Ugarte and Ruston Hit the Brakes on Warrington's Scheme

On the same day recall signatures were submitted against Mark DeForge, the North Plains City Council considered promoting him to mayor—a move the city attorney said would end the recall. Two councilors refused to let that happen without answers.

North Plains came dangerously close to making a decision on September 8 that could have erased a citizen-led recall before voters ever received their ballots.

That evening, the City Council was scheduled to choose between two applicants for mayor: former Mayor Cindy Hirst and Councilor Mark DeForge. Earlier that same day, residents submitted signatures seeking a recall election against DeForge.

Then the city attorney confirmed the consequence Council needed to confront.

DeForge could legally be appointed mayor. But to accept the office, he would have to resign his council seat. Because the recall petition applies to that seat, his resignation would make the recall moot. The petition would end. North Plains voters would never get to decide it.

Councilors Trista Ugarte and Jason Ruston understood what was at stake. They hit the brakes.

Ruston asked for written legal analysis and wanted the recall signatures validated before Council acted. Ugarte pressed for clarity about the consequences and the option of postponing the appointment. When City Attorney Emily Matasar joined the meeting remotely, she confirmed that Council could proceed—but also confirmed that appointing DeForge would extinguish the recall against his council position.

Matasar called it a policy choice.

That meant the law would not make the decision for Council. Its members had to decide whether filling the mayor’s office immediately was more important than protecting a recall process initiated by North Plains citizens.

Ugarte and Ruston chose the voters.

Their stand was especially important because Council was under visible pressure to keep the appointment moving. Don Weber said he saw no reason not to proceed. Anna Warrington later asked whether DeForge could be brought back from his recusal to break a tie. Their anti-democratic motives were laid bare for all to see.

The actions of Warrington and Weber should concern every North Plains resident.

Why was it so urgent to for Warrington to appoint a mayor that night? Why consider an action that could terminate a pending recall hours after citizens submitted their signatures? Why explore bringing the subject of the recall back into the process as a possible deciding vote?

The public deserves clear answers from DeForge, Warrington and Weber.

There is no need to speculate about private agreements or hidden motives. What happened in public is troubling enough: Warrington and Weber pushed to keep the appointment process alive even after its potential effect on the recall became the central issue.

Ugarte and Ruston refused to go along.

Ugarte worked through the voting procedure with the city attorney. Ruston made the motion to postpone the mayoral appointment for 30 days. The motion carried, giving the recall petition time to move through signature verification.

That was real leadership on display in North Plains, for the first time in years.

It would have been easy to treat the mayoral appointment as another item on the agenda. It would have been easy to hide behind the city attorney’s statement that Council possessed the legal authority to proceed. Ugarte and Ruston recognized that the question was larger than what Council could legally do.

The question was whether Council should use an appointment to take a decision away from North Plains voters.

They insisted that it should not happen that night.

The 30-day delay does not fully protect the recall. Under Oregon law, signature verification must be completed by the earlier of 30 days after submission or 120 days after the prospective petition was filed. If the petition qualifies, DeForge would have five days to resign or submit a statement for the ballot. A recall election would then follow within the period set by state law.

That schedule means Council could revisit the mayoral appointment before voters actually cast recall ballots. The same danger may return.

Before Council takes another vote, residents should be able to see the written legal analysis discussed during the meeting, confirmation of the petition’s verification status, and a public explanation from each councilor about whether the recall should be allowed to reach the voters.

North Plains has endured enough consequential decisions made through hurried appointments, incomplete records and unexplained procedures. On September 8, Ugarte and Ruston drew a line. They recognized that a technically legal maneuver could still deny residents the opportunity to exercise one of their most fundamental rights of local self-government.

They did not let the recall disappear.

The next test will be whether they—and the public—must defend it again.