The town clerk of Gore obtained a protective order against a former town trustee who allegedly chased her through the Town Hall and out to her car, and she has been bombarded with open records requests that consumed literally hundreds of pages.
A few times he came in here and wanted a certain video of Gore’s police department,” Clerk Lisa Marie Settlemyre told Southwest Ledger. “I spent 13 hours going through the videos and doing some redactions” of sensitive, personal, and/or proprietary information. But the requester, Gideon Thomas Miller, “never came back for the video.”
Gore, a community of approximately 1,000 residents in western Sequoyah County, lies at the convergence of US-64, SH-10 and SH-100, less than one mile from the Muskogee County line and across the Arkansas River from Webbers Falls.
Miller moved to Gore in 2019, Settlemyre said. Four years later he ran for the Gore Board of Trustees, Office No. 5. Miller was elected on April 4, 2023, winning by 16 votes out of the 240 cast in the two-man race.
Subsequently, though, it was determined that his residence is not inside the town limits. Miller was asked to resign, but refused. At a Feb. 6, 2024, special meeting of the trustees, his office was vacated and Randy Foley, the other candidate for the post in the 2023 election, was appointed to succeed him in Office No. 5.
A flurry of documents was filed in Sequoyah County District Court throughout 2024 after Miller was removed from the town board. The District Attorney’s office investigated a complaint alleging corruption in Gore’s municipal government; the complaint was deemed to be without merit.
Settlemyre informed Sequoyah County District Judge Gary Huggins that on Feb. 16, 2024, Gideon Miller and his brother, Solomon, followed her while she was on a shopping trip to a couple of stores in Sallisaw.
In addition, “Our Facebook site was hacked,” Settlemyre recalled. At that time, Solomon Miller “was helping with our website and hosted our domain,” she said. Solomon Miller’s contract was terminated and the trustees, during their March 19, 2024, meeting, approved a web hosting agreement with PCA Web Design and Hosting.
In addition, the Miller brothers and Ronald Edward Durbin II of Tulsa “all came in here, shooting videos.” Access to Town Hall is now restricted to just the foyer.
One open records request submitted by Durbin filled two USB drives – which he still hasn’t retrieved, Settlemyre said.
“At one point,” she told the Ledger, “I spent a week” complying with one open records request from Ronald Durbin that consumed 1,700 pages and another filled 389 pages that she loaded onto a USB drive.
“I got five open records requests in my first three years here,” she said. “Between January and March this year I received 180, and now the number is more than 200,” she told the Ledger on June 12.
One open records request was for “all emails between Robin and me,” Settlemyre related. “They are entitled to anything about running the town, texts between me and the town’s attorney or the board of trustees, running the city or expenditure of funds,” Settlemyre said. “But they are not entitled to anything worded that broadly.”
Settlemyre applauded enactment this year of Senate Bill 535, which modifies the state’s Open Records Act. Public bodies will be allowed to require advance payment of records request fees if the total bill would exceed $75. Also, anyone requesting public records will be required to “describe the requested records with reasonable specificity,” which is defined in the legislation. The new law goes into effect Nov. 1.
Settlemyre told the court that she and Gideon Miller had spoken by telephone May 23, 2024, and “I had already told him … that I didn’t have some records” he requested,
Turn to GORE, p7 and that “I could not give him records I didn’t have.” Miller, she told the judge, called her a liar.
Subsequently Miller entered Town Hall “around 4 p.m.” that afternoon, “chased me inside City Hall, screaming at me,” Settlemyre alleged. She fled through a door and, “I was running to my car while wearing 4-inch heels.”
Lisa Settlemyre said she is 5 feet 5 inches tall, while Gideon Miller is 6 feet 4 inches tall.
Gore Town Clerk gets protective order Settlemyre petitioned the district court on June 3, 2024, for a protective order against Miller, claiming she was a victim of harassment and of stalking.
The petition was approved by District Judge Gary Huggins. Miller was: • Forbidden from “attempting or having ANY CONTACT whatsoever with the Petitioner.”
• Prohibited from “injuring, abusing, sexually assaulting, molesting, harassing, stalking, threatening, or otherwise interfering with” Settlemyre, “and from use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force … that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury” to her.
• Prohibited from “engaging in other conduct that would place the protected person in reasonable fear of bodily injury…” Judge Huggins decreed on Feb. 25, 2025, that the emergency protective order remained in effect, and he directed Miller to contact either of two other town employees “for any City of Gore business he needs to conduct.”
“This has been going on for a year and a half,” since January 2024, Settlemyre said. “I almost quit my job a couple of times over this. But I refuse to let them bully me.”
Settlemyre, a Tahlequah native, has lived in Gore for five years.
Gideon Miller has an earthwork company. He and his brother are volunteer members of the town’s Emergency Response unit.
Durbin’s law license was suspended by the Oklahoma Supreme Court and he pleaded ‘no contest’ May 20, 2025, to a criminal charge of “causing a disturbance on the second floor” of the Tulsa County Courthouse on Jan. 17, 2024. During the confrontation Durbin became “abusive” and “violent” and used “obscene, profane, and threatening language,” witnesses told a sheriff’s deputy.
Durbin posts videos on YouTube and describes himself as “the face of Guerrilla Publishing: investigative journalists fighting for Civil Rights across the United States.”