By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission is investigating allegations that Yachats Fire District Chief Frankie Petrick used her position for financial gain and inappropriately used district personnel and equipment.
The commission voted unanimously May 19 to proceed with a full investigation after a preliminary probe found “there appears to be a substantial objective basis to believe that Frankie Petrick may have violated the gift clause and the use of office provisions of Oregon Government Ethics law.”
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission is a state agency with a staff of nine overseen by a seven-member appointed board and charged with enforcing government ethics laws.
Investigators will look at whether Petrick received a tractor for her involvement with the district’s purchase of land for its new station from her ex-husband and partner in their nonprofit South Lincoln Ambulance, and whether she had firefighters help her move cattle between fields near her Yachats River ranch and move furniture from her son’s flooded house.
During the agency’s initial investigation and during last month’s commission meeting, Petrick and her attorney, Dan Lawler of Eugene, denied any wrongdoing.
The investigation is entangled with two district issues.
The complaint was filed in March by Kyle Drewry, a Yachats firefighter involved in the successful effort last year to unionize the district’s firefighters and paramedics. The Newport Chapter of the International Fire Fighters Association, Drewry, Petrick and the district’s lawyer are currently negotiating their first contract.
The other issue is the district’s $413,000 purchase of six acres of land in 2015 for its new station from Petrick’s former husband, Steve Hamilton, and his brother.
Hamilton is a former Yachats volunteer fire chief who, with Petrick, controls South Lincoln Ambulance, which the fire district contracts with for emergency medical services.
The six acres on the north edge of Yachats proved to be a big headache for the district when it started construction last year on the $8.3 million fire station. Before it could start building it had to spend almost $1 million moving a creek and to reinforce the new station’s 10,000 square foot foundation with 109 pilings.
Drewry provided the Ethics Commission with a photo of a telephone text message between Hamilton’s wife, Martina Olson, and someone who so far has not been identified. In that text Olson wrote that Hamilton bought a farm tractor for Petrick as a “thank you for working on the land deal.”
Petrick has a cattle ranch along the Yachats River east of town. The Hamiltons are one of her neighbors. Hamilton and Petrick were married briefly in the 1980s but divorced more than 40 years ago.
The commission will also investigate Drewry’s allegations that Petrick ordered fire personnel to block traffic on Yachats River Road so she could her cattle between fields and twice called him and another firefighter to move furniture from one house to another.
The Ethics Commission discussed the preliminary investigation during an executive, or closed, session May 19. An audio recording of that discussion is now available on the commission’s website.
During that meeting commission investigator Susan Myers and board member Nathan Sosa focused on Olson’s text and whether Petrick owned the tractor.
Lawler told the commission that Hamilton purchased the tractor in 2009 “before the land deal was even contemplated.” Lawler said he has not spoken to Olson but termed her text “speculation.”
“I’m interested in knowing the nature of the text,” Sosa said during the commission hearing. “It is contrary to all other information we have here.”
Myers told YachatsNews.com that the commission’s second investigation, which must be completed within six months, includes the ability to subpoena records and interview witnesses under oath. The key will be to track down records of the tractor ownership.
The responses
Petrick and her lawyer declined to comment in detail to YachatsNews.com but via email she said “I am working to provide the Oregon Ethics Commission with all the relevant information and am answering all its questions. For the time being, due to the ongoing OGEC fact-finding, I wish to let the OGEC do its job and will not comment further at this time.”
When contacted last week by YachatsNews.com, Steve Hamilton denied the tractor purchase was any kind of payoff for the property deal and that his wife, Martina Olson, wrote the check for it.
“We’ve had it here for 15 years,” he said. “It’s not much of a tractor.”
Hamilton said that no one has contacted him about the issue.
He added that he was reluctant to sell the six-acre tract to the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District because it was zoned for up to 23 single family homes and would have been worth “a couple of million” if he had developed it for housing. Hamilton and his brother, Robert, made much of their living in real estate.
“I didn’t want to sell that property but the district couldn’t find a place for their station,” he said.
Yachats Fire District Board chair Katherine Guenther said the board is aware of the commission’s decision to investigate.
“It’s not necessarily a board issue, but the board is aware,” Guenther said. “Everybody is cooperating. We will just let them do their work.”
Drewry, who said he’s receiving “quite a bit of blowback” at work because he filed the complaint, said he had nothing to do with union negotiations.
“My motivation was that someone passed along to me this information and I immediately gave it to the Ethics Commission,” he said. “This has no correlation with the union situation at all. I just thought it was wrong.”
Read the full Ethics Commission preliminary investigation here: https://yachatsnews.com/19-044esm-petrick-pr-final-1/
