Portland Bureaucrat Dean Marriott Challenges Whether City Commissioner Nick Fish Can Place Him on Paid Leave

Longtime Portland bureaucrat Dean Marriott, placed on paid administrative leave after a city audit showed the costs of a sewer office building went out of control, is appealing to a labor board to overturn City Commissioner Nick Fish's decision to send him home.

Marriott will receive a Jan. 8 hearing with Portland's civil service board, which reviews the suspensions and demotions of city employees. The hearing will decide whether Marriott's paid leave counts as a suspension he can appeal to the board.

Marriott, the director of the Bureau of Environmental Services, has filed a notice that he intends to sue Fish and City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade. The Nov. 19 tort claim, first reported Wednesday by The Oregonian, charges Fish and Griffin-Valade with conspiring on a politically motivated attempt to end his career.

Fish placed Marriott on paid administrative leave because of the $11.5 million services building that opened this spring at the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant.

In April, WW obtained documents showing how the city turned what was supposed to be a utilitarian office building, originally estimated at $3.2 million, into a poster-child facility for wastewater engineers in North Portland.

Fish responded to reports by WW and KOIN-TV by asking for a city audit. He sent Marriott home Oct. 22 after the audit said BES managers approved a design so ornate and inadequate that it required 85 change orders during construction, mostly to fix design problems like the ecoroof covered in wetland grasses.

Fish has asked the Barran Liebman law firm to investigate the project.

Marriott's civil-service protection is at the center of his tort claim. In it, his attorney says Fish and Griffin-Valade trumped up the sewer building's cost overruns to create a cause for the last city bureau director who can't be fired at the discretion of elected officials.

"Since 2000, when the city voted to remove civil servant status for bureau directors, all directors who retained their civil service protections have been replaced by 'at-will' employees," the tort claim says. "Both [Griffin-Valade] and Commissioner Fish have demonstrated clear animus toward Mr. Marriott's legal protections and shown a clear intention to remove him from his position and replace him with someone who can be fired at Commissioner Fish's discretion for any reason."

The civil-service protection has extended Marriott's 20-year career before.

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Portland Bureaucrat Dean Marriott Challenges Whether City Commissioner Nick Fish Can Place Him on Paid Leave