Clackamas County is making its second major reorganization of its equity and inclusion efforts in less than four years.
Emmett Wheatfall, a former assistant administrator who worked for the county for 12 years, experienced the fallout from the last transition in 2019 when the county’s top administrator decided to eliminate his position. Wheatfall said he understood an administrator’s prerogative to eliminate positions but was then surprised to read large portions of his job description reused in the new Equity and Inclusion Officer position about five months later.
Wheatfall applied for the position, thinking that few people would be as qualified as he was, given he had designed and administrated Clackamas County’s equity and inclusion organizational mission and programs, but the county did not advance him past the first round of 15-minute interviews. Seven of 14 applicants who interviewed for the position were advanced.
Wheatfall told Pamplin Media Group that he could not nor would not talk about any tort claim or settlement. A county spokesman said, “The county resolved this case via settlement, and isn’t commenting on it further.” According to financial records, the county settled with Wheatfall by paying him $94,000 in August 2021.
According to Wheatfall, workplace “inclusion” refers to an organization that values diverse people, characteristics or interests — whether organizational, operational or occupational — as important assets. He defines “equity” as the principled commitment to ensuring the absence of visible and invisible barriers to fairness in representation, opportunity and access.
Wheatfall spoke with Pamplin Media Group about his experience working with the county and what he saw after his position was eliminated.
How does equity, diversity and inclusion relate to Clackamas County?
The county needs its EDI commitment and programs. Currently, some county commissioners are trying advance a political view and agenda that doesn’t value diverse and equitable workplace and community inclusion. May I provide a quick example?
Of course.
One of the county’s roles is to provide services to seniors, and there are LGBTQ seniors. I had an employee one time say, “Well, my religion won’t allow me to provide services to LGBTQ people.” I said to her, “Please understand that nobody’s questioning your religion, and you have a right to your religion, but we have an obligation to provide services to that community.”
How did you get started on 12 years of work with Clackamas County?
I was a military dependent. I grew up valuing diversity, getting a chance to experience it as an African American adolescent living overseas on Okinawa and on military bases all over the United States.
I went to work for Clackamas County in August 2007. When I was hired, they were looking for a diversity manager. People were aware of diversity, but there was no construct for them to engage this organizational concept of valuing equity, diversity and inclusion.
For the next 12 years, I administered and operationalized the philosophy that said, loosely quoting Martin Luther King, that I might not be able to legislate morality, but I can regulate behavior. Employers have the right to regulate employee behavior that represents organizational mission and values. More importantly, taxpayers have a right, I believe, to receive mindful and culturally competent services.
Take it out of the public sector, say you’re operating a business, then you need to understand your customer base. If you want to maximize your profits and shareholder value and return, then you need to make sure your services meet the needs of your diverse customers, and especially your taxpaying community.
I let all the employees know that neither I nor the county was trying to change their morality, but we have a responsibility to serve everyone in the county. A sheriff’s deputy needs to understand that someone might think you’re pulling over someone for driving while Black, or because the driver is a woman.
How did it go in Clackamas County in terms of that mission?
Employees, management and elected officials received me and allowed me to be the professional who designs and leads programs at the executive level, when there are high stakes in administering and operationalizing equity, diversity and inclusion. The approach that I brought resonated, since elected officials and employees recognize that they don’t have the experience to do this important work.
In 12 years, it went really well. We didn’t have a class-action lawsuit that I know of. We didn’t have a community uproar over our internal and external EDI program. The program that I built from scratch in 2007 was welcomed.
But how did it get to that point where the county eliminated your position?
You’re approaching an area where I need to be extremely careful. (County Administrator) Gary Schmidt communicated to me in September 2019 that he wanted to do a reorganization of two assistant county administrators, and I was one of them. So, he decided to eliminate both of our positions.
It caught me totally by surprise, since there were no performance issues, nothing in writing, no communication that there was a dissatisfaction. In addition, he had been county administrator for only nine months.
When I met with him at the beginning of 2019, he had his first conversation with me as the county administrator. He said, “I need your participation on my leadership team.” I felt assured about my position and EDI at the county.
He would regularly ask me for my advice in dealing with various issues, and he would take my advice and then come back to me when my advice had positive results. Then one day I was surprised when he asked me to come to his office, because he would usually come into my office and close the door to talk.
Once I got to his office, County Counsel Stephen Madkour was there. They started out, “You’ve done a great job; what you’ve done here has been outstanding,” which is a loose quote, then Gary broke the news about getting rid of my position. Then he asked me, “How could the county do EDI work with the position eliminated?” He asked me to stick around for 30 days and write a plan on how to continue the work without me. I did so.
Before you go on, I’m going to tell you what I found out from Richard Swift, a former departmental director at the county. He said that he had a meeting on Feb. 6, 2020, with Gary Schmidt where they discussed how you were a symbol to many equal-employment officers across the state, as you were the only person of color in executive leadership for the county. In 2020, Rich reported the meeting to the county’s HR director, writing, “I discussed the importance of needing to be careful and intentional when removing a symbol. Gary was frustrated. He stated, ‘I know I should not say this, but Emmett was a Black man not doing his job and hiding behind his skin color.’” I asked Gary to reply, and he wrote, “I never made that statement. It is false. It is unfortunate a malicious statement against my character is being made by a former employee in order to discredit me personally and professionally.” Do you believe Gary or Rich’s side of the story, and why?
Biblically it says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. As a man thinks, so is he. I wasn’t there for that conversation between Gary and Rich, so I’ll never know for sure. Anybody who thinks I would hide behind the color of my skin doesn’t know me.
I can’t speak to Gary’s character. All I know is that if that’s how Gary felt, then I have to take him at his word. But if it is true that he said that, then what happened later makes a lot more sense now. At the time that he said that he was eliminating my position, I had to take what was given to me, that he wanted a reorganization.
I perceive that you didn’t hear about Rich and Gary’s conversation until much later. What did you experience after you left the county?
This is my understanding. In late January or February 2020, I see a position posted for an Equity and Inclusion Officer. My plan didn’t include an equity officer. I looked at the job description, and it was pretty much what I had been doing, 150 days after my position had been eliminated.
Clackamas County has 1,800-plus employees, and one person with an approximately $60,000 annual budget built what I did, largely with volunteer support of great and talented county employees and management. I said, “Wait a minute, you’re going to have an Equity and Inclusion Office?” They took my job description, or a large portion of it, to lead that office. Why did they do that?
I applied for the job, and in the first round of interviews there were 14 applicants interviewed. It was only a 15-minute Zoom interview, because we were in the pandemic. I built and administered the program, so anyone else of the other 13 would need to meet me or beat me. They advanced seven people to the next round of interviews, and I was not advanced.