Alfalfa, Ore. — The wife of Alfalfa Fire District Acting Board President Mark Laucks launched into a lengthy social media attack against critics of the embattled fire district this week, blaming residents raising concerns about its operations for the loss of emergency services and making several claims about Wednesday’s board meeting that do not appear to have actually happened.
Paula Laucks, whose husband remains one of the district’s longest-serving board members, made the comments in a public post on Nextdoor following the district’s Sept. 2nd meeting.
“This is an open letter to the simpering coward who created a Zoom link to the Alfalfa Fire Department Board Meeting last night,” Laucks began.
She claimed an individual using the name “Junior Doe” joined the meeting and stated, “We’ll see what kind of lies are spewed by the original board members tonight.”
The Prineville Review documented no such statement during the meeting, and a review of the district’s own recording of the meeting found no such statement and no participant identified as “Junior Doe.”
We additionally confirmed that the district itself created the Zoom link for the meeting which was contained in its meeting notice/agenda—a requirement under Oregon’s public meetings laws. It was not clear if Paula Laucks was instead alleging that the already public Zoom meeting link was being shared.
Two Zoom participants did appear using names openly critical of Mark Laucks — “Mark hates transparency” and “MARK HATES FREE SPEECH.”
Shortly before the meeting began, Mark Laucks himself raised concerns that the district’s Zoom meeting had been “hacked.” Nothing during the meeting appeared to substantiate that claim.
Laucks then suggested the they should require the two participants to identify themselves or removing the participants. District legal counsel Jered Reid pushed back on that idea, indicating the board needed to just move on with the meeting.
The names, while plainly critical of Laucks, did not appear to interfere with the meeting.
Wife blames critics for district’s problems
Paula Laucks’ post went considerably further than criticizing the anonymous Zoom participants.
She repeatedly blamed critics of the district for its current staffing and emergency-response problems, suggesting residents raising concerns about district officials were responsible for putting their neighbors’ lives at risk.
“Can you imagine hanging upside down in your car while you wait for Bend fire department to arrive, because some petty community members see this as a game that they are ‘winning’?” she wrote.
In another response, Laucks claimed critics “don’t care if someone’s child bleeds out waiting for help.”
She later agreed with another commenter who characterized the critics as similar to people seeking to “defund the police,” saying they had “no compassion for their neighbors.”
Laucks also repeatedly characterized scrutiny of the district as harassment rather than acknowledging the numerous documented governance, financial and legal problems that have surrounded the district and former Chief Chad LaVallee.
“This harassment has been going on for over two years,” she wrote in one response, claiming board members and volunteers had been “attacked & falsely accused.”
In another lengthy response, she blamed people with “personal vendettas against the fire chief” for attempting to “take down” LaVallee and said residents have spent two years looking for “tiny infractions they can report to the state.”
Her characterization also stands in contrast to a six-page message delivered to the board last month by 16 district electors, who specifically separated their criticism of district leadership from their support for AFD’s firefighters.
The Aug. 10th message opened by expressing “profound gratitude” to the district’s volunteer firefighters, calling them “the true heroes of our community,” before outlining concerns over financial management, transparency, public meetings, permitting, district expansion, ambulance operations and past management of the district.
“First and foremost, we express our profound gratitude to our volunteer firefighters. They are the true heroes of our community, and their dedication to our safety is invaluable,” the message stated.
“While we recognize that the volunteer Board of Directors has attempted to expand district services through short-term funding opportunities, efforts that were initiated with good intentions, the district has repeatedly failed to analyze the long-term costs and administrative resources required to sustain these expansions. Consequently, the board has overextended its management capacity, bypassed critical legal requirements, and placed the financial and physical safety of the district in jeopardy.”
The electors ultimately proposed a dozen changes they said were intended to return AFD to sustainable operations.
As the Prineville Review reported following that meeting, the unusual presentation involved the electors taking turns reading portions of the same document during their individual public-comment periods after Laucks repeatedly attempted to move the presentation along.
According to Paula Laucks, that alleged campaign of harassment ultimately caused the district’s paid employees to leave and resulted in its station becoming unmanned.
She even criticized women who attend district meetings, saying some “get dressed up to come to board meetings because they know KTVZ will be there.”
Those statements come despite much of the scrutiny facing the district originating not simply from complaints by residents, but from independent actions and investigations by state agencies, court proceedings and issues revealed through the district’s own records.
The Oregon Secretary of State previously questioned the district over years of delinquent financial reporting, while the Secretary of State’s Elections Division is actively investigating election-law violations involving LaVallee and other district officials.
More recently, the Prineville Review uncovered that a company supplying approximately $165,000 in firefighter breathing equipment has not been paid for the purchase despite LaVallee previously publicly representing the equipment as having been purchased through a federal FEMA grant that district received last year.
The unpaid obligation includes a $119,765 invoice that Mark Laucks sought to have the board quickly approve during Wednesday’s meeting, despite the matter not being listed for action on the agenda. Reid advised the board against taking action until the matter could be properly noticed for another meeting.
The full story about the invoice and questions about what happened to the FEMA grant funds can be read here: Company stiffed $165K for equipment ordered by former Alfalfa Fire chief Chad LaVallee, despite receiving a FEMA grant to pay for it
Lauck’s wife and former board member float ‘cybercrime’ reports to law enforcement over critical Zoom names
Meanwhile, Paula Laucks continued responding to commenters on Nextdoor through Friday, describing allegations involving district officials as “ludicrous” and accusing critics of monitoring district vehicles, photographing staff homes and treating firefighters as criminals.
“You would think our firefighters were buying Lamborghinis & taking trips to the Bahamas with all of the mind boggling financial allegations,” she wrote. “How long did you think people would stay & be abused?”
A former elected board member, David Warren suggested the conduct of the anonymous Zoom participants might constitute “cybercrime” and that AFD should consider pursuing criminal charges.
“I want to add, that I think that kind of behavior is cybercrime and illegal and they could face serious charges which AFD might want to consider pursing, especially if it continues,” said Warren.
“Thank you, that is a good idea,” Paula Laucks responded.
Nothing reviewed by the Prineville Review from Wednesday’s meeting indicated the Zoom participants gained unauthorized access to the district’s system. Instead, they appeared through the same remote meeting platform provided for members of the public, with their criticism limited to the names displayed on screen.
Ethics investigations not completely dismissed
Paula Laucks also incorrectly claimed that an ethics complaint against LaVallee had been dismissed.
“As reported in The Bend Bulletin, the Oregon Ethics Committee dismissed the complaint against former Fire Chief Chad LaVallee,” she wrote. “For those of you crying ‘guilty! guilty!’ YOU WERE WRONG.”
But LaVallee remains the subject of a separate, ongoing formal investigation by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission involving allegations surrounding his hiring and supervision of his wife, potential misuse of office, and conflicts of interest.
OGEC voted in May to advance that matter beyond its preliminary review and into a full investigation. KTVZ independently reported at the time that the commission had initiated the full investigation.
What OGEC more recently declined to pursue was a separate complaint filed by this reporter involving LaVallee.
That complaint followed LaVallee’s admission that he hired a private investigator in connection with this reporter and sought to determine whether the district’s legal counsel could pursue a defamation action against the Prineville Review or this reporter. According to reporting from the Bend Bulletin, the OGEC report indicated that district counsel advised LaVallee that the district could not provide him legal representation for such a personal action.
The dismissal of that separate complaint did not terminate the already-open investigation involving LaVallee’s employment and supervision of his wife.
LaVallee’s hiring practices had already drawn public scrutiny well before the current controversy. Records and previous reporting raised questions surrounding his wife’s employment, district payments and grant-funded positions.
Mark Laucks himself raised possibility of shutting district down
Paula Laucks’ characterization of critics as people trying to “destroy” the Alfalfa Fire District also stands in contrast to comments made by her own husband.
During Wednesday’s meeting, it was Mark Laucks — not the district’s newer board members or its critics — who raised the prospect of developing an “exit plan” that could ultimately result in shutting down the district or converting it to a Rural/Rangeland Fire Protection Agency (RFPA).
It was not clear if the Alfalfa Fire District, could convert into a RFPA, a nonprofit landowner association used to provide fire protection in certain rural areas. Such a move, however, raises significant questions over whether a taxpayer-funded public body could simply be replaced by a private nonprofit, what would happen to the district’s publicly and grant-funded assets, and what public transparency and oversight would remain. An RFPA would also not retain the district’s existing property-taxing authority.
That discussion represented a notable departure from efforts by other board members to address longstanding governance, financial and accountability concerns and keeping the district operating.
The district has been undergoing substantial changes since LaVallee resigned as chief effective June 30th. Despite that resignation, Laucks revealed during an August meeting that LaVallee was again involved with the district as its “Training Director.”
Board members did not provide answers to questions from the Prineville Review Wednesday regarding how Laucks was able to appoint LaVallee to that position or whether his appointment had ever been formally approved by the board. LaVallee’s continued involvement comes while the ethics and election-law investigations involving his prior conduct remain unresolved.
Board member Dustin Piggott was not present at the meeting Sept. 2nd.
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Mr. Alderman is an investigative journalist specializing in government transparency, non-profit accountability, consumer protection, and is a subject matter expert on Oregon’s public records and meetings laws. As a former U.S. Army Military Police Officer, he brings a disciplined investigative approach to his reporting that has frequently exposed ethics violations, financial mismanagement, and transparency failures by public officials and agencies.
