Loveall offers fierce defense as fellow commissioners determine next steps

Lane County Commissioner David Loveall’s tussle with his fellow commissioners isn’t over. 

Three of Loveall’s colleagues on the Board of County Commissioners want him to apologize for prior statements after an outside investigation found he retaliated against three staffers, including the county administrator. 

The commissioners voted 3-2 Wednesday, Feb. 18, on a motion that directs county staff and attorneys to prepare a statement of unity for employees who have reported discrimination and harassment and for Loveall to issue an apology that acknowledges harm to affected people and the findings of the outside investigation. The statement of unity and Loveall’s apology — if he chooses to issue one — would be on the agenda for the board’s March 3 meeting.

The vote, which Commissioner Ryan Ceniga and Loveall opposed, marks the board’s first public action since the county released a 12-page summary of its findings Feb. 10. 

In one instance, a county employee complained Loveall described a community member as a “stripper on a strip pole, her hands moving like this” during a presentation, the report said. Another employee complained when Loveall signed a birthday card with “religious language.” Records show that Loveall signed it: “Thanks for doing kingdom work, blessings.” 

Loveall’s initial reaction to those complaints also are part of the county’s report. The report said Loveall ordered County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky to stop the complaints and “tell the employees to f— off” and threatened his job, the report found. 

Before and after Wednesday’s vote, Loveall mounted a vigorous defense and said the summary released to the public was one-sided and inaccurate.

“Factual error number one for the record, ‘stripper on a strip pole’ is not a comment stemming from me,” he said. “It was a context of a discussion with others.”

He also defended the birthday card salutation.

“Due to complaint methods like this birthday card crime, we now have people wearing crosses in our organization now under their shirts, and we no longer distribute birthday cards as a goodwill offering to our employees, because no one wants to be incurred or accused of having trauma being pushed on someone else,” Loveall said. 

Loveall and his attorney, Jill Gibson, also said the county was not following due process because he has not seen the full report, only the summary released to the public. Loveall declined to comment to a reporter after the meeting, but released a statement shortly after the vote that said it’s “not a fair process.”

“As I stated in my public comments this morning, every person deserves a fair day in court,” Loveall said in his statement. “But you cannot have a fair process, or true due process, when evidence is being purposefully withheld. Political accusations have been made against me, yet I am not able to listen to or review the evidence.”

Before the vote, Ceniga said he has concerns the process has been “flawed since the start,” adding he has concerns about the county’s liability.

During the meeting, Loveall’s attorney, Gibson, told commissioners her client’s constitutional rights have been violated, including his right to free speech. 

“I have advised him to file a lawsuit,” Gibson said. “I don’t say that lightly. Many times, I honestly advise clients not to file a lawsuit because I don’t like to lose and I don’t like clients to pay me money if they’re not going to win. I don’t have doubts in this case.”

County’s report called ‘a joke’

Loveall pushed for openness during the more than three-hour event. Lane County commissioners initially planned to discuss the matter in a closed-door executive session. Before they did, though, Loveall called a “point of order” and asserted his right to an open hearing, as allowed under state law.

So an open hearing began. Along the way, Loveall said he’s not received the full report of the county’s investigation, just the summary.

“As I prepared for (today’s) meeting, it became clear to me that I am unable to meaningfully respond to an investigative condensation or defend myself because I have not been provided the full investigative report as required by due process,” Loveall said. 

Loveall also said his fellow commissioners had not seen the full report either, an assertion the county’s outside attorney, Jose Klein, confirmed in open session.

Gibson started things off in her client’s defense, arguing that  the summary report is “a joke.”

Gibson said the allegations against Loveall are wrongly premised on a belief that the county’s administrative procedures manual applies to elected officials.

“It does not,” she declared, elaborating that elected officials are only subject to the rules and ordinances they pass and the administrative manual was not one they passed.

Further, she asserted that Loveall’s statements were all protected speech.

“He was put on a safety plan because he wrote a salutation in a birthday card that said ‘blessings,’” she said, calling this a “word that any reasonable person would not take offense to.”

Gibson also gave an overview of case law that showed elected officials are different from county staffers.

“Staff members cannot draft personnel policies to impose discipline on the very elected officials that control that,” she said.

The problem is that every “alleged violation” is “premised on something that Commissioner Loveall said and the county cannot discipline him for something he says,” Gibson said. 

“The voters put him in this office and only the voters can exclude him from this office,” Gibson said.

She also discounted the report’s finding that Loveall retaliated against the county administrator by giving him a low score on his job evaluation.

“That’s his job,” Gibson said. “The county administrator serves at the pleasure of commissioners.”

For his part, Loveall also defended how he graded the county administrator — with a ranking of 1 on a scale of 1 to 5. Loveall said he has consistently given the county administrator scores on the low end: a 2-point score in 2023, and a 1-point score in 2024 and again in 2025. 

Loveall said he agreed to a mediator to work out differences with the administrator, as the board recommended.

“I happily agreed to and put the request on the county administrator’s desk, where it laid for two weeks until he decided it was not worth his time,” Loveall said.

Loveall also said the report had other factual errors, such as meeting cancellations with the county administrator that happened for reasons unrelated to retaliation, including the county administrator simply missing an appointment.

Mokrohisky was present during the initial open session, but didn’t address Loveall’s statements during the meeting.

Loveall also pointed out a factual error that Lookout verified. The report wrongly said that Loveall discussed the “stripper” comment on a podcast. In fact, Loveall did not bring that issue up on the podcast.

The board later went into closed-door executive session after Loveall’s comments to discuss records exempt from public disclosure. Loveall, who did not join the executive session, objected to the board’s motion seeking an apology. 

Loveall, in open session, said his understanding is the board was going into executive session to discuss a legal memo, not whether to impose discipline on him. 

“In my view, this executive session you just completed was misrepresented,” he said.

Loveall added: “I voluntarily left the meeting under objection because there were  assurances that disciplinary motions and thoughts were not going to be discussed, and here we are with the motion on the table. So I strongly object to this motion, and I believe that it was that the discussions in the executive session violated ethics laws.”

Commissioner Pat Farr countered that there was no disciplinary action discussed during the executive session.