Oregon ethics panel dismisses case against former port director over Amazon data center tax breaks

Published 2:55 pm Friday, July 14, 2023

An aerial view of an Amazon data center near Boardman.

Oregon’s ethics board overruled its staff Friday and dismissed a complaint against the former director of the Port of Morrow regarding his role in awarding tax breaks to an Amazon data center in 2018.

The port’s longtime director, Gary Neal, is one of four officials in Morrow County who purchased a local company called Windwave Communications for $2.6 million in 2018.

Neal acquired a 20% stake in the business, according to the ethics commission.

Windwave provides fiber-optic service to Amazon’s enormous data centers in Morrow County near Boardman, a remote area 160 miles east of Portland. Commissioners were considering whether Neal had failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest at a 2018 meeting about Amazon tax incentives.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reported last year that Neal and the fiber company’s other owners — two port commissioners and a county commissioner — all played a role in approving incentives aimed at attracting huge Amazon data centers to the county of 12,000 residents.

The Oregon Government Ethics Commission operates under a four-year statute of limitations so it didn’t have authority to investigate the officials’ conduct during the period they were negotiating to buy Windwave.

Since Neal retired from the port in December 2018, and the port received a complaint about his actions last September, that left the ethics panel with a narrow, three-month period to consider.

Ethics commission staff recommended dismissing one complaint against Neal because the port had hired his son to take over as executive director, beginning in August 2018. Neal remained a port employee until December to assist with the transition.

But staff did recommended sanctioning Neal over his participation in an October 2018 meeting of the board administering Amazon’s tax breaks.

At that meeting, local officials approved expanding the areas eligible for property tax breaks to include a parcel where Amazon planned to build a data center. Neal represented the port at that meeting but had already stepped aside as port director.

On Friday, the ethics board concluded Neal had only a tangential role at the boundary meeting and voted 5-3 to reject the staff’s recommendation.

“I take this complaint and investigation seriously and I know that I took the approach that I believe in doing the right thing,” Neal told commissioners before their vote.

The ethics board is continuing to investigate Windwave’s three other owners.

And the Oregon Department of Justice is conducting a separate inquiry into how a nonprofit called Inland Development Corp. reached agreement to sell Windwave to the four officials. Two port commissioners who bought Windwave also served on Inland’s board, though Inland has said they didn’t participate in the vote to sell the business.

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