The BCC Weekly – Taking the “Blind” out of the BCC
Let me begin by saying it gives me absolutely no pleasure to write an article with this headline. I’m honestly kind of sick about having to write this. But having witnessed all the things I have seen in the last nine months, I would be doing a disservice to my fellow Josephine County citizens if I didn’t speak up. And in some ways, our local safety is at stake. I’ll get to that at the end.
Anyone watching local candidate races closely in the general election last fall knows that the November election turned into local partisan battle, despite all local government positions being nonpartisan by their respective government charters. And it got dirty, way worse than local campaigning should ever be in Josephine County in my opinion.
Recalled Commissioner John West worked overtime to get as many of his buddies into Josephine County and City of Grants Pass elected offices. Eyes started to be opened when he made a relatively large financial donation to commissioner candidate Chris Barnett. Considering West was embroiled in a recall, Barnett tried to deflect about his relationship with John West. He even showed up at a County Commissioner meeting and said he had no “business with John West.” Then not long after this he admitted on the radio he has been John West’s real estate agent for the last 15 years.
Then there was the sign stealing incident where Barnett played the victim card. During his campaign for Commissioner, he released a video of someone allegedly stealing one of his campaign signs. He claimed he caught them in the act. We later found out he edited the video and cut the part of Barnett screaming at this person while this person was trying to explain themselves. Barnett then took to the airwaves to publicize the incident on the Bill Meyer show and even paid for Facebook advertising to make sure the video got lots of views and to play the victim and smear the person. Law enforcement investigated and no charges were filed. Ask Barnett for a case number and ask him why no charges were filed.
When the Michael Sellers scandal broke last fall (both the Grants Pass Tribune and the Grants Pass Daily Courier reported on it), I asked Chris Barnett and other County Commissioner candidates what they thought about a County Director that oversees two County departments having a second full time job with the State of Oregon. I asked if they thought it was appropriate for a County Department Director to have a second full-time job and if they would support a policy change that might restrict this. Chris Barnett went back and forth with me by text message over this topic and refused to answer the simple question. Of course today we all know why he refused to answer this question while campaigning.
One other glaring red flag was observed on social media while Barnett was campaigning for commissioner. Barnett would regularly repeat the phrase “Unity for the Community,” as well as brag about how many decades he’s been in this community. Then on October 19th last year Barnett responded to a comment on Facebook by Keith Heck by saying “and what did you do for Josephine County? Never heard of you or ever seen you at events and personally don’t even know you in our community and I’m fully vested in our county events and been here 44 years….says a lot Keith from someone that nobody knows of but wants to input. Sorry but very true.”
Apparently Chris Barnett doesn’t even know that Keith Heck was the former Executive Director of the GP Gospel Rescue Mission and was also an elected Josephine County Commissioner that was in office between 2013 and 2016. Apparently Barnett is a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to Josephine County governance and wasn’t paying attention 8 years ago when Keith Heck was a sitting County Commissioner.
And while it may not seem like a huge deal, the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune saw John West and Chris Barnett out putting up campaign signs together. Chris played it off (lied) about the incident saying something along the lines of it was a coincidental meeting with West while he was out and about. Barnett’s car was nowhere in sight, and this was simply not a true statement.
Then last fall Barnett sued the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune for writing stories with what he says was not factual information, meant to smear Barnett. Examples of what he called fake news was the big lawsuit Barnett lost against dozens of elderly plaintiffs related to the Osprey Point RV Park that Barnett purchased in 2017. Barnett was accused of breaching resident contracts, interfering with their resort rights, and elder abuse. Barnett called this fake news, but a couple weeks ago the Oregon Supreme Court found him guilty. Barnett was caught in another false statement while the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune was once again vindicated.
Even worse, as widely reported recently, Barnett took to the airwaves after the Supreme Court verdict against him saying this verdict was fake and allegations completely made up! Three levels of court in Oregon and everything is just made up lawfare, claimed Barnett on the Bill Meyer radio show. And he said it has nothing to do with him personally; it’s just an LLC matter for the LLC Barnett created when purchasing this resort. Well, the actual court documents and court testimony paint a VERY different picture here and Barnett’s statements were simply not true.
Barnett’s lawsuit against the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune filed last fall has always looked like a loser in my personal opinion, but now it seems likely to be tossed on many grounds. And due to Barnett’s treatment of the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune, the counter suit filed against Barnett is likely to be a big winner (in my opinion) after reviewing all the allegations and facts. This will be a huge distraction to Barnett in the next year or two, and these are only a couple of many lawsuits or threatened lawsuits now involving Commissioner Barnett either personally or with the County.
These all should have been clear warning signs to voters in Josephine County, but let’s face it not everyone has the time to dig into the nitty gritty details. Sure enough, after winning his election and being sworn in as a County Commissioner in early January 2025, we found out those early warning signs were accurate predictors of future behaviors.
Barnett’s first meeting after being sworn in as commissioner, recalled Commissioner John West convinced Barnett and Commissioner Smith to vote on a premature lease cancellation with the Josephine County Library District. The vote was to give the Library only 30 days to renegotiate the lease, which had an original expiration date of December 2025. Rather than doing the right thing and taking this whole year to negotiate a new lease on the normal timeline, Barnett bowed to his friend and former Commissioner John West and voted to terminate the lease. Everyone knows the absolute chaos that followed this decision.
During Barnett’s first month in the Commissioner’s office, the Grants Pass Tribune made a request to be recognized by the County for media credentials to attend executive sessions just like the other main newspapers in Josephine County. The request was ignored by the Commissioners.
Rather than act on the request, Barnett created several new “news” agencies of his own and started promoting them on Facebook. He even called one of them the “Josephine County Tribune” and another “Grants Pass Media Events.” This appeared to us as more direct attacks on the Grants Pass Tribune and on the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune, given Barnett knew the legal entity behind the Grants Pass Tribune is called Grants Pass Media.
We had to make a second request in March 2025 to County legal and to the County Commissioners to be recognized as official media for the purposes of attending County executive sessions. This second request was also ignored, despite having conveyed to the commissioners that the Grants Pass Tribune is probably getting as many online article views as the largest newspaper in town. Then rather than act on our media request per approved County policy, the BCC decided last week to simply not hold executive sessions at all anymore and suspend the media policy. This is ridiculous given there are several legal situations that require a private executive session of the BCC. They were caught not following their own County policies again and in my opinion discriminating against the Grants Pass Tribune again, so this is how they chose to wiggle out of it.
Barnett has since paid for Facebook advertising to grow his fledgling news businesses on Facebook and even put out an advertisement to hire journalists. And Barnett seems to have spent most of his article-writing time railing against what Barnett calls “Fake News,” rather than actually write articles of substance. Once again, evidence is piling up that this is just an attack on legitimate local media that sometimes write articles critical of Barnett’s performance.
Since the launch of one of Barnett’s new “News” organizations, the Josephine County Tribune on February 10th, 2025, most of the Facebook page posts are simply passing on news or event announcements that were put out by other organizations. There have only been 9 original articles of substance or letters to the editor, and only 3 of these 9 had the author’s name listed on it. While there have been 9 additional articles or major posts complaining about fake news or “warning” of the dangers of fake news. It seems clear, in my opinion, these new “news” organizations have a goal of attacking any local media that Barnett dislikes.
Making matters worse, we learned this week that Barnett lied to the investigators of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission in an ethics case that was dismissed on April 29, 2025. In the investigator’s report contains the following paragraph:
“Mr. Barnett further acknowledged that, while he does have a news media badge, his work does not focus on county politics. He then provided Commission staff with information on the News Companies. He explained that he registered the names of the News Companies with the Oregon Secretary of State as a favor to a friend who is considering starting a news media business. The business names were registered for copyright purposes, and Mr. Barnett claims that Mr. Oliver Riccio is upset that he cannot use the names. Mr. Barnett does not collect any money from the News Companies. Additionally, he states that News Companies’ Facebook accounts are not managed by him, but by moderators. Lastly, Mr. Barnett stated that any Facebook posts on the News Companies’ accounts are made only after the information is publicly available.”
The statement that the “News Companies’ Facebook accounts are not managed by him” is a false statement by Barnett. And here’s the proof and the truth, which doesn’t take detective skills to figure out. For one, most of the videos that are posted on these news pages are videos done by Barnett himself, with Barnett himself speaking in many of the videos. Secondly, Barnett has owned and managed a Facebook news page called “Real Live News Southern Oregon” since long before he was seated as commissioner in January this year. When various things are posted on his brand-new News Companies’ Facebook pages, they often get posted to Real Live News Southern Oregon at the same time. And finally, we’ve captured screenshots of some posts that were posted to all Barnett’s News Companies Facebook pages as well as the official Facebook Pages for Josephine County and Josephine County Commissioners all posting the same thing at the same time. In my opinion, there is no doubt that Barnett is running and managing all these News Companies’ Facebook Pages. And he really can’t deny it…he speaks in most of the videos posted on these pages!
In summary, Commissioner Chris Barnett has lied to the public, lied during his commissioner campaign, lied to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, and in recent weeks has essentially said that the Oregon Supreme Court ruling against him is a completely fabricated claim and that it has nothing to do with him personally. We have a County Commissioner that has no respect for ethics or the rule of law.
Commissioner Barnett has also lost the trust of many that voted for him in recent weeks. And the calls for him to be recalled from office beginning in July when a recall petition could be legally filed (6 months being in office) are way stronger and louder than the voices of those that were calling for a recall of John West last summer. And Commissioner John West lost his recall vote by almost a 2 to 1 margin. My guess is that a current recall vote for Commissioner Chris Barnett would be even more lopsided to the yes on recall side.
Losing trust of the citizenry is costly in so many ways. And the number one job of local government in Oregon is public safety and law enforcement. We have to renew the Josephine County Jail and Juvenile Justice levy in the not-too-distant future, and if we want to have a properly functioning local criminal justice system this jail levy absolutely needs to be renewed. The less trust in our elected leaders, the harder it is to pass a levy or a levy renewal with voters.
Chris Barnett must resign as Commissioner immediately. And for more reasons than I had space to write just in this article. After talking to many people in recent weeks, in my opinion Barnett has lost trust with the Josephine County citizenry. Barnett has demonstrated a lack of respect for ethics as well as law and order, and it’s almost a sure thing that citizens will launch a recall if Barnett does not resign.
Let’s save the County the $60k or so that it costs to do a recall and start the healing sooner rather than later. Barnett has several other jobs other than his full-time commissioner job which has a total cost including benefits of $139,702. He’ll be fine, and the County can begin healing. And remaining commissioners must allow the remaining elected officials of the County to choose his replacement, which is the best way to honor voters of Josephine County.