Disagreements over comments from county’s attorney leads to woman’s exclusion from commission meetings

By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle

An Otter Rock woman is barred from attending Lincoln County commission meetings for 180 days after attempting to relay disparaging comments the county’s top attorney shared about staff and elected officials to her and another woman in a private meeting.

In an exclusion notice this week, commission chair Claire Hall said Christine Hutchins’ comments at the end of a June 18 commission meeting violated its rules against slander. Without first warning her as required under county rules, Hall sent a letter to Hutchins on Monday notifying her of the six-month ban. Hutchins promptly replied that she planned to appeal the order.

The exclusion order follows a series of county meetings in the past year that have seen more critical comments and grievances from the public, county employees and other county elected officials. That, in turn, led Hall to propose in May to limit public comments to only agenda topics.

The commenting issue came to a head again last week when county staff removed a recording of the June 18 meeting from its website and this week returned an edited video in its place. On Wednesday, the commission’s meetings typical livestream was limited to Zoom.

After making comments during the public portion of the commission’s June 4 meeting, Hutchins, a retired nurse and realtor and Barbara Davis, a retired nurse from Waldport, were pulled aside by Yuille for a meeting in her private office. Before that, the three women had never met each other.

Davis had come before commissioners to ask if there was a legal reason Commissioner Casey Miller was not allowed to return to his courthouse office after his ban for nine months and asked if mediation had been tried to resolve any issues.

Davis told the Lincoln Chronicle that she didn’t feel like Yuille answered her questions but once inside the attorney’s office instead heard a litany of disparaging comments about county employees and elected officials. Davis took notes directly after the meeting and shared them with the Chronicle.

“It was the first time I had an interaction with her and I was surprised at how candidly she was speaking; the comments felt inappropriate,” Davis told the Chronicle this week.

Hutchins said she was surprised too.

The June 4 meeting was the first meeting Hutchins had ever attended and she was there because she was critical of the use of taxpayer dollars to keep Miller in a separate, rented office. At the next meeting, she wanted to inform the public of her interaction with Yuille. So she read aloud a letter she wrote, recounting Yuille’s comments during the commission’s June 18 meeting.

“All I was getting at was that county counsel was talking about people in a disparaging way,” Hutchins told the Chronicle. “It felt like the exact thing Casey Miller is being punished for – for violating personnel rules.”

But, Hall and Yuille apparently viewed Hutchins’s remarks as a direct violation of public comment rules against slander or defamation.

Exclusion notice

A few days after the video recording of the commission’s June 18 meeting was uploaded to the county’s website, it was taken down, edited to redact some of Hutchins’ comments and returned this week. The county did not respond to the Chronicle’s questions about who made the decision to take down the video and what guidelines were used to do so. Miller also sent emails inquiring about the meeting’s recording.

On Monday, Hutchins received a letter in the mail notifying her she was not allowed to attend commission meetings for 180 days.

Hall’s letter to Hutchins repeated the potentially slanderous statement, confirming that a county employee did share disparaging comments, but disputed the exact phrasing that was used.

The exclusion did not bar Hutchins from viewing meetings online or sending in written comments but restricted her from attending meetings in person. She also has 10 days from when the letter was written to appeal the Hall’s decision.

Hutchins was not first warned that she may have violated the commission’s public commenting rules, which seems to go against the commission’s own rules.

“If the Board determines that these rules are not being followed one warning will be given,” the rule states. “If the rules continue to be violated after a warning, the Board may revoke the individual’s speaking privileges or have them removed from the meeting.”

Wednesday’s commission meeting was not live streamed on the county website, limiting video viewing to Zoom, which requires downloading the application and registering with a name and email address. During the meeting, Hall gave an overview of the public comment rules, including rules around slander.

At the meeting, Davis hoped to share the experience she had speaking with Yuille, but after finding out Hutchins had been given an exclusion letter, she shortened the statement she was going to make, not wanting to face the same outcome, she later told the Chronicle.

The Chronicle sought comment from Yuille about who made the decision to take down the June 18 meeting video and what the standards are for speaking to members of the public regarding critical comments about employees. Instead, Hall issued a response for the county.

“Since September, our business meetings have been used as a platform for grandstanding and personal attacks, all under the guise of transparency,” Hall said in her statement. “Public comment has been weaponized and used as a press conference for elected officials to make false accusations, for disgruntled employees to raise matters in violation of the collective bargaining agreements, as attention seeking behavior to harm others. At a recent business meeting, public comment was used as a way to defame and slander another person and such egregious behavior will not be tolerated.”

Hall said county staff gave records to Hutchins, most that are available on the county’s website and encouraged her to do research.

“As indicated in the exclusion order, Ms. Hutchins’ statements are false, inaccurate, taken out of context, or are her own representations of what she believes,” Hall’s statement said.

Hutchins has appealed the exclusion decision, the first step in a process that requires a hearing and usually involves both the county and the excluded person to make a case before an outside attorney.

“Instead of listening to a resident of Lincoln County attempting to speak to you about these issues you strip away my First Amendment rights and ban me from BOC meetings to protect Counsel Yuille,” Hutchins wrote in her appeal.

• Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org