As one of the original authors of the Recall Petition for Josephine County Commissioner John West, filed on August 2, 2024, as I reported last week I can honestly say I’ve been shocked about all the false statements made about the petition by Commissioner West and the Central Committee of the Josephine County Republican Party. And before reading on, let me say that I’m a lifelong conservative and also a registered Republican. And despite what West and other West allies have said lately, all the original “founding” members of what is now called the Committee to Recall John West were Republicans when the idea was in its formation stage. We just wanted to hold one of our own accountable.
So that’s the first of dozens of false statements made in response to this recall petition. West and his camp are saying this is a liberal effort, democrat effort, etc. This is of course not true. Then since the filing of the recall petition West has gone out of his way to attack the individuals involved in this recall effort, rather than debating the facts of the recall petition points. They say when you resort to personal attacks you’ve lost the debate. West lost this debate months ago, and his personal attacks have only intensified in recent weeks.
A few weeks after the petition signature gathering effort was launched, and after West put out his first written rebuttal of the petition points which was also riddled with false statements, West did an interview about the recall on the Bill Meyer radio show. And on this radio show all of a sudden he revealed that he had a private meeting with County Commissioner candidate Pat Fahey around March 2024 at the County Courthouse before the May 2024 vote on the Charter Change measure. He claimed on the radio that the subject of the meeting was that Pat Fahey was trying to get West’s support for the charter change measure and that he wanted to do a deal with West because he wanted Lily Morgan (chief petitioner of recall petition) to be the County Manager after the charter change was approved by voters.
These are nothing but false statements from West, and here’s why. West has admitted on video he personally spent more than $10,000 campaigning against the charter change measure earlier in 2024. West also broke state campaign finance laws by not reporting any of that spending, but the point here is West was one of the most vocal opponents of the charter change measure. And anyone paying attention to local happenings and the full-page ads that West has put in various local publications knows that Pat Fahey is like an arch enemy of West when it comes to the local political arena. Had that discussion actually happened as West said it did, West would have been SHOUTING from the rooftops about this meeting right after it happened. Because West wanted nothing more than the charter change measure to be voted down and Pat Fahey to be unsuccessful in his run for County Commissioner.
In fact, when Pat Fahey heard this recording of the West radio segment in August 2024, he informally challenged West to a polygraph test about what they discussed in that meeting. West of course backed off, just like he did when he recently turned down a live debate with the Recall Committee spokespeople. But West made that series of false statements in several other media interviews, presumably so that he could try and make the recall effort look bad.
West’s personal attacks on recall chief petitioner Lily Morgan have been relentless, and the lie about Pat Fahey wanting Morgan to be the County Manager was quite the whopper. The truth is, Lily Morgan just started a new job with the City of Gold Hill and informally committed 5 years to Gold Hill just as all City Managers are supposed to when they start a new City Manager job.
West repeated some of these lies in a big full-page ad in the Sneak Preview for the October 2024 edition. And West attacked me personally in the ad as well. The false statement on Lily Morgan in this full-page ad: “[Lily] Morgan needs John West out of the way so she can be appointed County Manager costing you over $300,000 per year.” Every part of this statement is false. The ad also stated “Meredith needs John West out of the way to push his takeover of Josephine County timberlands for a company called American Mineral Research. So they can leverage the taxpayers land and get investor’s money.” This statement is false as well as absurd.
The company American Mineral Research applied under the terms of County Code for a mining lease on just one piece of county property that has 76 acres (which makes up about 0.3% of the acreage all County owned timber properties). The company applied for the lease because we wanted to show the County how it could earn more revenues from its timberland to help support County Law Enforcement and Justice programs (without costing taxpayers anything), and we projected this single property could net Josephine County about $260,000 per year once commercial production started from the property.
Had American Mineral Research obtained a lease on that 76-acre property, it’s safe to say that taking over 0.3% of County properties would not meet the definition of a “takeover of Josephine County timberlands.” At this point perhaps it’s worthy to state that making false statements in advertising for a ballot measure or candidate is also against state elections law. I highly recommend that Commissioner West and anyone else interested read “ORS 260.532 False publication relating to candidate or measure; civil action; damages; other remedies; limitation on action.”
West was on a radio show yet again in the last week attempting to refute some of the recall petition claims. On the decision related to the American Mineral Research mining lease application just discussed here, West claimed “Commissioners made a 3-0 vote against the lease.”
Despite County Code law requiring the County to enter into a lease on a mining lease application when the applicant meets certain requirements, when American Mineral Research applied for this lease in May 2023 (5 months after West was in his Commissioner office), Josephine County has never once had a vote on this lease application. That’s right, 19 months after applying for this lease per the terms of county law, Commissioners haven’t even scheduled a decision on the lease application on the Board’s agenda. Just ask West or the County Commissioners to show proof of their decision in the official agendas and minutes of County Board meetings. They won’t be able to back up this West false statement. We’ve sent countless emails to Commissioners and County Legal on this topic and they’ve all been ignored.
Adding insult to monetary injury, in reaction to this recall petition, in October 2024 West spearheaded an effort to just put this specific mineral-rich property up for sale to damage American Mineral Research. West ignored yet another email warning from American Mineral Research and just voted to sell the property without even considering the legal ramifications of this action. West is opening both himself and the County up to significant legal risks by these kinds of actions. Not only has Commissioner West broken the law in these series of actions, but West has recently lied in relation to the recall ballot measure and the County taxpayers will be missing revenues that could support our local law enforcement and justice programs.
West acted out in a similar way in recent months in what appears to be vindictiveness and anger against the Williams area-based group that had been trying to purchase the County’s Pipe Fork timber property. This is another one of recall petition points. After Commissioners West and Baertschiger acted in bad faith in the final stages of the Pipe Fork property transaction and refused to sell the property to that group at a price that was about $300,000 above the official appraised price of the property, County Commissioners recently put that property up for sale in a public auction which closed in November 2024.
However, to add insult to injury for the potential Williams area purchasers, West and Baertschiger required this property to be bundled with another nearby County-owned timber property to make it harder for the Williams group to purchase it. Further twisting the knife into the people of Williams, the County offered those two similar bundled properties at a minimum bid price of about 10% LESS per acre than what the Williams group offered. The property didn’t even sell at auction, further strengthening the recall petition point and the community’s concerns. This has ended up as a lose/lose/lose scenario, and now County taxpayers are out $2.3 million of forestry revenues they could have had last summer.
Speaking of “ORS 260.532 False publication relating to candidate or measure,” West also just paid for a big direct mailer to many voters in Josephine County that repeat a bunch of other lies that West has made since the filing of the recall petition. Maybe I’ll dive into the nitty gritty of the mailer details in a future article, but for now I’ll say that every statement except one in this mailer is categorically false. In my opinion, it’s another example of personal attacks rather than debating the facts of the recall petition.
For this part one of the Chronicles of False Statements by Josephine County Commissioner John West let’s end with how West’s votes and actions negatively affected the safety of the community by removing County funding from County Law Enforcement programs and ignored the will of the people in the process. While a nuanced budget discussion, the bottom line is that West along with one other County Commissioner voted and acted to take General Fund money away from the Sheriff’s office during last summer’s annual budget process. This was just six months after County voters said yes to a new Law Enforcement Service District for the county areas outside the City of Grants Pass and provides a new $5.3 million per year of revenues for the Sheriff’s office.
Simply stated, this new $5.3 million per year from the new voter-approved Law Enforcement Service District was supposed to fund at least 20 new staff members in the Sheriff’s office. Due to the budget parameters laid out by West and one other County commissioner, the recommended budget had zero new staff members in the Sheriff’s recommended budget. And after a contentious series of budget votes that ended in a 2-1 vote to adopt the budget, this year’s budget has only the equivalent of funding for 5 new full-time Sheriff staff members. This is not what County voters said yes to just six months before these decisions.
West, in a YouTube video interview on The Oregon Grape Podcast that was filmed just a few days ago blamed this on the County losing “grant” funding. Nothing could be much further from the truth. The truth is the County took away some of its existing General Fund revenue that used to support the Sheriff’s office, right after the County voters said we’re willing to pay a slightly higher tax rate for more Sheriff services. The chart below is a presentation slide directly from the Sheriff’s presentation to the Budget Committee in June 2024. This was extremely concerning to the Sheriff.
I was actively involved in last summer’s county budget process and spent several hours preparing budget recommendations that would have kept the County budget well balanced and give the Sheriff the financial resources his department was due for the current year. The Sheriff thanked me for providing these recommendations and ended up passing some of the recommendations to the budget committee. West and one other County Commissioner ultimately ignored most of these recommendations, and West was the only one of the six budget committee members to vote no on all the Sheriff budget votes.
Here ends part one of the Chronicles of West’s false statements. Should you find yourself questioning any of the facts in this article, most of this information can be verified with a simple public records request which can be easily done right on the County website. Simple public records requests are free if the information can be emailed to you and there are not a lot of documents involved in the request.
And if you’re the type of person that wants to dive into the details behind the Recall Petition points, see the fact sheet posted at www.RecallJohnWest.com and feel free to reach out to the Recall Committee with any questions.
