When Gov. Kate Brown imposed her COVID-19 vaccine mandate on state employees late last year, one agency stood out for its high rate of religious exemptions.
Nearly one in five employees at the Oregon Department of Corrections received the special dispensation intended for those with “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
State officials at the time offered no explanation for that extraordinary rate – the highest among state agencies with at least 100 employees.
Now one possible explanation has emerged:
The Corrections Department’s second-in-command told managers to encourage employees to seek religious exemptions regardless of whether they qualified, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of conversations but unauthorized to speak on behalf of the agency.
Heidi Steward, the agency’s deputy director, told managers in at least two meetings to advise employees to “get religion” in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 18 deadline, the sources said.
The agency has long struggled with chronic staffing shortages that last year resulted in average monthly overtime costs of nearly $2 million.
The Corrections Department has about 4,400 workers to staff 14 prisons. According to the state, the agency granted all but two of the 822 requests for religious exemptions it received. It granted all 33 medical exemption requests.
Paul Buchanan, a Portland employment lawyer, said the agency’s decision to grant nearly every religious exemption request “a total dereliction of duty.” He said employers can deny such requests when they pose a burden on the employer’s ability to maintain a safe environment, “which is clearly the case in a correctional facility.”
Steward, through an agency spokesperson, denied directing anyone to pursue a religious exemption “as she strongly believes this is a very personal decision based upon an individual’s sincerely held religious belief.”
Corrections Director Colette S. Peters in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive praised Steward’s leadership during the pandemic, saying Steward “worked tirelessly” to ensure prisons were staffed and operating safely.
Steward, Peters said, “spent an inordinate amount of time educating employees and adults in custody on the importance of the vaccine and the governor’s direction.”
Steward has been with the department for more than two decades and rose through the ranks. She previously worked as superintendent of Coffee Creek Correctional Institution, the women’s prison in Wilsonville. She receives an annual salary of $193,092.
According to the state, 99 executive branch employees lost their jobs as a result of failing to meet the vaccination requirement. Of those, 17 worked at the Corrections Department.
Even though the governor last month rescinded her mandate for nearly 40,000 state workers, employees who were terminated because they failed to meet the requirement won’t be getting their jobs back, according to the Department of Administrative Services.
Andrea Chiapella, an Administrative Services spokesperson, said in an email that agencies must check references of all job candidates, including those who previously worked for the state, and that state workers who were fired for failing to comply with the governor’s order would have “left not in good standing and would not have a positive reference.”
Buchanan characterized as “very unfair” the state’s disparate handling of employees who may not have been entirely honest when seeking religious exemptions versus those who didn’t seek an exemption because they didn’t qualify.
“Wholesale denying people employment because they honestly told their employer that they wouldn’t get the vaccine? That seems unfair to me,” he said.
Rep. Ron Noble, R-McMinnville, also questioned why the state wouldn’t consider rehiring workers given the tight labor market.
“Not hiring people back who are qualified when there is no longer a mandate – it’s a little bit concerning,” he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic swept through Oregon’s 14 prisons. Among those in custody, 5,315 became infected and 45 died. Another 1,622 corrections employees also contracted the virus and three died.
