CANYON CITY — On Dec. 23, Grant County Judge Scott Myers stood in front of a Christmas tree in the lobby of the Grant County Courthouse to perform a wedding ceremony.

The happy couple, Ken Smith and Cynthia Covert, had driven up from Burns for the occasion (“It was the closest place we could elope,” Covert explained), and they were all smiles as Myers read out the familiar words.

“And now, by the power vested in me by the state of Oregon as Grant County judge, I pronounce you husband and wife,” Myers concluded. “And Ken, you may kiss your bride.”

Myers, 70, was two weeks away from retirement after 24 years on the Grant County Court, the last 12 as county judge, and this would be one of the last official acts of his career in county government. And that was fine by him.

“I really like doing these little weddings,” he said during an interview in his courthouse office. 

“That’s been my favorite part (of the job), I guess.”

An accident of fate

Myers was born in Eugene and grew up in Salem, and he might have remained in the Willamette Valley if it wasn’t for the shooting.

Myers was working at the Oregon Museum Tavern in Salem on May 7, 1981, when an unemployed mill worker named Lawrence William Moore walked in, pulled out a pistol and started firing.

He reloaded several times during the incident, killing four people and wounding another 20 before being overpowered by Myers and several bar patrons, who held him down until police arrived. Moore remains incarcerated in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he is serving four life terms for murder.

Myers, who was dating a woman from Grant County (his future wife, Shelley), decided to see what life was like on the east side of the state.

“I wanted to live in more remote country — fewer people, fewer incidents like that,” he said.

Myers moved to Canyon City in 1982. In 1983 he went to work for Malheur Lumber in John Day, staying in that job for about 15 years before launching his own business as a contractor doing roofing, siding and sheet metal work.

Political career

Myers got his first taste of politics in 1991, when he was approached by Canyon City Manager Tammy Day (now Tammy Bremner) about filling a vacancy on the city council.

“She asked me if I was interested and I said, ‘Yes,'” Myers recalled.

After filling out the remainder of the unexpired council term, Myers formally filed for office and was elected in his own right. After the city’s mayor had a stroke in 1995, Myers was appointed to that position, winning election in 1996.

In 2000, he was elected to the Grant County Court as a commissioner. In 2012, after three four-year terms in that role, he ran for a six-year term as county judge, unseating incumbent Mark Webb.

Both commissioner and judge are paid positions, but in Grant County the two commissioners are paid for part-time work, while county judge is a full-time job.

“It came with a steady paycheck, which I never really had in the construction business,” Myers said.

“I did that for 12 years for one-third time, and I was happy to do it, but I had other income,” he added. “You need free time to be a county commissioner. You can’t have a 9-to-5 and be a county commissioner.”

Grant is one of just six Oregon counties that still has a county court rather than a board of commissioners. The others are Malheur, Harney, Wheeler, Gilliam and Sherman. The Crook County Court voted to change its structure to a board of commissioners last year.

In addition to presiding over the twice-monthly meetings of the Grant County Court, the county judge has some judicial responsibilities. They include performing weddings, approving name changes and ruling on matters of probate, including guardianships and conservatorships. 

While most of those judicial duties are straightforward, there are occasional exceptions. The most egregious in Myers’ experience was the case of Lisa Bayer-Day.

Bayer-Day, a licensed fiduciary, had been appointed to act as conservator for the estate of a Grant County man. At the estate sale, Myers said, he noticed some things that didn’t seem right and reported his concerns to the Guardian/Conservator Association of Oregon.  

Others had reported concerns about Bayer-Day as well, and she was eventually prosecuted for stealing thousands of dollars from 26 clients, 21 of whom were disabled veterans. She was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay $117,000 in restitution.   

In the Grant County case, Bayer-Day was ordered to pay more than $28,000 to her client’s estate.

Things done and undone

Myers counts a number of accomplishments from his 12 years as Grant County judge.

One of his campaign issues in 2012 was promising to clean up what he called the “mess” at the county road department, which seemed to be locked in a constant cycle of grievances filed by union workers.

Paying an attorney to handle those cases was costing the county $12,000-$14,000 a month, Myers said, but after his election, the union rep dropped all current grievances and expressed a desire for a clean slate with the county court.

“Within three months,” Myers said, “we ended the contract with that attorney and have now gone 12 years without a single grievance with the road department.”

Myers also points to the court’s ability during his tenure to maintain a healthy reserve in the county road fund, which is currently in the neighborhood of $50 million.

He notes that the county was able to provide solid emergency operations management during the Canyon Creek Fire of 2015, the 2016 flood that impacted Grant Union High School and the wave of wildfires that hit the area in 2024.

In 2017, the Rainbow Gathering and the total solar eclipse both brought thousands of people, and plenty of potential for problems, to Grant County, Myers said, but in both cases the county was able to work with law enforcement officers from federal agencies to manage the situation.

“It was well-supervised, well-controlled,” Myers said. “It could have been much worse.”

As a county commissioner, Myers also had a hand in the construction of the new Grant County Regional Airport and the preservation of the old timber company town of Bates, which is now a state park.

Asked what items on his to-do list remain undone, Myers grew reflective.

“There’s always much to do — there are still some roads that need to be improved, some bridges that need to be improved,” he said.

“I don’t know how to heal the rift that’s happened between the city (of John Day) and the county,” he added. “That needs to be repaired. The city and the county need to work together.”

What’s next

Myers’s decision to retire wasn’t entirely voluntary. As a county judge, Myers falls under an amendment to the Oregon Constitution, passed by voters in 1960, that sets an age limit on judicial positions.

The law requires judges to retire at the end of the calendar year during which they turn 75. If Myers had won reelection last year, that mandatory retirement would have come five years into his third six-year term.

Now that retirement has come, however, Myers said he’s looking forward to spending more time with family, hunting, fishing and riding his beloved Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Of course, it won’t be all fun and games.

“I have some stuff that needs to be done around the house and on the house,” Myers said.

Nor is he stepping away from government service entirely.

Separately from his work on the county court, Myers chairs the boards of directors of the Northeast Oregon Housing Authority and Community Connection of Northeast Oregon.

He’s also hoping to keep his spot on the Grant County Regional Airport Commission, where he currently serves as the Grant County Court’s representative, although that could require a change in the organization’s bylaws.

And he’s returning to the place where his political career began more than 30 years ago. 

After he decided not to seek a third term as county judge, Myers filed for an open seat on the Canyon City Council. He ran unopposed in November and was sworn into his new/old position earlier this month.

Looking back on his time in office up to this point, Myers turned philosophical.

“Somebody said, ‘How do you sum it up?'” Myers recalled.

“Well, a lot of handshakes and heartaches,” he said. “There’s been a lot of both over the years.”