This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.

After some much needed sunlight on its operations, Travel Oregon is looking for a new chief executive—at a significantly lower salary.

Not long into a meeting last September of the Oregon House Committee on Economic Development, its chairman quoted from an OJP investigation about dysfunction at state-funded Travel Oregon and the oversized salary of its longtime executive director.

Then Rep. Daniel Nguyen (D-Lake Oswego) looked at the man sitting steps away at the witness table, Todd Davidson, the executive director whose base salary was more than $365,000 the year before.

“How do you justify paying that salary?”

Offering an answer from the witness table was Scott Youngblood, an eight-year veteran of Travel Oregon’s oversight commission. He suggested that Davidson, who had announced he would leave the agency this summer, wasn’t overpaid. Rather, he was the “Michael Jordan” of travel marketing.

“Scrutiny, it’s coming,” Nguyen would go on to say about the 70-employee, $45 million a year agency. “That is what the public is asking for.”

Travel Oregon’s board of commissioners apparently listened to the concerns Nguyen and other lawmakers expressed after OJP reported that employees said the agency had a toxic work culture and delayed sending out $9 million in small grants for a year. In a unanimous vote last month, the nine commissioners approved a salary range of $235,000 to $255,000 for Davidson’s eventual replacement, far less than Davidson’s compensation and an amount more in line with directors of vastly larger business-aligned state agencies such as Business Oregon and the Department of Agriculture.

OJP’s investigation “helped spur conversations about Travel Oregon’s work in my committee, among others in the Capitol, and at the kitchen tables of Oregon families,” Nguyen said by email Monday.

Travel Oregon, also known as the Oregon Tourism Commission, is funded by a statewide 1.5% tax on hotel stays. The governor appoints the nine members of its board to oversee an agency that spends about $45 million a year to promote Oregon tourism.

The issue of Davidson’s compensation has come up before. In 2020, the Secretary of State’s Office released an audit that focused on his high salary and those of his key staff. But nothing changed.

Today, the commissioners say they are looking for “a reset” at a time when international travel to Oregon is down and Portland-area tourism hasn’t fully recovered from business losses from the civic unrest after a Minneapolis policeman murdered George Floyd.

Candidates have until March 30 to apply for the top job promoting Oregon’s $14 billion-a-year tourism industry.

Nguyen and members of the Economic Development Committee will hear Wednesday from Greg Willitts, chair of Travel Oregon’s board of commissioners and president of FivePine Lodge and Spa in Sisters.

“Travel Oregon is funded largely through tax dollars,” Nguyen said Monday, “and we expect results, transparency, and accountability from their operations.”

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