Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson

Since 2016, when Sheriff Shane Nelson took office, Deschutes County has spent a total of $3.3 million in payouts and legal fees fighting 10 lawsuits from Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office employees who have sued the agency for violating their rights.

The majority of that sum is from Eric Kozowski’s 2016 wrongful termination suit, in which Kozowski successfully argued that Nelson fired Kozowski in retribution for running against him in the 2016 Deschutes County Sheriff’s election. Kozowski was ultimately awarded $1 million in damages and the county incurred an additional $1.2 million fighting the lawsuit for a total loss of $2,250,796.

However, even if Kozowski’s lawsuit is considered an outlier. The remaining $1.04 million the county has paid out from its risk management fund still stands in stark contrast to numbers dating back to 2009, the most recent year for which the county has records of this nature.

Between 2009 and when Nelson took office in 2016, the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office paid $42,065 as a result of disputes with current and former employees. In 2009, while Sheriff Larry Blanton was in office, the county spent $17,000 on one sheriff’s office discrimination claim and in 2016, before Nelson took office, the county paid another $65 to settle an unemployment dispute.

While not related to a complaint made by a former employee, in 2016 the county also paid out $25,000 to its insurance carrier as a deductible to cover the theft of $205,000 in county funds stolen by former Deschutes County Sheriff’s Captain Scott Beard.

Other costly employee lawsuits

After Kozowski’s, the next largest payout to a former employee was $527,000 awarded to Crystal Jansen after she sued for gender discrimination. While many of Jansen’s experiences happened between 2014-16, Nelson was singled out in the lawsuit because he was Jansen’s supervisor at the time. The county lists the total loss for this case as $536,641.

Most recently, the county settled a lawsuit by Deron McMaster against the sheriff’s office for $265,000, with a total loss of $335,075 including legal fees. McMaster resigned from the sheriff’s office in 2021 after his 28-year career with the agency collapsed due to allegations he failed to report another officer’s misconduct. In his lawsuit, McMaster contradicted the allegations, saying Nelson retaliated against him to cover up for his own misconduct in the case.

The remainder of the 10 lawsuits’ costs each total less than $100,000. Pauline Word, paralegal with Deschutes County Legal Department, said that the costs of these payouts and legal fees are all taken out of Deschutes County’s risk management fund, and “would not reflect any expenses the department may have paid on its own, if any.”

The sheriff’s office is working to determine if any expenses were incurred independently of the county’s risk management fund, but the agency has a history of not fulfilling such requests. The Bulletin originally reached out directly to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office to determine the total loss connected to employee disputes on Oct. 3, but after five of The Bulletin’s other records requests also went unfulfilled, it obtained the information from the Deschutes County Legal Department instead.

After The Bulletin informed Nelson it had obtained that data, he supplied the following statement over email:

“I strive to do the right thing and that includes holding people accountable for their actions,” Nelson said. Prior to making decisions, we confer with the county legal department and I confer with our administration who also confers with their county partners. In today’s litigious society, holding people accountable can often end up with those employees filing lawsuits.”

Broader financial and legal scrutiny

Lawsuits filed by employees aren’t the only source of legal costs incurred by the sheriff’s office under Nelson. Earlier this year, the sheriff’s office sued the City of La Mesa, California to obtain then-sheriff candidate Kent Vander Kamp’s decades-old employment records. Vander Kamp, now sheriff-elect, has criticized Nelson for using tax payer money to fund what he alleges was a politically motivated effort to bolster Nelson’s endorsed candidate, Capt. William Bailey.

This lawsuit cost the county $16,000 in legal fees. The Bulletin reached out on Oct. 3 with a public records request to determine if any additional costs had been incurred by the sheriff’s office, such as travel reimbursements for court testimony given in city of La Mesa, but that request has remained unfulfilled.

Leading up to the election, four tort claim notices — the official notification to a public agency of a potential lawsuit — were filed by sheriff’s office employees alleging political discrimination and retaliation. One of those employees was Vander Kamp himself, who has since told The Bulletin he does not intend to file that lawsuit now that he has been elected Deschutes County sheriff. It is unclear if the three other tort claims will proceed.

Nelson has also faced scrutiny for overspending in other areas. Last year, The Bulletin reported that the sheriff’s office overestimated the amount of money it would start the year with by more than $2 million. At the same tie, The Bulletin reported, the office had spent $3,115 on a slushy machine, $5,100 on fitness trackers and $60,000 giving employees at the jail free meals, among other purchases.

This budget shortfall was made up when the county agreed to raise tax rates, allowing the agency to end the year with a $4.4 million surplus instead of a shortfall.