Deschutes County Sheriff Kent van der Kamp, left, takes an oath during the swearing in ceremony, held in the packed courtroom of Judge Ashby, right, at the Deschutes County Courthouse in downtown Bend Monday morning. 1-6-25

In recent months, Deschutes County Sheriff Kent van der Kamp has faced widespread calls for his resignation following a string of dishonesty allegations. Now he says he will retire, despite giving the public little indication on when he might follow through with that plan.

Can the public act to remove him from office in the meantime? 

It’s possible.

It’s likely that the state Board of Public Safety Standards and Training will decide whether or not to permanently revoke van der Kamp’s law enforcement credentials — which are necessary to hold office as an Oregon sheriff — at its next meeting on July 27, but before that even happens the public has the chance to submit a petition to recall the embattled sheriff from office.

Petitions to recall an elected official in Oregon can be submitted six months after an elected official takes office. For the last election cycle, that date falls on July 7. 

“Even though he was appointed to fill the last sheriff’s term on January 1… van der Kamp was sworn into his current term on January 6, so that’s when the clock starts ticking. Six months will be a Sunday — and I don’t anticipate being here at work that Sunday — so the first day somebody could submit a recall would be that Monday, July 7,” said Deschutes County Clerk Steve Dennison.

The Deschutes County Clerk is the elected head of the county clerk’s office, which is the keeper of all public records for the county. The office manages property transactions, marriage licenses, county archives and everything election-related, including conducting all elections in the county. 

Once a recall petition is submitted and approved by Dennison, the petitioner has three months to obtain as many signatures as 15% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. In Deschutes County, that number comes out to 16,452. 

Although the signature verification process for recall petitions doesn’t face the same scrutiny as ballots, it still requires those who sign the petition to be a registered voter and for their signature to match the county clerk’s records.

“The recommendation is typically to exceed that minimum requirement by 20%,” Dennison said. “Once I approve it, they only have 90 days. That’s a lot of signatures in a short amount of time, so they need to hit it out of the park as far as the numbers go just to make sure that they have enough … Then they come in here with their signatures and we have 30 days to verify.”

Dennison said it probably wouldn’t take the county clerk’s office that long to verify the signatures, and with that timeline in mind, voters could estimate a recall ballot in their inbox sometime in the winter of 2025 if the petition is successful. Recall elections are not tied to any pre-determined election timeline, and that ballot would be sent out to voters if and when signatures are verified.

The last recall petition that made it to a vote in Deschutes County was in 2014, Dennison said, when Kay Walters and Sharon Struck were removed from their positions with the Terrebonne Domestic Water District. It was the first successful recall in Deschutes County for 12 years and there hasn’t been one since.

“As an elected official myself, if I know that if there was a recall effort going forward and there was reason for that with a very large public appetite for my seat to be recalled, I would take notice,” Dennison said.

Van der Kamp did not respond to The Bulletin’s request for comment, but if he retires, resigns or is recalled, it will fall on the Deschutes County Commission to appoint an interim sheriff until the next election in 2026.

“People are talking but there’s no action right now, not until we have an open position to respond to,” said Commissioner Tony DeBone

When the seat does open up, Commissioner Phil Chang said he would like the public to be intimately involved in a “competitive process” between qualified candidates. Chang also wanted to clarify that the County Commission does not have the ability to remove van der Kamp from office until after his law enforcement credentials have officially been revoked by the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training.

“A number of people – both internal and external – have expressed interest in serving as interim Sheriff between the time van der Kamp resigns/retires and the May 2026 elections,” Chang said. “Many people are calling on the Board of Commissioners to fire him. People need to understand that we do not have the authority to do that.”