Four days after Gov. Kate Brown urged Oregonians to stay home to “the maximum extent possible” to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, 44 rodeo competitors traveled with their horses to an arena outside Redmond for a barrel racing event called Corona Can 360.

Organizer Austin Hogue said in planning the event, which was held Friday and Saturday, he sought to comply with Brown’s stay-home executive order and received guidance on social distancing from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.

But Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said Monday the event clearly violates the spirit of the governor’s order, and the sheriff’s office should not have assisted Hogue.

“He’s reckless, and he put our community at risk,” Hummel said of Hogue. “And I don’t know why anyone bent over backwards to help him.”

The event was created to replace the High Desert Stampede, which was canceled March 12 due to the governor’s social distancing orders in place at the time — gatherings of 250 people or more were prohibited.

A Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association event, the stampede is a major draw for Redmond, and this year was to be the biggest yet, with more than 10,000 competitors, spectators, volunteers and vendors from around the country expected, according to board chairman Denis Fast.

In early March, the board briefly considered a “fanless” rodeo as an alternative to canceling, but decided there was no way to host the event while encouraging social distancing, Fast said.

“It’s just something that doesn’t work for a rodeo,” Fast said.

Hogue said his barrel racing event started as a joke on Facebook, with a parody flyer advertising a beer vendor, Chinese food and overnight parking. “HIT 3 BARRELS WIN FREE CASE OF CORONA.”

The flyer elicited so much support Hogue said he decided to stage the event for real.

“The original thought behind it was to give a chance to these people who were coming from out of town, who had already scheduled it and spent the money to prepare for it, to give them a place to come and compete,” Hogue told The Bulletin.

Hogue said he wanted the event to comply with the governor’s public health orders so he reached out to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office and met several times with the office’s lawyer. They devised an unusual racing format for the event — a competition where the athletes competed alone in an empty arena with a flagger standing outside.

Parking spaces in the area behind the arena would be separated by 100 feet. A volunteer stood near the entrance to make sure no more than 22 people were on the property at a time, including staff. Two security guards would patrol and hand out informational flyers about COVID-19 from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.

Everyone followed the rules “to a T,” Hogue said.

“It was safer to come to our event than it was to go to Walmart or Petco or Home Depot, or a park,” he said. “Our event was held with the utmost safety and health concerns in mind.”

A deputy spent time at the event but did not write any citations, Hogue said.

“They came out, spent 15 minutes walking around and told us, ‘You’re doing a great job,” he said.

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Speaking for the sheriff’s office, Capt. Paul Garrison said several sources were consulted while trying to interpret the governor’s executive order, including the county’s legal department and the sheriff’s office lawyer.

“We took this information to determine the best law enforcement response and approached it with a focus on education and voluntary compliance to work with the cooperative event organizer,” Garrison wrote in an email to The Bulletin. “We do not have the authority to shut these events down. In the case event organizers do not comply with the Governor’s Executive Order then enforcement action can be taken as a last resort.”

A spokeswoman for the governor’s office said unnecessary travel risks spreading COVID-19 to new communities across the state, particularly to rural areas where hospital capacity is very limited.

“We are asking all Oregonians to abide by the spirit of the order, which is to stay home to the maximum extent possible, which will also allow local law enforcement officials to focus on true public health and safety emergencies,” said interim press secretary Liz Merah.

On Thursday, the day before the barrel racing event, the Oregon Health Authority said the state was “at a critical moment in the fight against the disease,” but that social distancing could have a large effect on the rising number of cases.

Health officials also released projections on the pace of the pandemic, noting Thursday that a return to “business as usual” would result in a total of 15,000 infections by May 8. Conversely, if the state maintained the governor’s stay-at-home order, there would be 1,000 cases by May 8.

Since the stay-home order was issued March 23, some Oregonians have expressed confusion with its provisions.

A day after it was issued, Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson made waves with a video stating the sheriff’s office won’t arrest or ticket those who violate the stay-home order.

The short clip earned praise on social media, but it put the sheriff’s office in a position opposed by other Oregon law enforcement agencies, which have said they will arrest people for violating the governor’s order, though as a last resort after educating people about the order.

Bend Police Chief Jim Porter said sending mixed messages can weaken a public health response and possibly make Central Oregon more attractive to those who want to defy the governor’s order.

Hummel said he was consulted about the barrel racing event by the sheriff’s office and he advised the agency that deputies should be stationed outside to warn attendees they’d be ticketed if they entered.

“Look, we know where this guy’s coming from. He’s sticking up a big middle finger to every Oregonian who’s complying with the spirit of this order,” Hummel said. “And, you know, people have died. People will die. First responders and medical professionals are risking their lives for the safety of our community, and this idiot is putting people’s lives at risk because he wants to have a fun little party on the weekend. Well, you know what, to hell with him. He thinks he found a cutesy little legal loophole — good for him. The guy is an embarrassment to our community.”

Though Hogue doesn’t appear to have violated the order’s social distancing provisions, Hummel said the event appears to violate Provision 22 of the order, which directs Oregonians to minimize nonessential travel around the state.

For his part, Hogue said the event was never intended to insult the governor.

“We’ve had a gigantic amount of positive praise about this,” he said. “The girls felt safe. They felt like they mattered.”

Hogue expressed surprise when told the local DA believes the people who came to his event could be charged with a crime.

“That’s not what I was told,” Hogue said. “I was told everything we were doing was legal.”

-- Garrett Andrews, Bend Bulletin