Josephine County voters have reached the end of a campaign to recall Commissioner John West. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped off today, Tuesday, December 17.
West filed a complaint against Josephine County Clerk Rhiannon Henkels because she used statistical sampling to verify the petition signatures. A hearing on this matter will be held Wednesday at 9:30AM at the Josephine County courthouse.
Now we’ll look at the John West recall effort.
In case you’re wondering I voted “No” for the reasons outlined below.
The chief petitioner is Lily Morgan who currently serves as the Gold Hill city manager. Morgan was sued for defamation by West for making false statements on the recall petition. Making false statements on a recall petition is a felony under Oregon law with penalties up to 5 years in prison and fines up to $125,000. It seems that past Oregon lawmakers wanted to prevent frivolous recall petitions by imposing such high penalties. No hearing date has been set for this complaint yet.
In the process of researching this article, I watched about eight hours of YouTube interviews of Lily Morgan and Jay Meredith arguing in favor of the recall and John West defending himself against the six recall petition allegations.
If you’re still undecided, you can watch any or all of these videos. You’ll find links at the end of this article.
Recall Petition Allegations
Let’s look at each of the six allegations.
Allegation 1: “Bad faith negotiations in the Pipe Fork property sale, leading to lost revenue and jeopardizing a Williams community water source.”
The Pipe Fork property is 320 acres of timber owned by Josephine County. A group in Williams began negotiating with the county to buy this property four years ago so that it would not be logged and would remain open to the public. The Williams group was going to buy the property using money from a Virginia-based nonprofit, which would then sell the property to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
West has been a commissioner for less than two years. This year the negotiations broke down because the BLM would not agree to deed restrictions that would guarantee public access to the land and no logging. This recall allegation fails mainly because it was the Board
The county has not lost money and still owns the property. The property was recently put up for auction along with a nearby property. The property did not sell.
This image shows the county-owned timberland recently put up for auction. The property in the upper left is the Pipe Fork property.
Allegation 2: “Ignored the will of the voters by eliminating funding for community programs, including OSU extension, Law Enforcement, and Public Health.”
Read this Oregon Eagle article to understand why parents left 4-H to form their own nonprofit organization, Youth & Ag in Josephine County. Fed Up Parents Launch Alternative to 4-H Clubs.
John West ran for commissioner on a platform to eliminate county wasteful spending and prioritize funding for the Sheriff’s Office. Did John West “eliminate funding for … Law Enforcement”? No, a proposed increase of 10 sheriff deputies was reduced to an increase of five deputies after the sheriff told them that he likely would be able to recruit and hire five new deputies during the fiscal year.
Allegation 3: “West has shown a pattern of violating state laws, including campaign finance regulations and public meeting laws, and is currently facing several pending ethics and labor law violations.”
As a newspaper editor, I would have inserted the word “allegedly” before the word “violating” because John West had not been convicted of anything at the time of the petition filing nor since then.
Ethics violations can be filed by any member of the public. Labor law violation complaints can be filed by any county employee including department heads.
Local reporter Mike Jones edited this 11-minute video about the resolution of the ethics charges. He also conducted long-form videos with recall supporters, Commissioner John West, and Commissioner Herman Baertschiger viewable below. You can find his YouTube channel here.
Dismissal of Ethics Charges Against John West and Herman Baertschiger, the Rest of the Story (10:41)
Allegation 4: “Unlawfully approved a Library District withdrawal leading to costly litigation.”
“Unlawful” means the law does not allow you to do something. This is not true because state law allows property owners to petition the county to join the library district and to withdraw from the library district.
The law was passed in 1971, and this one of the only instances of someone petitioning to leave a tax district. Here is the law: https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_198.870
Josephine County is unusual in that the library tax district that passed in 2017 only covers about half the county’s population. Since 2017, property owners have voluntarily petitioned the board of county commissioners to annex their properties into the tax district.
On Dec. 6, 2023, Commissioner West and Commissioner Baertschiger voted to approve a withdrawal petition submitted by Mike and Winnie Pelfrey the previous October on the basis that their property does not receive library services. Concerned that more property owners would seek de-annexation, the library immediately filed a lawsuit against the county.
Following a legal review of the county’s petitioning process, the county adopted a revised petitioning process to be annexed into or to withdraw from the library. Property owners who had previously been annexed in under the invalidated process were grandfathered-in by the board of commissioners. The Pelfreys were told to resubmit their petition using the new process if they wished to withdraw from the library district. The library dropped its lawsuit following the adoption of the corrected petitioning process.
Allegation 5: “West has shown a pattern of threatening community safety by reducing the Firewise program, reducing the Emergency Management program, and eliminating property development fire standards.“
Any reduction in the Firewise program came from state budget cuts not the commissioners. Commissioner Herman Baertschiger said this about the Firewise program. “So FireWise that’s an easy one. We had two Firewise coordinators. We could have ran both fire wise coordinators, probably to the end of the year, then the program would end, or if we got rid of one Firewise program coordinator, we probably could get another year out of the money.”
John West asserts he has “never cut emergency management programs.” Commissioner West cannot cut any program or budget without the concurrence of one or two of the other county commissioners.
“Eliminating property development fire standards” refers to the commissioners voting to eliminate the requirement of property owners in the county to purchase fire protection services when building or making major remodeling. The commissioners took this step after Rural Metro acquired County Fire leaving county residents just one option for fire protection services. The commissioners based this decision on residents already paying for fire protection services from the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Allegation 6: “Hired unqualified political allies for key County employee and contract positions.”
Hiring key positions is always a challenge because hiring mistakes are costly in time and money. Faced with two final candidates, the commissioners hired the local candidate, Michael Sellers, rather than a candidate from Idaho who had never been to Josephine County until he arrived for this job interview. Sellers serves as the manager of both the county’s Information Technology and Emergency Management departments.
Separately, the commissioners hired former County Commissioner Simon Hare on a contract basis to facilitate the county receiving a grant for broadband services. He was paid $3,200 and successfully pursued a $150,000 grant.
In both cases, the commissioners hired someone they knew, liked and trusted to get the job done.
Ironically, chief petitioner Lily Morgan was hired as the Gold Hill city manager in part because of the strong recommendation by the interim Gold Hill city manager, Bill Landis, who knew Lily Morgan well because he was the Grants Pass director of public safety when Morgan was on the city council.
Morgan had zero years’ experience as a city manager, but Landis knew her and how she had performed in other government positions. This was a win for the Gold Hill City Council because they avoided an expensive recruitment search and was able to hire locally.
Conclusion
I voted “No” on the recall because the allegations simply don’t stand up, as explain above.
We need John West to continue to do the job he was voted in to do. We need limited-government conservatives in office to reduce wasteful spending, provide essential services and minimize taxes.
At a time of out-of-control spending at the state and federal levels, we need to keep a lid on local government spending. Keeping John West in office is a great way to do this.
Recall Interviews
John West refutes recall petitioners’ claims
Jay Meredith calls John Wests actions illegal
Commissioner Herman Baertschiger on the John West Recall:
Baertschiger explains things from the commissioners’ perspective. It’s an education on how things work in county government. Baertschiger is not being recalled, nor is he a recall petitioner.
Richard Emmons is the publisher and editor of the Oregon Eagle.