Critchley

BOARDMAN — Boardman Fire Rescue District Chief Michael Hughes denies taking advantage of his position when he used district equipment and personnel to install a personal hot tub, as a recent complaint to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission alleges.

The commission on Friday, July 14, heard Hughes’ case, which he said was administratively cleared with a split 4-4 vote.

Scott Ezell submitted the complaint, noting the chief used a district ladder truck and staff to help him place a hot tub on his personal property, which, according to Hughes, was allowed per his contract. He explained the operation was turned into a staff drill as an exercise for similar situations in the field.

“We take everything we do and turn it into a training situation to learn from it,” he said. “You take this hot tub and move it. Well, tomorrow we could be responding to an electrical fault that needs to be lifted off of somebody.

“We’ve helped multiple other people and businesses with moving not only hot tubs but also large appliances,” he added. “We don’t advertise it because we’re not in the business of competing with people who do those services.”

Ezell declined to give a comment.

Hughes said he used his own construction equipment and left it on site for the construction of Station 81 — the district’s new fire station — and “they didn’t even think twice about it. Nobody says one word about it, but I use a piece of fire district equipment for 15 minutes and now it’s an issue.”

According to the chief, his contract allowed for the use of the fire district’s apparatus. And in its preliminary report, the ethics commission provided an excerpt of that contract.

“The Chief may use District property for personal use under certain terms and conditions,” it read. “In recognition of the fact that the Chief is always on-call, the Chief may use such property.”

The commission noted that using district property was allowed under certain terms per the district’s policy but found no such policies existed.

Commission staff, upon contacting United Rentals in Hermiston, found the cost of that operation would range from $800 to $1,500, which would convey that Hughes violated Oregon Revised Statute 244.040 (1) by using his position as chief to avoid personal financial detriment.

He disagreed.

“I paid the hot tub company in advance to have it delivered to my home,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to save money by having help from the fire department. That wasn’t the case.”

Pendleton Fire & Ambulance Chief Jim Critchley added some insight into assisting residents within a department’s jurisdiction.

“We’ve fixed flagpoles before for a community member that wasn’t able to get to the top,” he said. “We used to have a program where we would fill swimming pools.”

But Critchley said such help could pose problems.

“If I do it for one person, then I feel obligated to do it for everybody,” he said.

When it comes to using a district apparatus as Hughes did, Critchley said he’d never done those types of things in the three municipal fire departments he’s been associated with.

“The vehicles we have can do it, but they’re not designed to be lifts,” he said. “There are commercial cranes that are designed to do it. Their equipment may have been designed for heavy lifts. My equipment was designed to fight fires. They could probably do heavy lifts, but my equipment isn’t certified for something like that.”

He added he wouldn’t push equipment to perform work it wasn’t designed to do.

Although the Oregon Government Ethics Commission dismissed the complaint, Hughes said he wouldn’t attempt anything similar in the future.

“Because of the backlash that I’ve gotten on social media, I will never do it again,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

Hughes said the complaint seemed to be part of a manhunt against others in positions of leadership. Complaints also have been made against Boardman City Council members, Port of Morrow and Morrow County commissioners, including commissioner Jeff Wenholz and, more recently, Greg Sweek, a former Morrow County planning commissioner.

“They’re kind of hunting us down, for lack of a better term, individually filing complaints against every one of us,” Hughes said. “There’s nobody that I know who’s in a position of leadership in this community that hasn’t had an ethics complaint about them.

“I think it’s interesting that so many people that are trying to do good for the community are being called out for ethics violations,” he added. “The interesting part is that the complainants are the same two or three people. I think this is about people not having a clear understanding of the statutes themselves and assuming we’re violating them without doing a thorough investigation.”

Investigating ethics complaints, however, is the role of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.