Sheriff-elect Kent Vander Kamp Loses Lawsuit Against County for Attorney Fees

Friday brought a close to a drawn-out legal challenge sheriff-elect Kent Vander Kamp initiated against Deschutes County, the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon Public Broadcasting, as well its local reporter, Emily Cureton Cook, with a judge ruling in the county and OPB’s favor.

The legal battle began on October 9 when Vander Kamp’s lawyer filed a temporary restraining order against the County entities and OPB to stop the release of personnel records from a police department in California where he served. Retiring Sheriff Shane Nelson sought the personnel records in question from the La Mesa Police Department following a DCSO internal investigation into claims against Vander Kamp. The records were from Vander Kamp’s brief tenure at the department during the mid-’90s, an employment history DCSO said he did not previously disclose. Vander Kamp maintains that the investigation and the desire for the records were politically motivated, since Nelson was a vocal supporter of Vander Kamp’s then-opponent, Captain William Bailey.

Sheriff-elect Kent Vander Kamp will take office on Jan. 1, 2025 and his term will officially begin on Jan. 6. He was appointed by the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners to start a week early because retiring Sheriff Shane Nelson’s term ends on Dec. 31. Credit: Deschutes County

However, the TRO Vander Kamp’s legal team sought in early October was soon a moot point, because upon filing for the order, one of his lawyers inadvertently included live links to the entire personnel file, effectively making the documents public.

Vander Kamp’s lawyers argued that DCSO did not have the right to release the records under Oregon’s public records law because the records were provided by La Mesa for DCSO’s internal investigation and not for public release. In Friday’s decision, Deschutes Circuit Court Judge Dan Bunch found that the County was “objectively reasonable in producing the records,” and that once the documents were in the County’s possession, they, too, became subject to the state’s public records law.

In his decision, Bunch noted that the accidental release of the records did not constitute permission from Vander Kamp, but he did take issue with the evidence that OPB and Cook provided, stating that the sheriff-elect had previously said he wanted the records disclosed to the public. It’s sentiment Vander Kamp shared with the Source Weekly during the course of the election when DCSO was in court in California to obtain the records from La Mesa.

“Of great concern to the Court is the uncontested fact that Sheriff Elect Vander Kamp presented to OPB/Cook as being entirely unconcerned with the release of the records at issue,” Bunch wrote.

Vander Kamp did not testify to that issue in the hearing on December 3, and so Bunch wrote, the court accepted the OPB/Cook declaration as accurate and “cannot square the Sherriff Elect’s seeking a TRO with the statement he made to Emily Cook.”

Bunch left open the possibility of OPB/Cook seeking attorney fees from Vander Kamp given his findings. He also found that although Oregon public records law allowed for the disclosure of the records, if Vander Kamp believed there was an issue with the records being released at all, it would be an issue to take up with California.

This article appears in Source Weekly December 19, 2024.