By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Lincoln County district attorney Lanee Danforth has gone to court seeking to prohibit county commissioners from preventing her from creating a second chief deputy’s position and promoting someone to fill it.
It’s the second public, personnel fight involving Danforth, who took office in 2021, and county commissioners in the past 18 months.
Danforth filed suit May 12 in Lincoln County circuit court, asking for a temporary restraining order to allow her to create another chief deputy’s position and fill it with Jenna Wallace, who is currently a deputy district attorney.
The district attorney’s office has traditionally had one chief deputy who typically helps with administration and high-profile cases. That position is currently held by Lynn Howard.
The lawsuit came the same day that county human relations director David Collier sent Wallace an email saying that Danforth could not unilaterally create a second chief deputy’s position and promote her to it.
“DA Danforth is a manager, but she is not your employer,” Collier said in a morning email. “Lincoln County, as your employer, has not created any additional positions in the district attorney’s office.”
Collier went on to warn Wallace about performing chief deputy duties and that doing so could “lead to potential county rule violations and ethical obligations.” He also wrote that “any conduct involving misrepresentation” could “reflect adversely on a lawyers’ fitness to practice law” and suggested she contact the Oregon State Bar.
In her lawsuit, Danforth said she created the new position May 1 to have Wallace help with the office’s managerial functions and carries what she called “a slight pay increase.” But the reclassification to chief deputy also removes Wallace from the county employee union.
In the lawsuit, Danforth argued that her office is “a state entity, conducting state business” and that the county only has jurisdiction over the district attorney’s budget.
The district attorney’s office has a paid staff of 29 and is budgeted for 10 attorney positions. But Danforth said there are three unfilled attorney positions, resulting in a personnel services surplus of $472,455 in a yearly budget of $2.54 million.
She said the difference in Wallace’s salary for the final two months of the fiscal year is $1,950.
Danforth argued that while county commissioners provide her a budget, they “do not have the authority to control the way that budget is spent.”
“If boards of county commissioners were permitted to control the staffing, structure and functions of the district attorney’s office, and have the authority to interfere with the discretionary decisions made by elected executive state officers, there would be no functional purpose in having elected district attorneys,” Danforth wrote in the 8-page argument.
Three days later Danforth asked the court for a temporary restraining order and a show cause hearing on it. As of Friday, no hearing had been scheduled – and it’s possible a judge from outside the county would come in to hear the case.
Danforth, commissioners and Collier were also involved in a three-month personnel fight in early 2022 when she sought to hire sheriff’s detective Abby Dorsey to a vacant detective position in the district attorney’s office.
Danforth got approval from the human resources department to hire Dorsey in January 2022. But a month later commissioners put the change on hold after noticing the job description gave the position wide latitude to initiate investigations of county and other local or state government employees. That provision had been there for years but was widely disregarded until Danforth took office.
Commissioners, the personnel and sheriff’s offices and Danforth finally worked out a revised job description in April 2022 that resolved the issue.
Seems to me that the commissioners are running scared. They protest mightily. Maybe they don’t want to have someone look too closely into their workings, or their ability to overstep their job.
Seems logical that the district attorney should have the ability to investigate legitimate concerns within her jurisdiction, even the commissioners, should there be reason to question their activities. Without the ability to look into activities things could become questionable without oversight.
Seems to me that Lanee Danforth is very spoiled and thinks she’s in charge of the county, which in fact by law is ruled by the county commissioners. I’m looking forward to seeing her getting kicked by the courts when this case finally is resolved. And I hope the residents of Lincoln County will think hard about find a better district attorney in the next election.
The county is not ruled by the commissioners, or anyone else for that matter. It’s a multilayered system of various offices and “officials” with numerous checks and balances in place to keep said “officials” honest and lawful. They freaked out because they learned about a well established rule that they never needed to know about, because this county and many like it across the country have been run by the “Good Ol’ Boys” forever. A woman with the power and jurisdiction to investigate them or anyone else in the county or at a state level that works within the county scares them to death.
I second this.
Lincoln County Commissioners over the years have enjoyed the physical/political barrier afforded by the coastal range to follow their whims with impunity; all one has to do is look back on the fiasco created when 911 services were moved out of county [why I left]. Hats off to Danforth and good luck.
Well I hope something good happens here. It seems to me like commissioners have an issue with women in control of their surroundings.
Hmmm, that makes it a personal problem. And, I agree state business and county business are two separate entities.
The district attorney’s office thinks they can bend the rules and make up their own. They have been doing it for years and recently have gotten even moreso. If she can’t handle her position (that she gets paid very well to do) then she should resign.