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Michael Dunne: I’m Michael Dunne. Stop me if I sound like a broken record, but the first part of today’s show is again going to focus on the dysfunction at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. This time, a longtime deputy has been found to have lied repeatedly about an incident involving SWAT and to have potentially covered it up, and an independent auditor is recommending his termination. That may seem kind of routine, but there’s a twist. The deputy is running to be county sheriff, and if he wins, the investigation might just go away. Today on the show, OPB joins us with the latest in this Central Oregon drama. Then, at the end of the show, two voices from our station join us: first to talk about a novel approach to housing affordability from St. Vinny’s, and then to get us ready for KLCC’s fall membership drive. Jen Baires is a journalist who covers Central Oregon for OPB. Jen, it’s great to talk to you again. Thanks so much for coming on.
Jen Baires: Yes, thanks for having me, Michael.
Dunne: Yeah, it’s a very interesting story, again, at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. Before we get into the controversy, let’s remind folks who the main actors in this play are. Who is Lt. James “Mac” McLaughlin, and who is Ty Rupert?
Baires: Yes, so Lt. James “Mac” McLaughlin has been at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office for about 19 years, and Ty Rupert has been there for about 20 years and is our interim sheriff. He was appointed last year by the county commissioners after our previous sheriff retired suddenly.
Dunne: Yes, indeed. OK, so Lt. McLaughlin has gotten into some hot water. We’ve talked about it before, but take a few minutes to remind folks what he did and what he’s been accused of.
Baires: Yes. This all stems from a SWAT team arrest back in February of this year. McLaughlin was the head of SWAT at the time, and during an arrest at a property, he and another deputy were recorded making remarks on a Ring video camera. The other deputy was talking about trumping up charges against the woman who owned the home where they were arresting someone, saying something like, “We’ll get her. We’ll get him for burglary, and we’ll get her for false reporting.” McLaughlin is caught laughing about it, chuckling and saying that he really appreciated that deputy’s “vindicticism,” which is the word he used. The woman, who watched through her cameras as this was happening, was obviously upset. She reached out to Mac about it. I think we have some texts that we just got showing that he apologized for it, but it was never brought forward as a formal complaint, and that’s where this stems from: When did he know that the Ring camera footage existed? What did he understand his involvement in her complaint to be, and did he take the appropriate steps to bring it to his superiors?
Dunne: OK, and those superiors, and I guess other groups, have looked at this. There have been some pretty hard recommendations against this officer. Bring us up to speed on all that.
Baires: Yeah. For the last few months, McLaughlin has been on paid administrative leave while there’s been an investigation into his actions that day and whether he was trying to cover up his part in it afterward. The independent investigator hired by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office reported in August that he found a number of violations by McLaughlin, including the charge of dishonesty. Dishonesty is one of those fireable offenses in law enforcement. Oregon has a code of ethics that it expects law enforcement to uphold, and dishonesty triggers a possible automatic termination.
Dunne: OK, so just so we’re clear, the sheriff’s office hired an independent investigator in all this, and of course that means interim Sheriff Ty Rupert said, “OK, I guess I’m going to recuse myself.” Is that the thinking, and is that why they hired this independent investigator?
Baires: Yes. I remember I spoke with Sheriff Rupert when the investigation first started earlier this summer, and at that time he told OPB that he wanted to get a third-party investigator to keep some distance between himself and the investigation, considering that both of them are running for sheriff this year.
Dunne: Which is where it gets very interesting, I think, because in the normal course of events, if McLaughlin wasn’t running for office, he might actually be asked to leave the department. But that’s not necessarily going to happen, right? So take us through the twist in all this, because he could win the election. What happens then? If McLaughlin gets enough votes to become sheriff, what happens to this investigation?
Baires: Yeah, I think that’s a great question, and one we would see play out. But it sort of tracks with what happened during our last election cycle. In our last election cycle, we had a candidate who was under an internal investigation for potential dishonesty. That was Sheriff Kent van der Kamp. He did win the election, and the investigation never concluded under the sheriff at that time, because van der Kamp went on medical leave. If you go on medical leave, that is a protected leave, and they cannot ask you to participate further in the investigation. You cannot have any hearings to determine whether you should be terminated. It basically puts everything on hold while you’re on this protected leave. So post-election, that investigation into him didn’t continue, because as elected sheriff, it’s his right to oversee investigations, right? So if we look at that as an example, we can see that, potentially, an elected sheriff can determine whether an investigation into himself continues.
Dunne: Has Rupert said anything about this? Has anybody asked him, “What are your thoughts about your competitor, your opponent, running for sheriff with this hanging over his head?”
Baires: Yeah, and really quickly before I answer that, I want to clarify something. McLaughlin is also on a protected leave at this moment, not paid leave, because of medical issues, his lawyer said. So, similarly, nothing can continue with his investigation or any possible termination while he’s on leave.
Dunne: OK. What I was asking is, the guy running against him is the interim sheriff, and I imagine as he campaigns for office, reporters might ask him, “What do you think about your opponent having these allegations against him?” Has he said anything publicly?
Baires: To my knowledge, he hasn’t, and he has been asked. We asked him as well, and he said that, considering this is an ongoing investigation and an open personnel issue, he wasn’t going to comment on it. So I think it’s a tricky spot to be in, as both a candidate and the head of the office.
Dunne: Yeah. OK. I don’t know if there’s been any polling on the two candidates. Do you have any sense of how this might play out? Is one candidate leading the other, or is that just not information you have right now?
Baires: Yeah, I wish I had that information. To my knowledge, no, I don’t know of any polls. It’s a race that we are all interested in, but I do know that when there is so much tension going into a race, similar to what we experienced in our last election cycle, a lot of people just choose not to vote, or maybe they write in somebody.
Dunne: Interesting. I want to go back to this, because it draws some parallels. I’m not claiming either of these gentlemen subscribes to this, but there’s this idea called the constitutional sheriff, where some sheriffs in the country say, “Mine is an elected position, so nobody except voters can fire me,” in a way. And it feels a little like, and again, I’m not claiming they’re doing anything other than what they say, you go on medical leave so you can’t be fired, and you could win an election and make it all go away. I’m wondering, from folks you’ve talked to in general, is there a sense that the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, looking at some of its past, is kind of out of control?
Baires: You know, both of these candidates, Rupert and McLaughlin, have said in the past that they feel the office has had a lot of issues and that they are the ones to right that ship. So as far as I know, there’s nobody saying, “No, the sheriff’s office is doing great.” I think there’s a lot of awareness that things need to change. The approaches are different. I’ve heard McLaughlin talk about possibly having an ombudsman if he were to win, a third party that would handle anything that could potentially be considered political in terms of investigations. I think Sheriff Rupert has shown that he wants to outsource some of this, by hiring third-party investigators or even having the board of commissioners weigh in on things like the past termination of Capt. Bailey, which was another situation this year. So from each of them, I hear and see actions that seem to indicate they do want the office to change course.
Dunne: Jen, my last question for you: Any indication of what morale is like inside the department?
Baires: That’s a great question. Personally, I can’t speak to that. I know in the past I’ve heard from people who work in the office that elections are the hardest times for them.
Dunne: I can only imagine. She is Jen Baires. She covers Central Oregon for OPB. Jen, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Baires: Same, thank you.
Dunne: Let’s check in now with KLCC reporter Zac Ziegler on an interesting new program from St. Vincent de Paul. Zac, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming in.
Zac Ziegler: Yeah, no problem.
Dunne: You know, we keep hearing that to solve our housing crisis, we need to look at a lot of creative solutions. You have a feature up about something quite creative for low-income housing from St. Vincent de Paul. Talk about it.
Ziegler: Yeah. St. Vincent de Paul has a partner nonprofit that it works with called Hope Homes, and Hope Homes is helping create some really reasonable, affordable housing. In fact, St. Vinny’s just put in 10 of these homes at a mobile home park north of Cottage Grove, and each one went in for about $100,000 total cost.
Dunne: Wow. So I guess the first question I have is, how do they keep them so inexpensive?
Ziegler: There are some advantages. Like I said, they’re manufactured homes. They’re built in a factory, which is much easier than building on site. There’s also the fact that it’s a nonprofit, so you don’t have that motive to make money on top of things. They’re also taking other steps along the way to keep costs down, like not offering a lot of choices, such as five different counters or three different fixtures. Those are some of the main ways they’ve been able to do it. But another big one also solves another problem: They are training a lot of the workers who are building these homes.
Dunne: Oh, fascinating. And for people listening, do they pass code? Are they energy efficient? Explain that they’re not just made of cardboard or something.
Ziegler: No, no. These are homes that meet Oregon’s building codes. They also meet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development standard, which helps with that. And as far as energy goes, they actually have one of the highest certifications out there, the Energy Star NEEM+ certification, so they are quite energy-efficient homes.
Dunne: Yeah, and I understand you went down there. What do they look like?
Ziegler: On the outside, they look pretty much like a more modern manufactured home. You just see them sitting out there. It’s obvious they’re brand new on the lot, and they look like they’re in good shape. I toured two units. One was a 500-square-foot, one-bedroom, ADA-accessible unit. The other was a two-bedroom unit. Hope Homes does have a floor plan for a three-bedroom unit, but they’ve had so much demand for the one- and two-bedroom units that they haven’t even gotten to building the three-bedroom units yet.
Dunne: Talk a little bit more about Hope Homes and their factory and how they operate.
Ziegler: It’s just off Chad Drive, right by Costco and OCCU, at the St. Vinny’s facility there, and they seem to be having some success. It takes them about 17 weeks to churn out one of these houses, and they’ve built a little more than 60 so far. About half of them have gone to St. Vinny’s projects. They do have some in stock and ready to go, and a few have been sold to private owners who have put them on their own properties.
Dunne: I think when a lot of people think of St. Vincent de Paul, they think of the retail stores and thrifting and all those sorts of things, which are very important in this community. But talk about their affordable housing program.
Ziegler: Yeah, when you hand over a few bucks for something someone donated, that money goes into this program St. Vinny’s has, with affordable homes across five Oregon counties. Most of the time, they have a waiting list, and their executive director, when I spoke with her, was very excited about these homes, because getting these 10 homes up means 10 people they get to pull off that list. The more of these homes they get going, the more people can come off that list, and the more these homes can be bought by others.
Dunne: Which leads me to my last question for you: What are their plans for expanding offerings and getting more people into these homes?
Ziegler: From what I was told, there’s still some hope that they’ll be putting these in other spots St. Vinny’s owns around the area. And as I said, these homes are available for just about anyone to buy. So for someone who has a plot of land but can’t afford to get a home built on it, this would be an option. It’s a little less expensive than buying a tiny home, where, yes, you get a lot of optionality and you get to make a lot of choices, but that choice often comes with a cost, and it also helps that most people building those are in the private sector. From what Hope Homes’ website says, and from what I can find, they are the first and quite possibly the only nonprofit manufactured home maker in the U.S.
Dunne: Wow, that is fascinating. Great feature. You’ll hear it on our air as well, on KLCC’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” Zac Ziegler, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming in.
Ziegler: Sure thing.
Dunne: There’s a chill in the air, and the turning leaves in the trees signal that fall must be here. Right now, we’re going to invite our membership director in to get us ready for another sign of fall: the KLCC fall membership drive. KLCC membership director Brooke Bumgardner, it’s always great to see you in studio. How are you?
Brooke Bumgardner: I’m great. How are you?
Dunne: Well, I’m great, and I know I’ll be pitching pretty soon, because we’re heading toward our fall membership drive. Give folks out there a snapshot of what it’s going to be like.
Bumgardner: Sure. For those who aren’t familiar with pledge drives or membership drives, it’s a time when all of us at KLCC invite you to become a new member or remind you to renew. The membership drive itself is a fun time to do it. Sometimes we call it our Fall Member Fest, because it’s really a celebration of the community support that makes programs like “Oregon on the Record,” the newscasts and music programs possible. So we take a few moments in the fall and in the spring to connect people with a chance to give.
Dunne: The membership drive, the pledge drive, has always been important for individual NPR stations such as ours over our 50-plus years of existence, but it’s taken on outsized importance because of what happened to us. Talk about how rescission, removing federal funding, puts an even greater premium on people calling and going to klcc.org.
Bumgardner: That’s correct. KLCC and the entire public media system are now 100% community supported. Previously, stations received funds every year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Those are public funds, and they have been the foundation, really, of public media. It’s this idea that a more informed public is a stronger citizenry. Those funds were removed in 2025, and we had amazing support from Oregonians to make sure KLCC was able to stay strong during that time and moving forward. But of course, those funds used to come every single year, and there’s no indication that they will be returning anytime soon. So every single year, we are really trying to make up for not having those funds, but also to continue being a really strong, thriving station. We have a newsroom that’s growing. We’ve got programs like “Oregon on the Record,” music programs and stories like “Oregon Ready.” There’s so much. It’s not just about making up that difference. It’s about investing in what’s important to our community.
Dunne: Yeah. Brooke, maybe this is an unfair question, but I’m going to put it to you anyway. Describe our membership. Who are they? Talk about how integrated our community is with our station.
Bumgardner: Oh, I love this question, because I really love membership drive time. It’s a chance to talk to lots of our members all at once. We have amazing members who support KLCC. They’re problem solvers. That’s what KLCC members are. One problem they’re solving is the loss of public media funding. They’re supporting KLCC so that we can help connect them, and others in the whole community, with good information. It’s kind of an active altruism to donate to KLCC. A lot of people say, “Oh, I don’t know what I would do without KLCC.”
Dunne: And the membership drive starts when?
Bumgardner: It starts tomorrow, bright and early. The phones will be open at 7 a.m., and I would love to hear from people.
Dunne: She is our membership director, Brooke Bumgardner. Thank you so much, Brooke.
Bumgardner: Thank you.
Dunne: That’s the show for today. All episodes of “Oregon on the Record” are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we talk with a Willamette University law professor about a disturbing trend of convenience stores intentionally overcharging customers in Oregon and nationwide. I’m Michael Dunne, host of “Oregon on the Record.” Thanks for listening.
