Hillary Borrud for The Oregonian:
Brown’s skepticism about putting the ombudsman in the Secretary of State’s office appears to be a somewhat recent development.
…
“We started with the secretary of state, but that didn’t end up feeling like — there’s political, you know, implications there as well. So (the Department of Administrative Services) is where it ended up.”
Translation: We were going to go with the Secretary of State until Republican Dennis Richardson was elected. Then we decided it was best for the monkeys to watch the bananas.