LINCOLN CITY — District Attorney Jenna Wallace, frustrated by estranged county commissioners who hold the purse strings over her shrinking department, warned citizens at a pair of open houses that justice is failing in Lincoln County.

With her budget suspended amid a purported financial crisis, wrongdoers get wrist-slapping plea deals or have their charges dropped altogether because there aren’t enough prosecutors to try cases brought by police departments in Lincoln County.

“We’re seeing more crime, but when someone gets logged into jail and there’s no staff to prosecute that person, they come back time and again with no consequences,” Wallace told an in-person and online crowd of about 100 people at a Dec. 20 town hall event in Lincoln City. The event followed an earlier one in Newport.

Wallace claimed vacant positions have been frozen by commission edict while some staff were fired without her knowledge by the HR office. Budgeted for 32 employees, 11 positions are unfilled including three deputy D.A.s, a Digital Forensic Analyst (important to collecting digital audio and video evidence), a detective, key administrators, victim advocates and support staff.

With 390 active cases on the court docket including six pending murder trials and a jail full of violent offenders, morale in her office is stretched tight as an E string.

“There’s only so much we can ask our remaining D.A.s to do,” she stated. “They’re getting burned out. Until we get more people in the door to cover the burden of this increasing case load it means we won’t be able to file.”

The beleaguered D.A., elected in 2024 amid a meltdown in relations between the previous district attorney and the three-member commission, brought statistics to back up her alarm. For example, year-to-date (2025) figures from the Oregon Judicial Dept. show Lincoln Co. criminal filings running neck-and-neck with Benton County, which has twice the population and double the number of D.A.s., plus municipal courts that share the load.

The bottleneck of prosecutions will be felt by 90 hardworking sworn officers in five jurisdictions including state, city and county.

“You can have every officer on the street but if you don’t have a deputy D.A. you can’t take cases to trial,” she said. “You won’t need probation, you won’t need prison. You won’t get accountability and justice for the victims.”

Wallace told listeners she took office offering an olive branch but was rebuffed from the outset by the apparently embittered head of the commission, six-term incumbent Claire Hall. “I’ve tried desperately to get answers behind the scenes and at their public meetings, but there’s no rhyme or reason, no criteria the board uses so I can understand why my positions are being frozen. I never hear back from commissioners Hall or Chuck.”

Casey Miller was the only commissioner to accept Wallace’s invitation to attend, taking the microphone to report he’d been cut out of vital decisions about the D.A.’s office and finally got so fed up he complained to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, which has opened a full investigation into a series of dubious closed-door meetings.

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“This isn’t right,” Miller said, asserting the decision to gut the D.A.’s office was made out of public earshot or debate. “There’s no transparency or collaboration.”

For her part, Commission Chair Claire Hall seems surprised at the fuss. In a recent video interview with journalist Keira Morgan of Oregon Coast Breaking News on YouTube, Hall was composed but oblique, saying things were fine and she didn’t know what Wallace was talking about. Hall said all departments had to take cuts because of a $4 million shortfall of tourist and property tax revenues in the $208-million county budget.

If she beats a Jan. 9 recall effort, Hall declared nothing will change. “It will be the status quo,” she said.

The Newport meeting was politely reserved compared to the Lincoln City meeting, which heard nothing from two mayors and a state representative in the audience but got infuriated feedback from some people. “Wallace is what this county needs,” declared citizen Mike Patterson after the presentation. Another attendee, Jake Villsaescusa, thanked Wallace for “putting up with such chaos in Lincoln County.” Kelly Beck was grateful for Wallace’s “clarity.”

Jerome Grant, a businessman who once ran for county commission, shook his head as he watched the flow charts of crimes and prosecutions.

“I can only imagine the frustration these people feel to call this kind of meeting,” he said. “These are positions we need, positions that were approved by the budget committee and adopted by the commission. What’s happened is unethical, if not illegal.”

When someone asked Wallace what could be done, she said voters must answer that question. A recall of Hall will be decided in a Jan. 9 special election, while two of the three seats, Positions 1 and 3, will be subject to a May 19, 2026 primary.

“I don’t have the power to change the current predicament,” she concluded. “You have the right to say how the board of commissioners is run and how tax money is spent. The only thing that will change the state of the county is a different majority on the board.”