The Oregon Government Ethics Commission on Friday agreed to fine Oregon’s longest-serving state representative $12,000 for abusing his position as a leader of an eastern Oregon public development authority to raise his salary and approve weeks of paid vacation.
The unanimous Friday vote by seven commissioners marked the second conclusion to an ethics case against Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, this year. It’s the first financial penalty for Smith, who commissioners concluded used his position at the intergovernmental economic development organization for personal gain.
Smith, who did not attend the commission’s meeting and did not respond to a phone call, text or email Friday, agreed to the fine in July without conceding that he intentionally violated state laws. By doing so, he waived his right to a hearing where he could mount a defense.
It was up to the commission to finalize the agreement at its Friday meeting, which it did without discussion.
“He (Smith) negotiated the terms, and originally we started out at a higher dollar value because there were more violations that we had alleged. But upon negotiation and the sharing of information, we determined we didn’t have sufficient evidence to pursue those,” Casey Fenstermaker, the agency’s compliance and enforcement coordinator, told commissioners. “So that’s why we are at the amount that we are at.”
The ethics investigation centered on Smith’s role as executive director of the Columbia Development Authority, an intergovernmental organization focused on redeveloping the site of a former military chemical depot that receives federal grant funding.
A 2024 federal grant application included a $66,000 raise to Smith’s annual $129,000 salary as the authority’s executive director.
The authority’s board reversed that raise upon learning about it and ordered Smith to repay the roughly $33,000 he netted, which he has not done, according to the commission’s final report. Smith resigned from the authority in January, about a month after the ethics commission confirmed his efforts to maneuver a raise broke state law.
The commission also faulted Smith for using his position to approve his own vacation time without guidelines, including taking nearly 11 weeks of paid time off between December 2024 and August 2025. His vacations cost the authority more than $51,000 over three years, the investigation found.
Smith maintains that the development authority’s fiscal agent, the Port of Morrow, never advised him to act differently, and that he did not write the language in the development authority’s grant application. According to the commission’s order, Smith was discussing a pay increase for the development authority’s employees, including himself, during the year prior to the federal grant application.
As a state representative since 2000, Smith has long supplemented his legislative salary with lucrative consulting contracts and side gigs assisting development in eastern Oregon. He is a member of House Republican leadership and serves on the powerful budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee.
More allegations could come from Oregon Department of Justice
A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice previously told the Capital Chronicle that it would review Smith’s case to decide if further investigation or action was appropriate. Morrow County District Attorney Justin Nelson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The state’s Justice Department is suing Morrow County officials and Smith for allegedly conspiring to enrich themselves through a deal with Amazon amid data center growth in their area. While state attorneys allege Smith worked to help local officials to develop a strategy for concealing their work, Smith has denied the allegations and any wrongdoing.
The fine Smith faces ranks among the highest penalties issued by the commission throughout its decades-long history.
In 2018, the commission agreed to fines of $20,000 for former Gov. John Kitzhaber and $50,000 for his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, over Hayes advising the Democratic governor on climate policy while accepting paid contracts from clean energy groups. That scandal ended Kitzhaber’s fourth term as governor shortly after his reelection.
Former Secretary of State Shemia Fagan paid $3,600 for her acceptance of a side gig consulting for a marijuana company that was the subject of an audit her office was conducting on state cannabis regulations that critics said favored the industry.
Smith’s case has also raised questions about whether leaders in the Oregon Legislature will act to hold him accountable for the violations, such as through reduced committee assignments or removal from leadership positions.
As first reported by the Salem Reporter, Rep. Dwayne Yunker, R-Grants Pass, is the only Republican so far to have publicly called on his colleagues to act upon the ethics violations. In a recent post on social media, he stopped short of saying how exactly legislative leadership should respond.
“We should expect high standards from others, but we must hold ourselves to the same standard. This is not about personal attacks. It is about integrity, public trust, and the responsibility that comes with elected office,” Yunker wrote on Facebook. “Leadership sometimes requires difficult conversations with people we respect. Our caucus should have that conversation and ask Rep. Smith to do the right thing.”
Friday’s decision was the second time this year that the commission rebuked Smith’s actions as a public official. In January, the commission issued Smith a letter of education, essentially a formal reprimand, for failing to disclose some clients of his private consulting company on his annual economic interest statements. He conceded that he violated state law and agreed to a letter of education for that case.
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