Blue state creates six-figure role for trans inmate services amid budget shortfalls
The Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) hired a gender-affirming care coordinator last month, a position set to earn between $78,000 and $115,000 annually.
The job includes oversight of a program for "managing and monitoring needs and safety risks of transgender, intersex and non-binary adults in custody," according to the listing. The position also chairs a multidisciplinary team focused on their individualized needs.
The role, which comes as the DOC is projected to have a $55 million deficit in 2026, continues gender-related initiatives spearheaded by Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, a longtime champion of the trans community, as she pursues re-election to a second term. It also highlights the logistical difficulties associated with trans prisoners.
After a 2023 review of Oregon’s only women-only prison, the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Kotek said her administration would look for ways to address what the report called delayed care across its cisgender and trans inmates.
"Transgender residents [are] being denied or delayed access to needed care, including hormone replacement therapy. This creates significant medical and mental health issues for some residents, including gender dysphoria," the report stated.
The report included one example of a transgender resident at the Coffee Creek who said her request for continuing her hormone blocker treatment had gone unheeded.
"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, a biological woman, said.
Kotek promised to address issues raised by the report.
"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.
"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."
As a part of the response, her office created the Advisory Panel on Gender Responsive Practices in Corrections.
In turn, the panel recommended training staff who make decisions about housing, medical and behavioral care on the needs of transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse inmates.
The panel did not specifically recommend the gender-affirming care coordinator position.
The role is similar to a position that would have been greenlit through SB 1120, a failed bill. Among other provisions, that law would have created a role tasked 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."
The hire clashes with Kotek's instruction to agencies to reduce spending. In 2025, when Republicans in Washington, D.C. passed tax cuts through President Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, Oregon's tax picture also changed. The state's tax code mirrors many of the definitions of taxable income used by the federal government. When those definitions shrank, so did Oregon's revenue, leaving the state with a -$373.7 million general fund balance, 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. 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," Kotek wrote in a letter to state department heads.
Like other departments, the DOC was also affected, reporting a projected $55 million deficit. To remedy this, the department was instructed to slow operational spending, prepare for operational cost reductions and suspend non-essential out-of-state travel.
Even so, Kotek has highlighted trans care as a priority, strongly advocating for a government-led approach to expanding access to trans procedures, calling them part of "health care."
"I want to be very clear. Gender-affirming care is health care. Period, end of story," Kotek said at a bill signing in 2023 after the legislature passed a reproductive and gender-affirming care package.
She has also pushed back against attempts from the Trump administration to limit federal funding for hospitals that provide transgender procedures to minors.
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"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," Kotek said in a video release.
Kotek’s office did not respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital about the new position and additional details about its duties.