FILE - City Hall in Portland, Ore., July 2023. Public records shed new light on the departure of Tim Grewe, Portland's former budget director.
Caden Perry / OPB
For the budget director in Portland, the week the annual proposed city budget is presented to City Council is akin to the Super Bowl.
That’s why it came as a surprise to many at the city to hear that Portland’s budget director, Tim Grewe, resigned a day before he was set to share Mayor Ted Wheler’s draft budget, which he helped write, with city commissioners.
The announcement came with little fanfare: “Tim Grewe has resigned - and is no longer with the City of Portland,” Bobby Lee, Wheeler’s chief of staff, wrote in an email sent to city commissions and bureau directors at 10:40 p.m. on May 6. The email focused more on introducing Grewe’s successor, a deputy budget director at the city named Ruth Levine, than explaining his abrupt departure.
But emails recently obtained by OPB through a public records request show that Grewe was fired by the mayor’s office and was blindsided by the news, inspiring him to threaten legal action.
The details come as Wheeler prepares to take control of all city departments. This step, which is meant to help transition the city into its new form of government, will place Wheeler’s office in charge of managing all bureau directors.
Related: Portland Mayor Wheeler will take control of all city bureaus next month
Grewe’s last day in City Hall can be pieced together by a series of internal city emails.
According to a message emailed by a scheduler in Wheeler’s office, Grewe was summoned to meet with Lee at 3 p.m. May 6. The meeting didn’t last long. Nineteen minutes later, Grewe sent a brief resignation letter as a PDF attachment in an email to Ron Zito, the city’s deputy human resources director. In the letter, Grewe said he was resigning for “personal reasons,” but clarified that statement in the email message that accompanied it.
“For the record it is my general option to have a resignation letter in any position that I take,” Grewe wrote. “So please take it from that perspective.”
An email sent by Zito that evening to human resources staff clarifies that the city “ended” Grewe’s appointment to the budget director’s office before Grewe submitted his resignation letter.
The email doesn’t explain why Grewe was let go. But Grewe’s earlier email to Zito suggests it came as a surprise.
“I want to emphasize that I may still choose to seek [a] legal representative because of the way this has been handled with the Mayor’s office,” Grewe wrote. “No performance evaluation. No initial meeting to try and correct performance issues. Nothing that would normally be considered to be staples in a process like this. Especially doing this following completion of the proposed budget.”
When reached by phone, Grewe declined to comment.
Wheeler’s office also declined to comment on the claims included in Grewe’s emails, citing the potential legal concerns. According to Wheeler’s office, Grewe did not receive a severance package.
Grewe’s departure, initially characterized as a resignation, was first reported on by Willamette Week.
Related: Portland City Council unanimously approves $8.2 billion budget
Wheeler appointed Grewe to lead the budget office in January 2023. This followed a 30-year history at the city, where Grewe worked as the city’s chief administrative officer, financial planning director, and held other bureau leadership roles. Since in office, Grewe has overseen two challenging budget cycles, where he was responsible for navigating bureaus through a period of significant revenue shortfalls as federal COVID-19 stimulus funding dried up. Wheeler has repeatedly thanked Grewe publicly for leading the budget office during a particularly difficult time.
But recent messages between Wheeler’s office and Grewe strike a different tone.
Text messages obtained by OPB show a pattern of frustration from staff in Wheeler’s office around Grewe’s lack of communication in the month leading up to this year’s budget presentation. “‘Tim, where are you?’” reads one text from Lee in late April. Two hours later, Lee follows up: “Tim are you getting these texts?” A few days later, Lee sends a similar message to Grewe: “Tim. We tried to call. I tried to email you also.”
Grewe’s departure may feel familiar to City Hall observers. In April 2022, Wheeler announced he was firing Tom Rinehart, the city’s chief administrative officer, with little explanation. Staff described Rinehart as “visibly shaken” after receiving the news in an interview with the Oregonian/OregonLive.com. Just under a year later, Wheeler said he asked his top aide, former Mayor Sam Adams, to resign after learning of Adams’ alleged pattern of bullying female city employees. Adams disputes Wheeler’s narrative, arguing that he had offered his resignation to the mayor prior to Wheeler asking for him to resign. At the time, Adams told OPB it felt like “a knife in the back.”
Wheeler will take over managing all city bureaus on July 1. Bureau management is traditionally divided among city commissioners. Under the city’s new form of government, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, all city bureaus will be overseen by a new city administrator, who will report to the mayor. Wheeler has said that taking control of the bureaus is critical to smoothly transitioning city government into its new structure.
Wheeler is not running for reelection, and will leave office in December.