{img:133249}Paula Brown, a Republican from Ashland, has been nominated by Gov. Kate Brown to succeed Susan Morgan on the Oregon Transportation Commission.

As a member of the five-member commission, Brown could be a power player in the shaping of a transportation package in the 2017 legislative session.

The transportation legislation will likely send hundreds of millions of dollars to the Department of Transportation, which the commission oversees.

Brown is the governor’s appointee to the commission, pending Senate confirmation in December.

“I don’t have a position going in,” Brown said of her approach toward the transportation package and a pending performance audit of the transportation department. “For me, it is learning about what is going on, what happened in the past and what we are looking for in the future, and how the commission can make recommendations to the Legislature and the governor and make sure we are doing the job for the citizens of Oregon.”

Brown and her husband, Patrick Flannery, own the Dana Campbell vineyards in Ashland, but Brown has worked extensively in federal and local infrastructure projects and government contracting, according to her LinkedIn profile. She served as deputy chief of civil engineering at Naval Facilities Engineering Command in Washington, D.C., from October 2013 to September 2016. Before that, she worked at the U.S. Navy First Naval Construction Division in Norfolk, Virginia, from October 2010 to September 2013, and served as the public works director for the City of Ashland from June 1997 to December 2008.

She also worked at the Rogue Valley Council of Governments from fall 1993 until June 1997. She said that earliest experience “gives me the most diverse background, and it’s when I got involved in tranportation.”

The nomination is “a great opportunity because I have done a lot of transportation projects in previous jobs,” she added. “It will definitely be a new challenge on a new side of things.”

As first reported by the Pamplin Media Group/EO Media Group Capital Bureau, Morgan left her more than 15-year stint in state and local government to pursue a career as a lobbyist.

The Republican from Douglas County has accepted a position with the Association of Oregon Counties, where she will lobby for counties’ interests in the creation of the transportation package and policy related to transportation and natural resources.

As a former member of the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, Morgan worked on natural resource policy.

Morgan publicly announced her resignation last week, but she notified the governor’s office weeks before that. Her departure came at a critical time for the Department of Transportation. The department is under scrutiny as part of an ongoing performance audit. The audit is designed to make sure the agency is prepared to efficiently manage the massive influx of funds that would come from the transportation package.

Morgan leads the oversight committee for the audit and plans to remain as the committee’s chairwoman until the end of the more than $1 million audit by New York-based McKinsey & Co.

Oregon law requires that the commission represent different geographic regions of the state. At least one member must live east of the Cascade Range. Commission Chairwoman Tammy Baney, who lives in Bend, fulfills that requirement.

No more than three members may belong to any one political party. Paula Brown said she is registered as a Republican, but she identifies as an independent.

Baney, who is a Deschutes County commissioner; Morgan, and Commissioner Sean B. O’Hollaren, vice president of government relations at Nike, are Republicans. Commissioner Alando L. Simpson, owner of City of Roses Disposal & Recycling, and Commissioner David H. Lohman, an Ashland attorney, are Democrats.