Travel Oregon Seeks a New Boss at a Extra Cheap Wage

This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom overlaying the state.

After some a lot wanted daylight on its operations, Travel Oregon is on the lookout for a brand new chief govt—at a considerably decrease wage.

Not lengthy into a gathering final September of the Oregon House Committee on Economic Development, its chairman quoted from an OJP investigation about dysfunction at state-funded Travel Oregon and the outsized wage of its longtime govt director.

Then Rep. Daniel Nguyen (D-Lake Oswego) regarded on the man sitting steps away on the witness desk, Todd Davidson, the manager director whose base wage was greater than $365,000 the yr earlier than.

“How do you justify paying that salary?”

Offering a solution from the witness desk was Scott Youngblood, an eight-year veteran of Travel Oregon’s oversight fee. He steered that Davidson, who had introduced he would depart the company this summer time, wasn’t overpaid. Rather, he was the “Michael Jordan” of journey advertising.

“Scrutiny, it’s coming,” Nguyen would go on to say in regards to the 70-employee, $45 million a yr company. “That is what the public is asking for.”

Travel Oregon’s board of commissioners apparently listened to the considerations Nguyen and different lawmakers expressed after OJP reported that workers stated the company had a poisonous work tradition and delayed sending out $9 million in small grants for a yr. In a unanimous vote final month, the 9 commissioners permitted a wage vary of $235,000 to $255,000 for Davidson’s eventual substitute, far lower than Davidson’s compensation and an quantity extra in keeping with administrators of vastly bigger business-aligned state companies resembling Business Oregon and the Department of Agriculture.

OJP’s investigation “helped spur conversations about Travel Oregon’s work in my committee, among others in the Capitol, and at the kitchen tables of Oregon families,” Nguyen stated by electronic mail Monday.

Travel Oregon, also referred to as the Oregon Tourism Commission, is funded by a statewide 1.5% tax on lodge stays. The governor appoints the 9 members of its board to supervise an company that spends about $45 million a yr to advertise Oregon tourism.

The subject of Davidson’s compensation has come up earlier than. In 2020, the Secretary of State’s Office launched an audit that targeted on his excessive wage and people of his key workers. But nothing modified.

Today, the commissioners say they’re on the lookout for “a reset” at a time when worldwide journey to Oregon is down and Portland-area tourism hasn’t absolutely recovered from enterprise losses from the civic unrest after a Minneapolis policeman murdered George Floyd.

Candidates have till March 30 to use for the highest job selling Oregon’s $14 billion-a-year tourism trade.

Nguyen and members of the Economic Development Committee will hear Wednesday from Greg Willitts, chair of Travel Oregon’s board of commissioners and president of FivePine Lodge and Spa in Sisters.

“Travel Oregon is funded largely through tax dollars,” Nguyen stated Monday, “and we expect results, transparency, and accountability from their operations.”

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