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Matt Brown said he wants to bring attention to poor budgeting decisions through his tort claim notice and does not wish to harm the district. He says he was retaliated against for forecasting errors during the 2025-26 school year.
Eugene School District 4J’s finance director has resigned.
Matthew Brown, who filed a notice of his intent to sue the district in June for retaliation due to a budget forecasting error, told Lookout Eugene-Springfield he resigned Friday, Aug. 28. He said his tort claim remains active. A tort claim is a document that precedes filing civil litigation against a public entity.
“This has never been about money for me, it is about my integrity as a public servant, and about honoring the work that my staff and I did on behalf of this district and the decisions they made,” Brown said in an email to Lookout. “Accountability and transparency are the foundations of public trust. I hold myself to that standard, and I believe the community has every right to expect the same from those in leadership, especially those entrusted to act in the district’s best interest rather than their own.”
In Brown’s tort claim notice, he alleges the district unfairly blamed him for a $16.4 million forecasting variance in 2026-27 budget planning. The tort claim says the district asked him to resign following an April 22 budget committee meeting for “neglect of duty.”
In that April 22 meeting, in addition to laying out more information about the forecasting error, he reviewed past board decisions that went against his financial advice. Brown refused to resign, according to the tort claim, and the district put him on administrative leave and launched an investigation.
The tort claim links the $16.4 million forecasting variance to 4J’s overall budget deficit and blames district and board leaders for passing budgets that have spent down reserves. It also blames Superintendent Miriam Mickelson for prematurely committing the district in the fall of 2025 to a $30 million budget cut for the 2026-27 school year even though many budget variables were unknown at the time.
Kelly McIver, 4J spokesperson, has said the district strongly disagrees with Brown’s claims. McIver confirmed Brown’s resignation and in a Monday statement said that there has been no change to the status of the tort claim. He said associate finance director Bob Blyth has been filling in as finance director and “the district will determine next steps for the position in the days ahead.”
The $16.4 million variance, Brown said in a statement to Lookout, is not a result of one or two specific things but a culmination of poor budgeting decisions and internal systems. He said he hoped to highlight those issues through his tort claim. One such flaw named in the tort claim was the lack of oversight the finance department had over certain other departments, including special education services.
Brown said as finance director, he did not hold the authority to make the financial changes he saw necessary at 4J, and he claims his advice to those who did was ignored.
“I have cautioned district leadership for all 4 years I have been at the district and unfortunately it felt like my warnings began to sound routine and easy to dismiss,” he wrote. “My own child attends 4J schools and I want the best education for our community. I have no interest in tearing down something my own community depends on. My concern throughout my tenure has been, and still remains, that the Eugene community deserves honest, complete financial information from its school district and every public agency.”
