An outside investigator hired by the City of Bend completed a report this month discrediting allegations of racial discrimination in city hall.

Former City of Bend Equity Director Andrés Portela III, who is Afro Latino, resigned from his job three months ago. City staff said they would investigate the reasons for leaving that Portela wrote in a Sept. 12 resignation letter.

In the letter, Portela described a hostile work environment, such as colleagues making racist comments and City Manager Eric King allegedly doing little in response. After he resigned, the city paid Portela an $86,000 settlement. Now, the investigator the city hired is pointing to “ample evidence that Portela lacks credibility.”

The city attorney’s office hired an outside attorney, Amy Ahrendt, to interview staff and review records about Portela’s two-year tenure. Her Dec. 2 report did not find evidence that top city employees treated Portela differently because of his race. Ahrendt also did not believe Portela’s account of how the city manager responded to his resignation letter.

The report acknowledged that racist things happened to Portela during his two years in Bend.

“No one expressed doubt that Portela had been spat upon and called a racial slur,” Ahrendt wrote.

But she said the racism Portela experienced in Bend was mostly outside of work and outside the control of city managers, who appropriately handled “insensitive if not overtly racist” comments made by colleagues, according to the investigation report. It cleared the city of wrongdoing a day before City Manager Eric King’s scheduled performance review, when city councilors gave him a raise.

Portela said in an email that he didn’t ask for the investigation and the city didn’t send him a copy of the findings.

“This investigation wasn’t for me,” he wrote, “It was to make leadership feel absolved.”

The City of Bend attorney’s office said in a statement “the investigation found that the City took the issues seriously and did not treat the former employee differently based on race. The City is committed to making our organization a safe and fair place for everyone and recognizes that this experience has presented learning opportunities.”

The investigator found there was “no dispute” about “at least two incidents of graffiti containing the ‘n’ word and several racially insensitive if not overtly racist comments by at least one (former) City Council member and two employees, as well as members of the community.”

Ahrendt said many of the people she interviewed acknowledged the difficulty for a Black person to live in a mostly white community. She concluded Portela tried to hold city officials accountable for events that were “not in their power to address” or “they only had limited power to address.”

She found city staff took his concerns seriously when he reported incidents of racism. Ahrendt also found the city had concerns about Portela’s leadership of the equity department that were “unrelated to his race,” and that city leaders had “legitimate business reasons” for reassigning his direct reports to other department leaders in the months before his departure.

Ahrendt’s investigation largely focused on the days after city officials received his resignation letter. Records show Portela sent a new version of the letter after talking with King. The city released this version in response to a public records request by OPB, and it didn’t contain any criticisms of the city. About half of Ahrendt’s report pulls apart starkly different accounts of why that happened.

King said Portela offered to write a second letter. Portela said King pressured him.

Ahrendt found “portions of Portela’s account were implausible,” and that he “lacked credibility for various reasons,” including misstating the timing of emails and meetings, and because “evidence clearly shows that Portela mischaracterized at least several allegations in his resignation letter.”

Ahrendt found King’s version of events more “plausible and persuasive,” bolstered by his employees’ character references.

And, Ahrendt wrote, “even if King asked Portela to write a revised letter, he had legitimate reasons for doing so and the request in itself was not inappropriate.”

“King’s interest in avoiding public dissemination of Portela’s unverified allegations, particularly those impugning individual employees, was reasonable,” she wrote.

Ahrendt interviewed several high-ranking city employees, including City Attorney Ian Leitheiser, Chief Innovation Officer Stephanie Betteridge and Communications and Engagement Director René Mitchell. They called the city manager ethical, gentle and collaborative, and agreed that it would have been out of character for King to pressure or intimidate anyone.

Bend paid $18,685 to Ahrendt’s firm, Attorney-Conducted Workplace Investigations, according to a city spokesperson.

The city attorney’s office said in a statement the outsourcing was “to ensure an objective process, as third-party investigations follow the facts, gather and assess information and reach independent conclusions.”

Bend City Councilor Gina Franzosa said she had concerns about the role of the city attorney’s office in the process.

“I do think it was problematic,” she said. “There was an investigation being done on the City Manager. Council should have been briefed on that prior to the investigation being done, as opposed to the investigation being produced and handed to Council.”

The Bend City Council is King’s boss. Franzosa told OPB she received the investigation findings Dec. 2, the day before the city manager’s annual performance review.

“I thought that was insufficient time to consider it,” she said.

On Dec. 3, King received an overwhelmingly positive review from city councilors, who approved a 5% raise for the position he’s held for 17 years.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/18/bend-investigation-discredits-claims-racial-discrimination/