KGW and other news outlets are reporting that Multnomah County Chair, Jeff Cogen, will resign on September 16th. Cogen conducted a nearly two year long affair with an underling at the County who was summarily fired when the relationship was outed by County employees.
Cogen recently killed a resolution demanding his resignation. He defiantly voted for himself while all other Commissioners voted in favor of him leaving. The vote needed to be unanimous. He refused to recuse himself from the vote.
So, the question becomes, why now? Why is he having a change of heart? Or is it a change of economic situation? Is he leaving now because he’s vested in a County retirement fund? He announced today he’d had a change of heart. From Willamette Week,
“Over the past several weeks, I have been reflecting both on the mistakes I have made, and on the best interests of Multnomah County government and the people that it serves,” he writes. “People want to move on from this distraction. They deserve to.”
Or could it be that his erstwhile, now
fired paramour has begun a letter writing campaign against him? I received this email several days ago from someone identifying herself as a Multnomah County Employee. The return address is sonia.manhas@multco.us <sonia.manhas@multco.us>. Is it from Sonia Manhas? She doesn’t work at Multnomah County anymore, does she?
She seems to be blowing the whistle on another co worker affair. I’ve removed the last names.
Name: Multnomah County Employee
Email: sonia.manhas@multco.us
Questions/Comments: Re: Jeff Cogen/ Mult. Co scandal
Is it really appropriate for the Multnomah County Commissioners to demand
Cogen’s resignation over this scandal when the majority of those very same
Commissioners approved Jenny **** (now known as *******) for the job of
Multnomah County Attorney, even when it was rumored she was engaged in her
own extramarital affair while she was an Assistant County Attorney with
co-worker Stephen *******? (As you can probably tell from [her]
new last name, she and Stephen married each other 4 months ago – and
Stephen is the [nearby] County Attorney, which seems like an additional
conflict that the Multnomah County Commissioners would have had to
approve.) If the allegations are true that Jenny **** *******did engage
in an extramarital affair with her own co-worker, it is hypocritical and
quite unseemly for her office to have facilitated and approved Sonia
Manhas’ resignation. It is also unseemly and highly inappropriate for the
majority of these County Commissioners to be rebuking Jeff Cogen for
conduct when the Commissioners approved very similar conduct for the sake
of hiring their new County Attorney.
IP Address: 97.65.106.254
The IP address goes to a security wall site.
