Baker County Approves $359,000 Settlement in Tax Foreclosure Class-Action Lawsuit

Baker County approved a $359,000 payment Wednesday as its share of a proposed federal settlement over tax foreclosure sales, with Chair Shane Alderson and Commissioner Michelle Kaseberg voting 2-0 at Baker City. Commissioner Christina Witham was absent.

Where exactly that $359,000 comes from inside the county's budget remains unanswered. Kaseberg said after the vote that commissioners will take up the question at their April 15 regular meeting, leaving open whether the payment draws on the general fund, a reserve account, or another source.

The lawsuit traces back to September 2024, when Jerry Baker filed suit against Baker County in U.S. District Court in Pendleton after the county foreclosed on and sold his Huntington property over unpaid property taxes. His case was later consolidated into a class action involving ten Oregon counties, including Marion, Jackson, Columbia, Multnomah, Josephine, Klamath, Clackamas, Lane and Yamhill.

The core allegation is financial: when counties sold foreclosed properties at prices above the tax debt owed, they distributed that surplus to cities and taxing districts rather than returning it to the former owner. One property in Baker County illustrates the scale of the claims. The county sold a foreclosed parcel for $38,000 while only about $3,200 in back taxes had been owed, a gap of nearly $35,000 that plaintiffs argue should have been returned to the person who lost the land.

The settlement, if approved by the presiding federal judge, would resolve claims tied to foreclosure sales between 2018 and 2024. A six-year civil statute of limitations set the 2018 cutoff; former owners whose properties were sold before 2018 or after 2024 are not eligible for compensation under the terms.

Oregon's Legislature acted before the case reached this point. A 2025 state law, passed in response to a wave of similar suits that followed the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Hennepin County case, now requires counties to place surplus foreclosure proceeds in a separate fund and give former owners a clear process to file a claim. Baker County staff will need to apply those procedures to all future foreclosure sales while simultaneously working through the administrative steps of reconciling past transactions covered by the settlement.

County attorney Kim Mosier had been authorized in November 2025 to negotiate toward a resolution on Baker County's behalf. Wednesday's 2-0 vote clears staff to move forward with the payment, though no money changes hands until the federal court gives final approval to the deal.