Council Elects Officers For The New Year

At its January meeting, the Council elected Richard Devlin, an Oregon member, Chair and Bo Downen, a Montana member, vice chair.

 

Devlin was appointed to the Council in 2018 by Oregon Governor Kate Brown. Devlin served 31 years as an elected official, first at the local and regional level, where he focused on open space and habitat conservation, land use planning, and transportation, and later in the Oregon House of Representatives and the Oregon Senate. From 2007 to 2010 he was the Majority Leader of the Senate. He then was appointed Co-Chair of Ways and Means, a position he held until his appointment to the Council. He graduated from Portland State University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Administration of Justice and Pepperdine University with a Master of Arts in Management. His occupational background is in adult and juvenile corrections, and civil and criminal investigations, and he served in the United States Marine Corps.

 

Bo Downen was appointed to the Council by Montana Governor Steve Bullock in 2019. Before his appointment to the Council, Downen was the director of environmental and regional affairs at the Public Power Council, a regional association of consumer-owned electric utilities. Downen, who was raised in Montana, joined the Public Power Council as a policy analyst in 2006, focusing on the Council’s fish and wildlife program, energy efficiency policy, and regional power planning. Prior to joining the Public Power Council, he worked as an attorney for the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and was a staff member for the State Government Administration Committee. He graduated from Georgetown University and the Loyola University Chicago School of Law.