Deschutes County Commissioners who voted to shut down a staff-led committee focused on improving equity and diversity in county workplaces and services defended the decision last week after taking criticism from staff, the public and other Central Oregon politicians.

The vote dismantled the county’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access committee, a group of department heads and staff who came together two years ago with a mission to integrate best practices for diversity, equity and inclusion into the county’s policies, services and programs. With its members authorized to spend up to four hours per month on the work, the committee was in the final stages of crafting a workplan assessing access and inclusion across the county, while improving employee retention and communications.

The decision followed President Donald Trump’s executive orders from his first week in office seeking to purge DEI practices from federal agencies.

Commissioner Patti Adair stood by the Feb. 5 vote to dismantle the committee in an interview on Friday. Adair said she feared the county could lose “tremendous federal funding” supporting its budget if the organization was not aligned with the president’s priorities, although she acknowledged that Trump’s orders did not directly threaten to remove funding from the county.

“As a commissioner you have to be proactive,” she said.

A handful of large companies have acted similarly by scaling back workplace diversity initiatives in response to campaigns by conservative activists and the president’s order.

DEI policies, which have roots in the 1960s civil rights movement, are meant to address social barriers that have prevented historically marginalized groups, like people of color, from advancing in certain fields or roles. Critics argue the practices are unfair because they take identity factors like race, gender and sexual orientation into account.

Commissioner Tony DeBone said in an interview on Friday he didn’t mind when staff came forward wanting to form a DEI committee, but “two years down, and they say they’ve worked on a set of goals or principles, but I don’t have anything in my hand,” he said.

“I’m here to serve everybody, to love all and serve all,” DeBone said. “Please define for me what’s broken and then let’s go fix it. Let’s agree that it’s broken and then go fix it.”

Janice Garceau, director of the health services department, expressed concern about the potential impacts of the decision in a letter to commissioners last week. Garceau said the committee is directly responsible for improving access to information for non-English speakers, people with disabilities and addressing internal concerns of staff through anonymous surveys.

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The decision to end the committee comes as the county continues a wage equity analysis to address the county’s gender pay gap identified by an internal audit. According to Garceau, the audit also found women of color leave the workforce at disproportionate rates and that people who don’t speak English as a first language still face gaps in accessing information.

DEI practices will continue

In an email, Kim Katchur, a spokesperson for the county, said diversity-focused work will continue within departments such as health services and community justice, while the county’s Human Resources department — for which the county is seeking a director to fill a resignation from 2024 — will work to analyze recruitment and retention data.

Recruitment and hiring decisions occur within departments and offices with support from Human Resources, Katchur said.

“Deschutes County strives to support an equitable and inclusive workforce that represents the diverse voices and needs of our community. We value hiring applicants with various perspectives and experiences,” Katchur said.

County officials who make hiring decisions are still bound by the county’s 2024-2025 Equal Employment Opportunity plan, the policy that states Deschutes County won’t discriminate when hiring on the basis of race, age, national origin, sexual orientation, or any other classification protected by state or federal law.

The plan also lays out 19 objectives to help make sure diversity among the county’s more than 1,200 employees matches that of the community workforce. One objective was creating the DEI committee to help attract and retain employees affiliated with underrepresented groups. Other actions include continuing to offer training on diversity, equity and inclusion, expanding methods to recruit women and diverse candidates, and monitoring recruitment and selection efforts to make sure the county was meeting its goals.

Other than the DEI committee, the county will continue to pursue all other objectives laid out in the plan, Katchur said.

According to the plan, which was signed in January 2024, the proportion of minority employees working for Deschutes County is 1.5% lower than those potentially available for hire. The biggest gap was among hispanic men, who make up 4.4% of the workforce but 1.6% of county employees. In addition, the plan found women were “significantly underrepresented” in the categories of officials and administrators, service maintenance workers and skilled craft.

For groups who make up a smaller chunk of the community, including Black people, Asian people, American Indian and Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, county staff represented the broader workforce.

Commissioners confident in county’s diversity

DeBone said he is supportive of hiring a diverse range of applicants at the county, but not in pursuing that through a DEI committee. He said lowering housing costs would help with recruitment of diverse employees to Deschutes County.

“We’re welcoming to anybody that’s qualified to apply for a position. After that, I don’t know,” he said.

DeBone and Adair said the county is already doing a good job making information accessible to non-English speakers, including translating public testimony spoken in Spanish to English for the board’s consumption.

“I do believe that … Deschutes County is a great place to work, and we do all we can to make it a welcoming community,” Adair said. “We have a lot of diversity, and I know it will continue.”

Bend City Councilor Megan Perkins denounced the county’s decision during a Feb. 5 council meeting, as Bend’s leaders took turns pushing back against Trump’s recent orders on immigration and federal spending.

“The president doesn’t get to decide or stop the important work we are doing in our community,” Perkins said. “To have a city that works to include all voices as part of its processes and decision making is not a series of bad works called DEI, it is the sign of a city that wants to be a city for everyone. None of the work that our equity department or the human rights and equity commission does divides us, it expands our views and makes us better. We will continue this work because it is the right thing to do.”