Published 65 Miles Away
Union County Voters Approved Term Limits by 68%. Three Commissioners Quietly Killed Them.
By Levi Bakke | Valor Investigations | April 9, 2026
In May 2016, Union County voters passed Initiative Measure 31-89 with 68% support -- 5,578 votes in favor -- limiting county commissioners to two consecutive terms. By August 2025, the ordinance that implemented those term limits was gone, struck down by a circuit court judge in a proceeding that not a single Union County resident contested.
The reason nobody contested it is straightforward: the legally required public notice was published exclusively in the East Oregonian, a newspaper based in Pendleton, Umatilla County, roughly 65 miles northwest of La Grande.
It was never published in a Union County newspaper.
WHAT THE LAW REQUIRES
Oregon's validation statute, ORS 33.720(2), sets out how a county government can ask a court to rule on the legality of a local ordinance. The statute requires that notice of the proceeding "shall be served on all parties in interest by publication thereof for at least once a week for three successive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation published in the county where the proceeding is pending."
The only exception: if no such newspaper is published in the county, then a paper in a contiguous county may be used.
Union County has the La Grande Observer, which transitioned to digital-only publication on July 1, 2024 but continued publishing local news content throughout 2025. Under HB 3167, a 2023 law that amended ORS 193.010, digital newspapers qualify. The publisher's own Affidavit of Publication lists the Observer among its publications.
The contiguous-county exception did not apply. A Union County newspaper existed and was publishing.
HOW IT HAPPENED
On January 22, 2025, all three sitting Union County commissioners -- Matt Scarfo, Paul Anderes, and Jake Seavert -- voted unanimously to petition the court under ORS 33.710 to examine the constitutionality of the term limits ordinance. County Counsel Wyatt Baum filed the Petition for Validation of Local Government Action on April 4, 2025.
Notice was published in the East Oregonian on April 16, 23, and 30, 2025. In a May 16, 2025 letter to Judge Thomas B. Powers, Baum wrote that notice had been "published once a week for three consecutive weeks in the East Oregonian." He calculated a May 13 contest deadline. No one contested.
On August 25, 2025, Judge Powers entered judgment declaring Ordinance 2017-01 unconstitutional under Article VI, Section 8 of the Oregon Constitution, relying on the Court of Appeals' decision in State ex rel. Smith v. Hitt, 291 Or. App. 750 (2018). The judgment was entered as "uncontested" and noted that nothing had "been filed with the court by any interested person seeking to contest or object the petition."
Zero of the 5,578 voters who approved the measure in 2016 filed an objection.
WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ
Jim Mollerstrom, the chief petitioner who led the original 2016 initiative campaign, did not learn of the court proceeding until September 2025, when an OPB reporter called him for comment -- roughly five months after the notice was published and one month after the judgment was entered.
The East Oregonian primarily serves Umatilla and Morrow counties. It is not a Union County paper. Union County residents who rely on the La Grande Observer -- the local newspaper -- had no way to learn about the proceeding through the publication the law required.
THE MOTION
A Motion to Set Aside Void Judgment has been prepared under ORCP 71 B(1)(d), which allows void judgments to be challenged at any time with no filing deadline. The Oregon Court of Appeals has held that a void judgment "is a nullity ab initio" and that a court must set it aside -- that refusing to do so is an abuse of discretion. Estate of Hutchins v. Fargo, 188 Or. App. 462 (2003).
The argument is narrow and jurisdictional: ORS 33.720(2) makes publication the mechanism by which the court obtains jurisdiction over the electors in a validation proceeding. The Court of Appeals confirmed this in Columbia County v. Rosenblum, 324 Or. App. 221 (2023). If publication did not comply with the statute -- and here, it did not -- the court never acquired jurisdiction. The resulting judgment is void.
The motion does not challenge the constitutional analysis in the underlying ruling. It does not argue that the term limits ordinance is or is not constitutional. It argues only that the court proceeding that produced the judgment lacked the jurisdiction required by Oregon law because the notice was published in the wrong county.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
If the motion is granted, the August 25, 2025 judgment would be vacated. The county would be free to refile and try again -- but this time, the notice would need to be published where the law says it must be published: in Union County.
And this time, Union County residents would know about it.
Valor Investigations is an independent investigative journalism organization based in La Grande, Oregon. Levi Bakke is a Marine veteran and investigative journalist. Contact: levi@valorinvestigates.com