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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018
Former Portland teacher banned from States aim to stop
teaching for public indecency in Astoria internet release of
Miller also
served as
union president
By BETSY HAMMOND
and BETHANY BARNES
The Oregonian
A controversial former Lin-
coln High School teacher and
Portland teachers union presi-
dent has had his right to teach
permanently revoked after
he was convicted of inde-
cent exposure for masturbat-
ing naked on a public street in
Astoria, records show.
Jeff Miller taught social
studies at Lincoln High for
several years before he retired
after getting in trouble for wor-
risome conduct around stu-
dents. Before joining the fac-
ulty at Lincoln, he taught at
Cleveland High for 20 years
and also taught at Wilson and
Benson high schools. He was
an elected leader of the Port-
land Association of Teachers
for 11 years, culminating in
serving as its president from
2006 to 2008.
The behavior that caused
him to lose his license hap-
pened in summer 2016. A cou-
ple saw him lying naked on a
towel in public and masturbat-
Jeff Miller
ing in Astoria, where he and
his wife own a vacation home
a short walk from Astoria High
School. He was 60 years old at
the time. According to the state
teacher licensing committee,
the pair captured photographic
evidence of the crime.
Jeffrey Scott Miller pleaded
no contest to indecent expo-
sure in March 2017 and was
sentenced to 10 days in jail
plus 18 months probation. He
is still on probation, with con-
ditions that include a ban on
using or possessing marijuana
and a requirement that he sub-
mit to random searches of his
Lake Oswego and Astoria
homes.
In August 2017, Oregon’s
Teacher Standards and Prac-
tices Commission notified
Miller it planned to ban him
from ever regaining a teaching
license because of his convic-
tion for public masturbation.
He did not respond to or con-
test the commission’s action.
Miller also did not immedi-
ately reply to a message left
Monday at the office of the
lawyer who represented him in
the indecency matter.
Miller retired from Lincoln
under a cloud several years
ago, having been put on leave
by the district and publicly rep-
rimanded by Oregon’s teacher
licensing agency for a host of
unprofessional acts deemed by
the licensing board as consti-
tuting “gross neglect of duty.”
According to that find-
ing, Miller used the N-word
in class, threatened two stu-
dents, failed to present bal-
anced views of politics during
class, used swear words while
teaching and displayed post-
ers “including skateboards
with animated models in sex-
ually suggestive positions and
containing captions includ-
ing ‘school sucks’ and ‘I hate
school.’”
Students videotaped some
of his conduct and posted it on
YouTube. One video showed
him as he led a rowdy pro-
test and, for several seconds,
pressed his body against that
of a female student. She later
said she was not upset by his
conduct.
Lincoln Principal Peyton
Chapman did not immedi-
ately respond to requests for
comment. In March, Chapman
gave an in-depth interview
to the school’s student news-
paper, The Cardinal Times,
about how she handles prob-
lem teachers.
Miller retired during the
2013-14 school year and is
paid $44,000 a year in public
employee retirement benefits.
John Larson, president of
the Oregon Education Associ-
ation, said Monday in a state-
ment that the state teachers
union strongly supports get-
ting bad actors banned from
teaching.
“There is no place in the
education system for anyone
who has exhibited the types of
behaviors that Jeff Miller has
been convicted of. That behav-
ior is unacceptable. Period. I
support the actions taken by
the Teacher Standards and
Practices Commission to keep
him out of our schools. Dis-
tricts and administrators need
to act swiftly to address this
type of behavior as soon as it
is reported.”
Coastal towns tackle vacation rentals
Tension brews
between tourism
and livability
By TOM BANSE
Northwest News Network
Hot housing markets in
major cities like Seattle and
Portland have pushed the cities
to regulate short-term rentals
like Airbnb. But small Pacific
Northwest towns popular with
visitors are also struggling to
balance the growth of Airb-
nb-type rentals with a tight
housing supply.
Newport is the latest to put
those types of rentals in the
crosshairs.
Newport is a beach town
on the central coast known
for its working waterfront, sea
lions, lighthouses and aquar-
ium. Now, the town finds itself
at the messy intersection of the
sharing economy, the tourism
business and a housing crunch.
The second of two open
houses for people to ask ques-
tions and sound off on short-
term rentals happens Wednes-
day evening at Newport City
Hall.
Sandy Benning came to the
first open house last week to
support capping the number
of short-term vacation rentals
available in Newport. Benning
said she learned firsthand how
tight the housing market on the
Oregon Coast is when she and
her husband moved to New-
port two years ago.
“We literally looked for
a place to rent for almost 90
days,” Benning said. “That
entire time we stayed in
VRDs (vacation rental dwell-
ings) around the local area. It
was a huge expense for us to
stay here over the summer for
what, three months, before we
found a place to live.”
Benning shares a widely
held concern around the
Northwest that landlords are
converting long-term units
for the local workforce into
short-term rentals for visitors
because the temporary rentals
are more lucrative.
Tom Banse/Northwest News Network
In Newport, vacation rentals are concentrated along the
bluffs above the Pacific Ocean.
‘Lots of traffic. Lots of
noise. Garbage. Lots of
people. This was a quiet
neighborhood.…’
Newport resident Carla Perry
lives in an oceanfront neighborhood where
vacation rentals have proliferated
“This was something we
found repeatedly,” Benning
said. “In fact, we ended up
having to purchase a home.
And the availability of homes
for us to purchase was very,
very limited.”
Newport resident Carla
Perry was also on hand at
City Hall to share her opin-
ion. She lives in an oceanfront
neighborhood where vacation
rentals have proliferated and
created what Perry calls “a
critical situation.”
“Lots of traffic. Lots of
noise. Garbage. Lots of peo-
ple,” Perry said. “This was
a quiet neighborhood. It’s
changed that. There are no
neighbors. It’s not like you
can know who is staying
anywhere.”
Perry is part of a citizen
advisory committee that came
up with options for how New-
port could regulate short-
term rentals. The alternatives
include limits on the num-
ber of vacation rentals, their
location or density, as well
as establishing a complaint
hotline.
Newport
Community
Development Director Der-
rick Tokos said the commit-
tee borrowed ideas from other
Northwest places that took
a run at this issue recently.
Hood River doesn’t restrict
home shares or bed-and-
breakfasts where the owner or
a manager lives on the prem-
ises. Gearhart and Yachats
have caps on short-term rent-
als, and Durango has a den-
sity limit that only allows one
short-term vacation rental per
block.
“It’s kind of a potpourri,”
Tokos said. “They looked at
best management practices
that a lot of jurisdictions are
using. These are all kinda liv-
ing codes that get updated
periodically as jurisdictions
try something. Then, ‘Hey,
maybe that wasn’t working
like we wanted.’ So they make
adjustments.”
Newport has a permanent
population just over 10,000.
Tokos said about 200 proper-
ties are licensed as vacation
rentals.
The push to clamp down
comes just as more prop-
erty owners are looking to list
their beach homes with rental
management companies. Pete
Even, who lives outside of
Springfield, is in the process
of a buying a second home in
Newport with hopes of gener-
ating some retirement income.
“There’s already enough
rules and regulations on the
books. They just need to be
enforced,” Even said on his
way out of City Hall. “We
want to do it the right way, but
we don’t want to be micro-
managed if we’re doing it
properly.”
Jon Tesar of Kennewick,
Washington, owns a second
home in Newport that he’d like
to turn into a vacation rental.
He’s concerned a cap that’s too
restrictive might mess up his
plans, not to mention the city’s
greater economic prospects.
“If you start to estab-
lish yourself as a place that
is unfriendly to tourists, it’s
a slippery slope,” Tesar said.
“You don’t know where it’s
going. So if you start restrict-
ing the number of tourists that
can come in, it just doesn’t
seem like it’s good for our
economy. You’re wasting the
space.”
The Newport City Council
will have the final say on what
to do after the citizens commit-
tee and the planning commis-
sion first try to reach consen-
sus where they can.
Newport has a fairly basic
licensing requirement for
vacation rentals that permits
them in all zones of the city if
adequate parking is available.
Nearby Lincoln City last year
joined several other coastal
cities in limiting the number
of vacation rentals allowed
in residential neighborhoods.
Astoria only allows vacation
rentals in commercial zones,
although an Airbnb search this
week showed that restriction is
being flouted.
3D-printed gun plans
By MARTHA
BELLISLE
Associated Press
SEATTLE — A federal
judge in Seattle hearing
arguments over a settlement
that allows a Texas com-
pany to post online plans for
printing 3D guns said Tues-
day the overall issue of such
untraceable plastic weapons
should be decided by the
president or Congress.
U.S. District Judge Rob-
ert Lasnik said he’ll rule by
Monday on the legal issues
involving the settlement
between the company and
the Trump administration.
He added, however, that “a
solution to the greater prob-
lem is so much better suited
to the other two branches of
government.”
Nineteen states and
the District of Columbia
sued the federal govern-
ment, alleging it reached
a “covert” settlement with
the company, Defense Dis-
tributed, without notifying
Congress or the Department
of Defense about changes it
made to an export act that
prohibited 3D gun plans
from being posted online.
The Austin-based com-
pany is owned by Cody
Wilson, a self-described
“crypto-anarchist”
who
opposes restrictions on gun
ownership.
Lasnik
granted
a
restraining order in July
that blocked the immediate
release of the plans online.
The states want him to make
it permanent.
Washington state Assis-
tant Attorney General Jeff
Rupert argued that the gov-
ernment’s decision to allow
the posting threatens pub-
lic safety and should be
reversed.
Any felon or terror-
ist with a laptop and a 3D
printer could start making
firearms that can’t be seen
by a metal detector, leav-
ing airports, courthouses,
jails and many government
buildings and schools —
vulnerable, he said.
Lasnik made it clear that
he was frustrated that he
only had a few days to make
decisions on “probably the
most significant case that
I’ve handled as a United
States District Court judge.”
He added, “I really hope
and wish that the executive
branch and Congress would
face up to this.”
More than a dozen mem-
bers of the Washington
Chapter of Moms Demand
Action for Gun Sense in
America filled half the
courtroom during the hear-
ing wearing red T-shirts.
They later said they agreed
that the answer lies in Wash-
ington, D.C.
“We do believe in the
right to own a gun, but we
also believe in this country
our rights rest of a founda-
tion of shared responsibil-
ity to keep all members of
society safe,” group spokes-
woman Sue Whitecomb
said. “And we believe that
is the job of Congress.”
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