Union County Commissioners Accused of Deception over Term-Limits Review
An ethics complaint against Commissioner Matt Scarfo escalated to a 7-0 state investigation after voters who passed term limits in 2017 say they were kept in the dark.
The man who led the 2017 citizen petition that imposed term limits on Union County commissioners says he found out the county was legally challenging those limits not from county officials, but from a phone call from Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Jim Mollerstrom, who identifies himself as the chief petitioner of that voter-approved effort, published a letter in the East Oregonian on March 19 alleging that the Union County Board of Commissioners used what he calls a "deception process" when it voted unanimously in January 2025 to direct taxpayer-paid county legal counsel to pursue a writ petition seeking a judicial determination on the validity of the 2017 term-limits adoption.
Mollerstrom contends that no affected parties were directly notified of the legal proceeding. The only required notice, he writes, was published in the back pages of the East Oregonian in April 2025, which he says gave the public "little-to-no-chance of citizen awareness." He says he remained unaware until an OPB reporter called him in mid-September 2025, roughly eight months after the board's unanimous vote.
The fallout from that discovery has moved well beyond a letter to the editor. Mollerstrom and others revived a civic organization called the Union County Citizens for Good Government, which filed a formal complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. The complaint focuses specifically on the actions and perceived intent of two-term Commissioner Matt Scarfo.
The OGEC accepted the complaint and conducted a 60-day preliminary review, after which its investigator made concluding recommendations. On February 6, the full OGEC board voted 7-0 to authorize a continued ethics investigation of Scarfo. No findings or charges have been issued; the investigation is ongoing.
Neither Scarfo nor other members of the Union County Board of Commissioners have been quoted responding to the allegations. The letter does not name the county attorney or law firm directed to pursue the writ petition, and it does not confirm whether a writ petition was ultimately filed in court.
Anyone seeking information on the investigation can contact the Oregon Government Ethics Commission at 503-378-5105 and reference Case No. 25-708ECF.
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