I followed this morning's hearing at Multnomah County with great interest. The commissioners listened to public testimony on a resolution, introduced by Judy Shiprack, that calls on county chair Jeff Cogen to resign because of his affair with Sonia Manhas, a manager in the county's public health department. Ms. Manhas has resigned her position, saying that unnamed county officials forced her to quit. The commissioners voted 4 to 1 for the resolution, with Mr. Cogen understandably voting against it.
One argument that Mr. Cogen's detractors are making is that since the other person in the affair was forced to resign over this issue, in fairness Mr. Cogen should resign also. Let's assume that unnamed county officials in fact forced Ms. Manhas to resign. Consider the possibilities.
First, Ms. Manhas may have violated county policies so egregiously that she deserved to be fired. In that case the question should be whether Mr. Cogen also violated county policies so egregiously that he should resign. The public evidence so far indicates that he didn't.
Second, Ms. Manhas may not have violated county policies sufficiently to merit being fired. In that case the question the commissioners should be asking is not whether Mr. Cogen should resign, but who at the county unjustly pushed Ms. Manhas out. The number of suspects is limited: the five commissioners, Ms. Manhas's supervisor, and the county attorney. It strikes me as very odd that the county has not disclosed who decided to fire Ms. Manhas.
Third, it's possible that Ms. Manhas did not tell the truth when she said that county officials forced her to resign, but in that case the county would have promptly denied her statement and said that she resigned of her own free will and not under pressure from her employer. The county hasn't said so, so I rule this out.
Thus, it's wrong to say "Ms. Manhas had to leave, so Mr. Cogen should also," unless both of them violated county policy to the same egregious degree. If the other commissioners believe that Ms. Manhas was unjustly terminated, then they should find out who ordered her to leave. There's time enough to look into what Mr. Cogen did.