Washington County, Oregon Chair Kathryn Harrington was caught on camera making an obscene gesture at a fellow commissioner during a publicly livestreamed meeting Tuesday morning, according to reporting from The Oregonian and KGW.
The confrontation began when Harrington abruptly interrupted the meeting to tell Commissioner Nafisa Fai to “stop getting in the way of my sight line” of Commissioner Jason Snider. Footage from the livestream shows Fai adjusting her chair twice before Harrington shoved her own chair back, slammed her hands on the table, and appeared to give Fai the middle finger while other board members were looking elsewhere.
Snider went on to answer a housing question Harrington had posed, at which point Fai interrupted to ask whether anyone else had witnessed the gesture.
“Could you pause for a second? Did you see the finger?” Fai asked. “Did anybody see that?”
No other board member responded. Fai told the meeting to continue, and Snider offered, “Maybe I can help by moving.”
A Rival Calls for Accountability
Commissioner Pam Treece, who was present at the session and is running against Fai to succeed Harrington as chair, publicly called on Harrington to apologize to both Fai and county residents.
“As leaders, we have to hold ourselves to higher standards for our speech and our actions. And when we fall short, we need to acknowledge it, take responsibility, and do better in the future,” Treece said in a statement reported by KGW.
Treece said she would return a recent campaign contribution from Harrington and remove the chair’s endorsement from her campaign website. She added: “Commissioner Fai and I are opponents in the race for Washington County Chair, and we don’t always agree. But I strongly believe that disagreement should never prevent us from treating one another with respect.”
Treece further warned of a broader trend she sees locally and nationally, saying, “Sadly, here in Washington County, as we are seeing in Portland and across the country, we are experiencing a rise in intolerance for differences of opinion and differences in approaches to problem-solving. This should be concerning to us all.”
Harrington Apologizes
Harrington issued a statement Tuesday afternoon calling her conduct “unprofessional.”
“I formally and personally apologize to Commissioner Nafisa Fai, my other fellow district commissioner board members, to our Washington County workforce and the community for my unprofessional response to Commissioner Fai in our work session meeting this morning,” she said. “My reaction was very plainly not appropriate in any instance. I should not have behaved in such a hurtful manner.”
A Pattern of Complaints
This is not the first time Harrington’s conduct as chair has drawn scrutiny. Two former county employees told The Oregonian that even after a 2022 investigation found her treatment of staff to be abusive, her behavior continued. A more recent report alleged she yelled at an employee in March, leaving that staffer in tears. Harrington apologized publicly at the time and said she would step back from certain duties as chair.
