State Treasurer Tobias Read, pictured on April 3, 2024, is Oregon’s next secretary of state. (Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
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Incoming Secretary of State Tobias Read will bring several top employees from the state Treasury with him when he starts as Oregon’s chief elections officer and auditor in January.
Read, a Democrat elected in November, spent the past eight years as state treasurer. He announced Tuesday a list of key hires for his incoming administration, including several people who have worked with him at the Treasury.
Michael Kaplan, who has served as deputy treasurer since 2019, will be the deputy secretary of state. Kaplan was the Treasury’s chief operating officer from 2017-19, served as director for the Oregon Department of Energy from 2014-17 and worked in former Democratic Govs. John Kitzhaber’s and Ted Kulongoski’s administrations.
Read’s chief of staff through his two terms as treasurer, Dmitri Palmateer, will continue in that role at the Secretary of State’s Office. Before joining Read, Palmateer worked for Kitzhaber, former Gov. Kate Brown, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and legislative Democrats.
Two other Treasury employees, organizational risk and resiliency manager Mary Krehbiel and executive services director Grace Roth, will also join Read at the Secretary of State’s Office. Krehbiel was an internal auditor at the Treasury and a financial auditor in the Secretary of State’s Office, while Roth previously worked for Brown, Kitzhaber and Kulongoski.
Read picked Tess Seger, the communications director for Oregon Senate Democrats, for his deputy chief of staff for communications. Before joining the Senate in 2022, Seger managed Nevada U.S. Rep. Susie Lee’s 2020 reelection campaign, and was Iowa communications director for Democratic Sen. Cory Booker’s presidential campaign. Capitol observers blame an attempt from former Senate Majority Leader Kathleen Taylor to replace Seger, along with several other employees, for the caucus choosing to oust Taylor after mere months as leader.
And Ricardo Lujan Valerio, now the director of government relations at Western Oregon University, will be Read’s deputy chief of staff for government relations. He previously worked for Portland City Councilor 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 trust to the office, which has seen significant turnover in recent years and is still reeling from former Secretary of State Shemia Fagan’s resignation over revelation she moonlighted for a cannabis company involved in an audit conducted by the office.
“These dedicated and well-respected Oregonians understand the importance of the work that lies ahead of us,” Read said. “I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with them to benefit our state.”
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