State Treasurer Tobias Read, pictured April 3, 2024, is Oregon’s next Secretary of State. (Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Editor’s note: The Capital Chronicle is running a year-end fundraising campaign, with a goal of $10,000, to help us continue our top-notch reporting next year. The stakes are high, and we have a long legislative session in 2025. We are completely dependent on donor dollars, and they are tax deductible. Please contribute to us if you can.
Incoming Secretary of State Tobias Read will bring with him several top Treasury Department officials when he starts as Oregon’s election official and auditor in January.
Read, a Democrat elected in November, served as state treasurer for the past eight years. He announced on Tuesday a list of key personnel for his next administration, including several people who worked with him at the Treasury Department.
Michael Kaplan, who has been deputy treasurer since 2019, will become deputy secretary of state. Kaplan served as Chief Operating Officer of the Treasury Department from 2017 to 2019, as Director of the Oregon Department of Energy from 2014 to 2017, and worked for former Democratic Administrations. The administrations of John Kitzhaber and Ted Kulongoski.
Read’s chief of staff will continue in this role in the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs during his two terms as Treasurer, Dmitri Palmateer. Before joining Read, Palmateer worked for Kitzhaber, former Governor Kate Brown, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and House Democrats.
Two other Treasury Department employees, Mary Krehbiel, organizational risk and resilience manager, and director of executive services Grace Roth, will also join Read in the Office of the Secretary of State. Krehbiel was an internal auditor at the Treasury Department and a financial auditor at the State Department, while Roth previously worked for Brown, Kitzhaber and Kulongoski.
Read chose Tess Seger, the communications director for Oregon Senate Democrats, as deputy chief of staff for communications. Before joining the Senate in 2022, Seger led the re-election campaign of Nevada US Rep. Susie Lee in 2020, and served as communications director in Iowa for Democratic Senator Cory Booker’s presidential campaign. Capitol observers blame an effort by former Senate Majority Leader Kathleen Taylor to replace Seger, along with several other employees, for the caucus that chose to oust Taylor after just months as leader.
And Ricardo Lujan Valerio, now director of government relations at Western Oregon University, will become Read’s deputy chief of staff for government relations. He previously worked for Portland City Council Member Carmen Rubio and at the Latino Network, ACLU of Oregon and Oregon Student Association.
Read said in a statement that the new hires will help with his priority of restoring accountability and confidence in the office, which has seen significant turnover in recent years and is still reeling from the resignation of the former minister of Foreign Affairs Shenia Fagan following the revelation that she was being shadowed by a cannabis product. company involved in an audit conducted by the firm.
“These dedicated and respected Oregonians understand the importance of the work ahead,” said Read. “I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with them for the benefit of our state.”
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES IN YOUR INBOX
