The Oregon Department of Corrections hired a gender-affirming care coordinator last month, a position that pays between $78,000 and $115,000 a year, even as the agency projects a $55 million deficit for 2026.
According to the job listing, the coordinator oversees a program for “managing and monitoring needs and safety risks of transgender, intersex and non-binary adults in custody” and chairs a multidisciplinary team focused on their individualized needs.
The hire follows years of scrutiny over how the state handles transgender inmates. A 2023 review of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon’s only women-only prison, found that transgender residents were “being denied or delayed access to needed care, including hormone replacement therapy,” which the report said created “significant medical and mental health issues for some residents, including gender dysphoria.”
The report cited one transgender resident, a biological woman, who said her hormone blocker prescription lapsed after she arrived at the facility.
“I had been accessing prescriptions at the county. I did not get it when I got here. … I sent several [requests], but they kept bumping me to different places. Now I’ve gotten my period twice. It’s been terrorizing and humiliating,” the resident said.
Gov. Tina Kotek pledged to respond to the findings. “In the wake of national, systemic shortcomings in meeting the needs of women who are incarcerated, I am resolved to confront these issues head-on,” Kotek said in a press release at the time. “The GIPA report was sobering to read. It is incumbent on Oregon’s corrections system to ensure that the use of carceral settings yield the best possible public safety outcomes and sets people up for successful re-entry.”
Her office subsequently created the Advisory Panel on Gender Responsive Practices in Corrections, which recommended training staff who make housing, medical and behavioral care decisions affecting transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse inmates. The panel did not specifically call for creating a gender-affirming care coordinator position.
A similar role had been proposed in SB 1120, a bill that failed in the legislature. That measure would have created a position to “provide coordination of efforts and training across staff and adults in custody on best practices for supporting transgender, nonbinary or gender-diverse adults in custody.”
Budget pressures across state government
The new hire comes as Kotek has directed state agencies to cut spending. Oregon’s tax code is tied to federal definitions of taxable income, and when those definitions changed under the tax cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax legislation passed in 2025, the state’s revenue picture shifted with it. Oregon now faces a negative general fund balance of $373.7 million, according to state reports.
“This is not what we had planned for, but it is what we must do. I am asking you to leave no stone unturned to save tax-payer dollars,” Kotek wrote in a letter to state department heads. “This challenge is not unique to Oregon, but how we respond will be. Our resilience, teamwork and determination have carried us through hard times before. They will again.”
The Department of Corrections, facing its own $55 million projected deficit, has been instructed to slow operational spending, prepare for cost reductions and suspend non-essential out-of-state travel.
Kotek, who is seeking re-election to a second term, has consistently framed transgender medical care as a policy priority. “I want to be very clear. Gender-affirming care is health care. Period, end of story,” she said at a 2023 bill signing for a reproductive and gender-affirming care package.
She has also opposed efforts by the Trump administration to restrict federal funding for hospitals providing transgender procedures to minors. “The Trump administration cannot change the rules and restrict funding to hospitals and doctors who provide gender-affirming care to young people. Gender-affirming care is recognized by major medical organizations and plays an important role in helping young people stay safe, healthy and supported for who they are,” she said in a video release.
Kotek’s office did not respond to inquiries about the new position or additional details about its duties.
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