Latinos still underrepresented in governor’s appointments

It's been about a year since we checked in on Gov. John Kitzhaber's promise to diversify his staff. Back then he hadn't made all that many appointments given there are about 2,000 members serving combined.

A year later, he's made hundreds more appointments for a grand total of 671, according to his office's latest figures.

As a quick reminder, because this promise isn"t explicit in what it means to "diversify” his staff, we settled on the measurement that the governor would be succeeding if his staff mirrored the overall diversity of the state.

The last time we checked, he seemed to be generally on the track but was falling behind when it came to Latino representation. That still seems to be the case today.

Overall, 79 percent of the governor's appointments identified as white, compared to about 78 percent of all Oregonians (according to Census info). African Americans and Asian Americans represented about 6 percent of the appointments each, which goes beyond their representation statewide (2 and 4 percent respectively). Native Americans represented 1 percent of appointments compared to their 2 percent statewide population.

Finally, Latinos represented 6 percent of all appointments -- statewide, however, people identifying as "Hispanic” make up 12 percent of the population.

As far as gender parity goes, men represented 56 percent of the new members -- the state is nearly evenly divided between men and women.

We recognize that there are varying types of diversity, of course. When we last updated this promise, Kendall Clawson, the governor's director of executive appointments, told us they were also focused on differences in age, socioeconomic background and sexual orientation, among other factors.

Of course we agree that those types of diverse backgrounds are important. But the governor specifically mentioned ethnic diversity, so we'll have to stick with the demographic data at hand.

Where does that put us as far as this promise is concerned, then? Well, the governor's appointments don't match perfectly with the state's composition, but they do reflect a good faith effort. The largest exception, however, is with Hispanic or Latino appointments, which continue to lag in meeting parity with the state. As before, we'll continue to monitor this promise to see if he's able to further balance the ranks of the state"s various boards and commissions.

For now we"ll keep this promise In the Works.