This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
Opponents of six-term Lincoln County Commissioner Claire Hall who object to the way she runs meetings and believe she is creating turmoil among employees have been given the go-ahead to begin collecting signatures to force a recall election.
The petition to recall Hall passed preliminary requirements Tuesday and will now need 3,940 signatures to advance to a special election.
The petition is the second recent recall effort in Lincoln County – last month the county clerk’s office received and approved petitions seeking to remove all six Waldport city councilors.
Petitioners seeking to recall Hall will have 90 days – until Nov. 2 – to collect signatures from 40,455 active, registered county voters. The number of required signatures is set by the Oregon Secretary of State based on a calculation of 15 percent of the 26,270 Lincoln County voters in the 2022 gubernatorial election.
If petitioners collect the 3,950 verified signatures, Hall will have five days to resign or submit a statement of justification of why she should stay in her position, County Clerk Amy Southwell said. If Hall does not resign, there would be a special election where voters would decide if she stays in office.
Since the ballots would have to go out in a separate election countywide, it would cost the county between $40,000 to $50,000, Southwell told the Lincoln Chronicle on Tuesday.
Hall has served as a commissioner since 2004 and is in her sixth term in office. When she ran for re-election in 2024 she faced four challengers in the May primary and defeated Rick Beasley of Depoe Bay in a November runoff by just 115 votes, the closest commissioner race in decades.
But little has gone smoothly in commission offices since that re-election.
Commissioner Casey Miller has been banned from commission offices since last September, the county’s first administrator resigned in February after 2½ years on the job and Commissioner Kaety Jacobson quit in frustration that same month with two years left in her term.
Hall and county counsel Kristin Yuille have since divvied up administrator duties and have been in a constant battle with district attorney Jenna Wallace over a host of personnel issues.
All that had led to commission meetings experiencing more critical comments and grievances from the public, county employees and other county elected officials, which led Hall to propose in May to limit public comments to only agenda topics.
In June, Christine Hutchins of Seal Rock used the public comment period to attempt to relay disparaging comments that she said Yuille shared privately with her. As chair, Hall cut her off and later issued an exclusion notice that barred Hutchins from attending meetings for 180 days for breaking the commission’s rules against slander.
Hutchins has appealed the exclusion decision that assigned assistant county counsel Brian Gardner to hear the appeal. She has asked to have an outside attorney and not someone who reports to Yuille conduct the hearing, but hasn’t heard back, she told the Chronicle.
Now, Hutchins, who initiated the recall petition under her married name of Jamison, seeks to recall Hall from office.
According to Hutchins’ petition, much of the reasoning behind the recall has to do with how Hall has handled comments at commission meetings, including abruptly adjourning meetings to prevent Wallace and others from speaking. Hutchins’ petition also said Hall uses social media to criticize members of the public who disagreed with her, “and oversaw a drastic shift in the county’s finances from a multimillion dollar surplus mid-year to a budget shortfall with minimal transparency and communication.”
In a written statement Tuesday, Hall said the petition targets her attempts to “maintain order” in public meetings. Hall said she feels that the public comment period at the end of commission meetings has been “weaponized” to level accusations against other county staff and officials, and also blamed Miller for encouraging it.
“Commissioner (Casey) Miller has done his best to enable and encourage these behaviors, as well as engaging in them himself,” Hall said in her statement.
Hall said there are many other issues that county officials and residents should be focusing on such as trying to understand how changes at the federal and state levels will impact the county’s ability to provide services.
“We have serious challenges in Lincoln County right now, and your county government should be focused exclusively on meeting those challenges,” Hall said. “Instead, a small group has created chaos and confusion in an effort to push narrow personal agendas at the expense of the greater good.”
Hall said that if the petition generated enough valid signatures, she would not resign.
