan Public Defender in Portland and director of Portland’s Independent Police Review.

• Amelia Porterfield, regional solutions director. For the past three years, she has been director of government affairs for The Nature Conservancy. She was a top aide to Kotek when Kotek led House Democrats from mid-2011 until 2013 — when the House was tied 30-30 — and then her first chief of staff (for three years) after Democrats gained a majority and Kotek became House speaker.