NEWPORT — With meetings declared unsafe at the courthouse, the Lincoln Co. board of commissioners barred citizens, prohibited remarks and met behind closed doors in front of video cameras at their latest session.

Public comments were disallowed for the first time in memory as two rival commissioners and a county lawyer debated the new closed-door policy, which is set to continue indefinitely. A half-dozen members of the public watched the meeting from a community college classroom that had been set up with a monitor three miles from the courthouse using “COVID protocols.”

“Employees who are required to be at business meetings are no longer willing to come because they don’t feel safe,” asserted chief counsel Kristen Yullie, citing “anecdotal” threats and a brief scuffle between two citizens at a meeting last fall in which no charges resulted. “You can have all the rules you want but if they’re not being enforced what good are they?”

Yullie claimed the decision to change meetings policy was made by the county’s HR director, David Collier, to whom authority was ceded by board members Walter Chuck and Casey Miller following the death of commission chair Clair Hall in January.

Chuck, an appointee seeking election in the May 19 primary, appeared to welcome the finding. Mentioning supporters of Miller, he claimed some attendees are unwilling to abide by public meetings rules.

“If they want to break them they will,” said Chuck. “If staff are unable to come to meetings, that’s on us. Some of the comments, the manner and tone of the people and the way they approach make them uncomfortable.”

Casey Miller, facing five challengers in his own bid for reelection, acknowledged the “tense” political environment but argued against harsh measures, calling instead for new “buffers” to current meetings rules and a deputy to keep things calm.

“People are heavily invested in wanting to be able to have a voice and they don’t want to lose the opportunity to engage with us,” he said. “We need to create an environment that lets them engage with their government.”

His appeal to keep citizen input on the agenda was spurned by his own lawyer, however.

“Public comment is one-sided comment,” responded, Yullie. “There’s no engagement, no back and forth. There are other ways of public engagement available 365 days a year: meeting individually, listening sessions, coffee with commissioners.”

The decree coincided with a letter from prominent Democrat activist Monica Kirk of the Lincoln Co. League of Women Voters, saying the group had observed “an escalating level of uncivil conduct” and urging the county to go to Zoom-style meetings.

“There are people in Lincoln County who want to be involved in local government in constructive ways,” opined Kirk. “The disrespect and confrontation on public display at the BOC meetings make this impossible.”

But such “pearl-clutching” claims of unruly behavior are inflated as a pretext to stifle criticism of county policies, according to frequent boardroom attendee Christine Hutchins of Otter Rock.

“When someone said something Yuille and Chuck did not want to hear, you were interrupted and silenced, and so now the public is banned from the BOC chamber and we have to watch via Zoom — but no public comments are allowed,” she remarked, disputing that Miller’s backers are at fault. “These people believe they are untouchable. They do not work for the people.”

The decision to block the public from attending business meetings of an elected body marked a shocking departure from open government, valued and enshrined in Oregon law but not entirely immune to loopholes.

“The Public Meetings Law guarantees the public the right to view government meetings, but not necessarily to speak at them,” states an Oregon Dept. of Justice guide to the state’s public meetings law.

Oregon’s Public Meetings Law (ORS 192.610 to 192.690) requires that all meetings of a “governing body” of a “public body” be open to the public. Yuille stated that public testimony would be allowed when required, such as land-use matters or ordinance adoptions.