A campaign finance watchdog on Monday filed an elections complaint with Multnomah County and state elections officials against Sharon Meieran’s campaign for county chair and the political action committee she directs, Fixing Multnomah County.
The complaint, filed by Seth Woolley, alleges that Meieran, a former county commissioner who served two terms before leaving at the end of 2024, committed eight campaign finance violations. Most concern Fixing Multnomah County, which built a 23-page “Comprehensive Multnomah County Turnaround Plan” that Meieran now says she will enact if elected. Woolley alleges Meieran skirted county campaign finance limits because she used Fixing Multnomah County to fund her plan for county chair, and then failed to report the plan as an in-kind contribution.
Woolley is a self-styled elections watchdog who frequently files complaints against candidates for local office that he believes are out of compliance with campaign finance rules.
The first five counts of Woolley’s complaint pertain to a campaign finance question WW reported earlier this month about the overlap between Fixing Multnomah County and Meieran’s candidate committee, Friends of Sharon Meieran.
Fixing Multnomah County, which Meieran opened in late October, collected just over $70,000 in contributions from a handful of donors to fund the development and writing of a plan. At issue was whether Friends of Sharon Meieran should have been required to report the plan as an in-kind contribution, and if Meieran had skirted the county’s campaign finance limits by accepting donations well in excess of $603 to fund a product ultimately central to her campaign.
The remaining counts allege that Meieran engaged in personal conversion by claiming anyone could use the plan, but had copyrighted the committee-funded plan; and that she had engaged in pre-announcement campaigning and fundraising.
“This complaint alleges that Fixing Multnomah County furnished its paid work product, associated rights, infrastructure, or services to Meieran or Friends of Sharon Meieran without equivalent compensation and outside the County contribution limit,” Woolley wrote. “Complainant believes it is likely that Fixing Multnomah County was established for the purpose of evading the County contribution limits.”
If substantiated, Woolley writes the violation should be criminally prosecuted as a Class C felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
In an email comment to WW, Meieran says she did not break any campaign finance laws.
“This is a cynical effort to make it seem like it’s somehow cheating that I put substance before politics and spent a year working with experts to write a comprehensive plan to fix the county—and posted it publicly—before deciding whether to actually run for chair,” she wrote. “Those who complain about it later, like it’s wrong to actually put substance before politics, show us exactly what’s wrong with our system. This is why we repeatedly end up with politicians who want to BE something instead of trying to actually do anything.”
Meieran previously told WW that she had hoped the plan alone could act as her final contribution to the county and that it was “immaterial from a disclosure perspective” because all candidates had access to it. In his complaint, Woolley alleges that’s not the case, given that Fixing Multnomah County’s website displays an all rights reserved copyright.
In his complaint, Woolley writes that Meieran’s opponents, sitting county commissioners Julia Brim-Edwards and Shannon Singleton, are engaged in official work that “necessarily included planning.” Woolley adds that candidates outside of current office can develop plans within the boundaries of the law.
“Meieran’s claim that other candidates lacked plans does not establish that she needed an unlimited-contribution political committee to finance hers,” Woolley wrote. Her plan “appears distinctive not because she alone planned, but because self-interested, deep-pocketed contributors financed its development through a separate political committee without the candidate committee reporting or paying for the resulting value.”
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