Lincoln County Commissioner Casey Miller stood for this photo in January 2025 to illustrate his prohibition since September 2024 from using his office in the Newport courthouse. A federal judge ordered the county in June to allow him back to work. (Lincoln Chronicle file photo)By QUINTON SMITH/Lincoln Chronicle
Lincoln County and Commissioner Casey Miller have settled his federal whistleblower lawsuit with Miller agreeing to drop claims against two top county employees and a fellow commissioner.
In return for dropping any current or future claims against the county, its insurance provider will pay Miller’s attorney fees of $64,000.
The settlement ends a contentious federal lawsuit filed in March when Miller accused top county officials of violating his civil rights. The county’s legal counsel and human resources director responded a month later saying the lawsuit was a political stunt.
But U.S. District Judge Anne Aiken issued a temporary restraining order against county officials in June saying they could not bar Miller from courthouses offices as it had done since October 2024 after accusing him of bullying staff and releasing confidential personnel information.
Aiken’s decision set off a series of settlement meetings in Eugene overseen by a federal magistrate culminating in this week’s agreement.
Miller and his attorney, Beth Creighton of Portland, announced the settlement Thursday after three county officials – counsel Kristin Yuille, human resources director David Collier and Commissioner Walter Chuck — signed the agreement. Also signing was the niece of former commissioner Claire Hall, who died in January, and who is the representative of Hall’s estate.
“The defendant and plaintiff now wish to settle all claims and issues between them to get back to the important business of county governance, believing such settlement to be in their respective best interests,” the agreement said.
The agreement said that Miller acknowledges the settlement is a compromise “of a disputed claim” and that the four defendants “deny any wrongdoing and any liability associated with the claims …” .
Thursday’s agreement dropped Miller’s other request that the judge order Yuille, Collier and Chuck to stop obstructing him from putting items on the commission’s meeting agendas.
County officials including Chuck, Yuille and Collier did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.
In a media release late Thursday, Miller said his focus now is to help strengthen the systems that govern how commissioners make decisions.
“I pursued this case so I could do the job I was elected to do,” his statement said. “The most important question now is what we learn from it.
“Good government requires clear authority, transparent procedures, equal access to the tools of public office, and dependable ways to resolve disagreements without turning them into personal conflicts,” Miller said in the statement.
Miller said he believes the experience has highlighted the need to examine whether county policies clearly identify who has authority, how elected officials obtain information and administrative support, how agenda and operational disputes are resolved, and “how future disagreements can be addressed before they become institutional crises.”
Miller was elected to Position 1 on the three-member board of commissioners in 2022 after working 14 years as the county’s public information officer. He is seeking re-election in the Nov. 3 general election, but is in a runoff with Cathie Rigby of Newport after finishing second to her in a five-way contest in the May primary.
Lincoln County commissioners Walter Chuck and Casey Miller have spent months unable to agree on how and who to appoint to fill the vacant position left by the death of Claire Hall. (Shayla Escudero/Lincoln Chronicle)Two years turmoil
Miller filed his federal lawsuit in early March seeking unspecified damages over his ban from commission offices and retaliation for his complaint to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission about potentially illegal public meetings to vote on employee hirings.
Outside attorneys for the county said in April court filings and motions to dismiss the lawsuit that Miller’s injunction was a “political stunt completely devoid of merit.”
The board of commissioners has been in turmoil since September 2024 starting when Miller spent more than 30 minutes criticizing commission work, stopped Yuille from cutting off his comments, alleged meeting law violations and wondered aloud about the imminent departure of their first administrator who had worked for 2½ years without an evaluation.
What followed was a months-long investigation that found Miller did not engage in disrespectful conduct or bully staff but that he did release confidential information about Johnson.
Commissioner Kaety Jacobson quit in frustration and the county’s first full-time administrator Tim Johnson resigned in February 2025. Miller and Hall appointed Chuck, then a Port of Newport commissioner, to replace Jacobson and who mostly sided with the late Commissioner Claire Hall on issues and later with Yuille to thwart Miller’s many attempts to place items he’d like to discuss on the commission’s agenda.
A successful petition to hold a recall election of Hall in January only inflamed tensions, but the election was voided after Hall died unexpectedly Jan. 4 after complications of months-long illnesses.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]
I appreciate your reporting on the problems the Lincoln County commission has had over the past couple of years. What are the items Casey Miller wants on the agenda but aren’t allowed? What is the process for setting the agenda and who decides what is included? Thank you.
From attending BOC meetings and speaking with present and former employees, I have learned that problems in the county predate Commissioner Miller’s election.
Calling Miller’s injunction request a “political stunt” doesn’t change the court’s findings. Judge Ann Aiken found he had a valid complaint for violation of his First Amendment rights and ordered his customary office and meeting access restored. The settlement provides for permanent protections of Commissioner Miller’s rights and privileges that are afforded an elected official to the county commission.
Miller, prior to 9/18/2024, was able to place items on the meeting agenda. Since that date Miller has submitted over 40 agenda requests, based on citizens’ expressed concerns, none of which made it into the BOC meeting agendas. Agenda-setting remains unresolved. Citizens deserve clear explanations for excluded requests for agenda items and consistently applied rules giving every commissioner a fair opportunity to bring their concerns before the Board.
Per Judge Aiken “. . . these are elected positions, and when people are not able to serve in those positions, individuals go unrepresented.” Thank you Commissioner Casey Miller for courageously standing up, for speaking out, restoring our/your rights. Now the County needs transparent procedures that protect representation for everyone.
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Your view is highly distorted. Casey Miller has single-handedly brought county government to a near standstill since his public temper tantrum of September 2024.
I believe his intentions were good, and he has been correct on a few issues. But overall his obsession with process has paralyzed the county when he should be paying attention to getting things done. Most of Casey’s agenda items are procedural nitpicks and process oriented instead of focusing on the county’s actual business, which is why he has been prevented from wasting even more time. Walter Chuck has bravely held his finger in the dike and kept Casey’s flood of nonsense at bay for months even though he lost his election. Casey has become a tool, witting or unwitting, for the county’s right-wing contingent. Vote him out in November and replace him with the highly competent Cathie Rigby.
I read Judge Aiken’s preliminary injunction order and the hearing transcript. I’m ready for less courthouse drama too. But I don’t see how Casey gets the blame for this.
Her order listed Casey’s efforts to get back to work. He’d worked with the Association of Counties, taken numerous training sessions and made public apologies. But HR insisted on yet another apology one the HR director would have to approve.
At the hearing, Aiken said he did “bend over backwards to do what was required,” and still nothing changed.
The judge also wrote that the defendants had “no intention” of restoring his office access. No wonder Casey concluded he’d have to go to court to get back into his office.
As for the agenda, bring back the preparatory meetings that staff canceled after his September 18, 2024 speech. Commissioners used to bring our concerns to the board that way. Seems pretty reasonable to me. That’s hardly nitpicking.
The election is in less than a month. What kind of elected official sues his own government, costing us, the taxpayers, thousands of dollars? We desperately need all new commissioners, to start over and get things back in order at the Board of Commissioners. We have great new candidates on the ballot. Vote for new commissioners.