Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler fired Sam Adams for ‘bullying’ female employees. Here’s what records show

The workplace conduct by Sam Adams that prompted Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to fire him as his senior mayoral adviser consisted of belittling, interrupting and yelling at multiple female employees in roughly a dozen instances over 16 months, public records show.

The experiences left several female employees in tears, humiliated and even fearful they might lose their jobs.

It’s unclear, however, whether Adams was fully informed of the complaints at the time they were made, counseled to improve his behavior or given consequences if he did not. At least two supervisors who contacted human resources on behalf of women who complained wrote that Adams should be told his behavior was out of line, coached to do better or required never to repeat it, not fired, records show.

At least seven city employees complained to the mayor’s office or human resources about Adams’ conduct — particularly toward women — after the longtime City Hall fixture returned as Wheeler’s director of strategic innovations two years ago, redacted records provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive late Friday show.

The complaints allege Adams belittled city employees, talked over people, interrupted them and sometimes yelled or screamed. In some cases, he asked or demanded that city employees complete work tasks he assigned them, even when they were not under his direct supervision, complaints allege.

“This was one of the most unprofessional experiences I’ve had, not just at the city, but in my career,” an employee in the city attorney’s office wrote. Another city employee wrote that she left a 2021 meeting with Adams feeling “accosted and upset.”

The records do not indicate how many of the complaints were formally investigated or if Adams faced prior warnings or reprimands. Adams told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Saturday that he believes no complaint underwent formal investigation.

Adams’ role in the administration was to be a power player who would use his political savvy and deep familiarity with the workings of City Hall to execute the mayor’s vision and bring about rapid action on Wheeler’s priorities.

“I was given the mandate to help the mayor get the city back on track,” Adams told the newsroom Saturday. “At times, as we struggled to make progress, I felt a great duty to insist we find a more successful way forward.”

As part of that, he said, he did not intend to cause anyone to experience trauma at work or fear for their job. But he admitted that his hard-charging style and unapologetic backing of the mayor’s agenda rankled some people and angered others.

Many of the complaints about his workplace conduct arose from policy discussions involving some of the most contentious issues facing the city, including police response to protests, graffiti removal and homelessness, he said.

“I set out to work on the issues,” he said. “These are difficult issues. I’m passionate about my positions and others are passionate about theirs.”

Prior to joining the mayor’s office in early 2021, Adams spent two decades in Portland City Hall as chief of staff to former mayor Vera Katz, then a city commissioner and ultimately the first openly gay mayor of a major American city. His tenure as mayor was undermined nearly from the get-go after it was revealed Adams had initiated a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old he met through work, then repeatedly lied about it.

Though most of the complaints about Adams’ conduct while serving as a top aide to Wheeler trickled in sporadically, concerns about them appeared to dramatically intensify last month after two female city attorneys alleged Adams had mistreated them in recent meetings.

One of the attorneys wrote in an email to City Attorney Robert Taylor that a visibly angry Adams berated and condescended to her in a pair of meetings. She said the encounters were “unprofessional in a way that I have not previously experienced either at the city or in other workplaces.”

Taylor later forwarded the woman’s written account to human resources and also emailed Adams separately about the episodes.

“I understand you were frustrated today with my office, and you took that frustration out on two of the professional attorneys on my staff. They are among the hardest working and most professional lawyers in my office,” Taylor wrote to Adams on Dec. 16.

“They described the interactions to me, and I want to express to you that how you handled it was not acceptable. They do not want an apology from you. They just do not want it to happen again. I share that expectation.”

Ron Zito, director of employee and labor relations for the city, suggested earlier this month that Adams’ lengthy, alleged pattern of conduct likely violated city rules against “discourteous treatment of the public or other employees, offensive conduct or conduct unbecoming a city employee.”

“Given the at-will nature of Sam’s role and the outsized impact of his position – this trend does create significantly liability for the city, it is not quite comparable to other situations with line staff,” Zito wrote to his boss, Human Resources Director Cathy Bless, in a Jan. 4 email.

The following day, Bless suggested how Wheeler’s chief of staff, Bobby Lee, might break the news to Adams that the mayor had decided to terminate him.

Wheeler said he demanded Adams’ resignation Tuesday at the recommendation of the human resources director and city attorney.

“I had periodically heard either directly or anecdotally that Sam would get heated in a meeting or he could be rude in his behavior,” Wheeler told The Oregonian/OregonLive and Willamette Week on Friday. “But the complaints identified here were not brought to my attention until literally until the last couple of days of 2022.”

Wheeler had summoned the two news organizations to City Hall to contradict Adams’ stated reasons for resigning. Adams publicly and staunchly insisted he was leaving solely for health reasons.

COMPLAINTS BEGAN IN 2021

Complaints against Adams provided by the city stretch back to August 2021, just six months after the former mayor returned to City Hall.

That month, a female employee with the Office of Civic & Community life claimed Adams made her feel “belittled” and “cornered” during an interaction she had with him, according to an email sent by the bureau’s interim director Michael Montoya to Lee, Wheeler’s chief of staff.

Montoya added he believed some of Adams’ remarks to the woman constituted “threats to her possible professional future.”

“Sam clearly needs some seriously worded guidance on harnessing his dedication and passion for making a difference,” Montoya told Lee in the email. “I would hope you will consider all factors when determining what is the best course of action.”

It’s not clear how — or whether — the mayor’s office handled the complaint.

Several weeks later, in September 2021, another female employee recounted to human resources a virtual meeting in which she said Adams interrupted and yelled at her multiple times, records show. The woman claimed the interaction was “mildly traumatizing” and “felt like she may be fired.”

Those allegations were followed by other sparse accounts reported to human resources that alleged, among other things, that Adams treated women differently from men, that his behavior caused some to cry and that he was a reason why some female city employees had left the mayor’s office.

“There have been so many different concerns with Sam since he came on,” Zito wrote to Bless in a separate Sept. 2021 email. “I believe it is really a conversation we need to have directly with the mayor at this point as well.”

FOLLOW THROUGH UNCLEAR

In a statement Friday evening, Bless said human resources officials contacted Adams at least twice to discuss complaints about his alleged behavior. The statement provided no details about the timing or outcomes of those meetings or if any disciplinary action was taken.

Adams has said he knew of a few of the complaints but not the details and insists that he stepped down because of chronic health problems. He maintains that the mayor never asked him to resign and that he believes he’s being scapegoated for something else.

“In all my years working for the city I have never witnessed a city director of human resources and a city attorney speaking at an official city news conference offering sweeping statements about HR complaints that apparently did not meet the threshold to even be officially investigated,” he wrote in a text to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Friday.

The complaints by city employees in 2021 and 2022 were not the first time his Adams’ behavior in City Hall — and his handling of questions about professional conduct — has come under intense scrutiny.

Most notably, his tenure as mayor was severely tainted by a sex scandal that hampered his effectiveness in office. While on the City Council, he started a sexual relationship with a teenage legislative intern he met on the job, then lied about it.

Prosecutors investigated the young man’s claims that the sexual relationship began before he turned 18, which would have been illegal on Adams’ part. But they found the claims by Beau Breedlove not to be credible and did not bring any charges.

In 2017, after Adams left office and took a job in Washington, D.C., he was accused of sexually harassing his personal assistant while mayor. Adams has denied the man’s allegations, and members of his staff and contemporaneous records from the mayor’s office refuted key elements of the staffer’s claims.

— Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; skavanaugh@oregonian.com; @shanedkavanaugh

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