It was September 2024 and we at the Grants Pass Tribune first published “A Story of Corruption.” Click here for a refresher, since this was the prelude to last week’s corruption revelations by Josephine County insiders.
We published facts about how Michael Sellers was hired in 2023 to be the Director of a newly created position of IT/Emergency Management Director, according to insiders created just for him so he could have a higher amount of pay than just a regular director. Mr. Sellers may have been qualified for the IT Director position, but he did not have any boots on the ground experience in Emergency Management operations. This crony hiring process was confirmed by both county insiders and a highly qualified Emergency Management Director candidate, all with firsthand experience in the hiring process.
Then came the first attacks on the Josephine Community Library District, in a way that might not have been widely reported or remembered today. Library officials had been collaborating with the County’s previous IT Director for a broadband grant of almost $200,000. Library officials made more than six attempts to meet with Mr. Sellers to finalize the grant, and Mr. Sellers refused to meet or respond to any of the emails. Library officials had no choice but to give up on the grant. Then the more public attacks on the Library District began, led by former Commissioner John West.
In attempting to justify the crony hiring process, former Commissioner West also falsely claimed that merging the IT and Emergency Management departments saved the County $95,000 per year. In reality, the combined budgets for both departments increased by $835,400, or 35.3%, in fiscal year 2025. This was the first annual budget created after the merging of these departments. While Sellers’ departments got a combined 35% increase in budget, commissioners randomly reduced other department budgets such as Public Health, in what now appears to be an act of retaliation against a department director that attempted to report wrongdoing by commissioners West and Baertschiger.
During approximately the first 18 months of Mr. Sellers on the job as the County’s IT/Emergency Management Director, he was also working full-time for the State of Oregon with 50% of his state time dedicated to serving under one Republican State Senator and 50% of his state time under a separate Republican State Senator. He only disclosed one of those jobs when applying with Josephine County. And the two Commissioners that hired him claimed they didn’t know about the one that was disclosed, which confirms the crony hiring process (they didn’t even read his resume/application if they truly didn’t know he was working for a State Senator).
What’s worse, after both the Grants Pass Tribune and the Grants Pass Daily Courier reported on how Mr. Sellers was working more jobs than one person could physically perform and as a result was shorting the taxpayers of the state and/or county, Josephine County Commissioners took no action and didn’t care one bit that he was essentially shorting taxpayers. Just the job of IT Director alone is more than a full-time job, and now he was the Director of both IT and Emergency Management plus working another full-time job for the State of Oregon on top of that!
Then came a significant budget mistake by Mr. Sellers in the Emergency Management arena, likely either due to not having the time to research the matter thoroughly or misunderstanding the budget or program requirements of Title III federal funds. In early summer 2024, Mr. Sellers recommended to the Commissioners to cut the Firewise program in half, despite federal funds and carryover funds being available to keep the program fully funded for many years to come. Sellers claimed the program was running out of money, when in fact it was not running out of money. I personally sat down with the County’s Finance Director last year and confirmed that the program was not actually running out of money (and I have a witness who joined me in this meeting). And after everything that has played out in recent weeks, I now suspect that the former Finance Director chose not to speak up about this because she didn’t want to offend one of the Commissioners’ favorite directors. I also personally asked the Commissioners several times to explain this. One commissioner in a weekly business session promised he would have the Finance Director make a presentation on this topic to clear the air. Then that presentation never happened.
Then came the Commissioner John West recall campaign. Some of us heard from reliable sources that Mr. Sellers was monitoring emails of County employees, likely even those of law enforcement professionals. Sources also claimed that Sellers spent a fair amount of time across the street from the Courthouse at the Josephine County Republican headquarters building, which makes sense given Sellers has been and continues to be the Vice Chair of the Josephine County Republican Central Committee. Several sources also claimed in 2024 that Sellers developed a reputation inside the County Courthouse as being intimidating and untrustworthy, as well as spending an unusual amount of time in the Commissioners’ offices. It’s unclear how widespread this attitude towards Sellers is among County employees, but several sources confirmed how much time Sellers has spent in the Commissioners’ offices. This makes sense given that Sellers worked under Baertschiger during his eight years as State Senator.
Next, in 2025 comes all kinds of firings, layoffs, and a voluntary employee resignation/buyout program, all without any explanation by the Commissioners behind these actions. Through either voluntary resignations or layoffs/terminations, the County reportedly lost all but one staff member in HR, lost several department directors and other key employees, and reportedly all employees in code enforcement and solid waste. But Commissioners still haven’t publicly detailed all these losses.
The County has either been slow to respond or has delayed responding to public records requests about many of these actions, but we know the voluntary employee resignation program was approved by Commissioners without even a financial analysis of the potential costs. Our rough estimate has been the likely total cost including benefits and payroll taxes is probably about $800,000, but we won’t know for sure until the County responds to outstanding public records requests which have been outstanding for several weeks. And Mr. Sellers is in charge of the staff that respond to public records requests.
As we’ve reported in several articles in the last couple of months, the move to lay off several County employees and offer the voluntary resignation program comes at a time of increasing operational revenues in the last couple years. While former and current commissioners claim revenues are dropping, when it comes to operational revenues that support day-to-day operations of Josephine County, those revenues are actually increasing. The County will have less capital project money in future budgets due to COVID-era money dwindling, but this has little effect on day-to-day County operations. All these costly employee layoffs have been done without a legitimate financial reason, and worse many recent employee actions have resulted in lawsuits with even more lawsuits being threatened.
Now because the County lost its Finance/HR Director from the voluntary resignation program, Mr. Sellers was put in charge of both Finance and HR, despite having no experience or certifications in these areas. Before the public learned of Budget Officer Simon Hare’s resignation letter last week and the letter from former Finance Director Sandy Novak confirming Hare’s revelations, we had public records requests outstanding related to Sellers’ salary rates, results of the employee voluntary resignation program, and more.
On social media in recent days, former Finance/HR Director Sandy Novak has made it clear that she left the County due to the corruption and what she sees as the boys’ club that don’t respect women professionals. A recent social media post by Ms. Novak said “I was hired two pay grades below the man before me. The man after me has ZERO training in GASB [Government Accounting Standards] but is getting $14 an hour more than I was 10 years into the gig.”
Ms. Novak continued, “As the shit show continues to unravel I plead with folks to pay attention. Pay attention to the one pulling the strings. Pay attention to the one who runs to a camera, not noticing the painful story unfolding in front of him (that he voted for, but didn’t notice or care about the aftermath).”
Nobody in the public even knew Mr. Sellers had the newly bestowed title of “Interim Director of Operations” until Chris Bristol of the Grants Pass Daily Courier broke the story on April 3rd, 2025. Sellers reportedly used this title in the termination letters of two employees, Public Health Director Mike Weber and Community Development Director Mark Stevenson. Even more concerning, the Courier reported that Sellers claimed in his resume sent to Josephine County that he had a master’s degree in cybersecurity, however in a sworn declaration in a lawsuit in January 2025, Sellers admitted he was one course short and one thesis dissertation short of actually earning the “Master of Science in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance.”
After learning of the harsh and corruption allegations in last week’s Simon Hare budget officer resignation letter, former Finance/HR Director Sandy Novak wrote a letter of her own, confirming the allegations of corruption, improper behavior of current and past commissioners, and the costly personnel action mistakes. In regards to Sellers’ new reign as the Director of Operations, Novak wrote as a response to the Simon Hare resignation letter, “I fully concur with his public statement as I have experienced what he described. Mr. Sellers should be moved back to IT alone and not be considered for a position doing anything else until he has demonstrated an ability to prepare, manage, and make efficient the budget of the IT department, he should especially not be given authority over all budgets. Further, he should not be serving as Finance Director or over Finance without a working knowledge of Government Accounting Standards and GAAP…”
In last week’s Simon Hare budget officer resignation letter, Hare cited a number of instances of financial mismanagement and chaos caused by recent personnel actions, including an alleged cost of over $633,000 for the Voluntary Resignation Program. But of course, what got everyone’s attention from last week’s letter was a budgeted plan to pay Mr. Sellers a total of $388,000 (including taxes/benefits) in the next fiscal year for his new role as Director of Operations. Hare’s resignation letter stated, “This compensation package was negotiated and approved by Chairman Blech as the result of weeks of closed door, backroom meetings with Sellers. I think it is safe to assume with the full knowledge and delegated authority of the other two commissioners, Barnett and Smith.”
Hare also circulated a budget report directly from the County’s financial system showing in fact that Seller’s budgeted pay rate was $113 per hour, annual wage of $254,125, with a total compensation package including taxes and benefits of $388,049. The budget document also showed that 25% of Sellers’ cost was to be allocated to the HR department budget, while 75% of Sellers’ cost was to be allocated to the IT/Finance department budgets. This rate is step 5 of the D15 pay grade, reportedly the top pay grade available in the entire County salary schedule and pay grade structure.
Having some experience in budget processes after personally serving as the City of Grants Pass Finance Director for the 10 years between 2010 and 2020, in my opinion this budget document disclosed by Hare looks legitimate. However, it’s not clear how much involvement Commissioners Barnett and Smith had in the promotion of Michael Sellers to the inappropriately high-priced role of Director of Operations and Step 5 of the pay scale for that role despite not having experience or qualifications to fill that role (in my opinion and in the opinion of Simon Hare and former Finance/HR Director Sandy Novak).
And of course as reported in last week’s “BCC Weekly,” Commissioner Barnett was on the Bill Meyer radio show singing the praises of the job Michael Sellers has been doing. Barnett said, “Michael Sellers has really stepped up. He really cares about the County and how we do things there and try to run more efficiently. He is the Director of Operations, so that is his job. He oversees the other departments, and he gives us briefings and updates…it kind of makes the process of supervising more efficient and the Director of Operations is doing that. And it gives us more time as commissioners to be out in the field and do things people want us to do.”
Therefore, Commissioner Barnett admitted on the radio that Sellers is essentially supervising other departments and performing many of the same duties that a County Manager performs. None of this has been reported to the public, and according to the Simon Hare resignation letter even County employees do not know who is “running” the County. Hare’s letter stated, “Since being appointed to fill Novak’s role as budget officer, it is undeniable Sellers is running Josephine County, hiring and firing at will and setting budget directives.”
Sellers was invited to the Bill Meyer radio show last Friday morning to answer to some of these allegations. Bill Meyer asked some inappropriate leading questions at the beginning of the interview such as “you can probably afford what half of the current number of employees that Josephine County has…is that a fair assessment?” Sellers responded that we have to be nimble to adjust for changes in state and federal funding and we won’t know exactly what that looks like until the legislature completes this session.
Except that as previously stated, operational revenues that support day-to-day operations of the County are increasing and not decreasing. And most general fund, law enforcement, and public works revenue sources that support day-to-day operations don’t come from state/federal grants and almost entirely are not dependent on what the state legislature does in the current legislative session. Sellers (and Bill Meyer) likely think that the County is going to be hurting because of threatened reductions in state or federal funding because that’s what former Commissioner Baertschiger said incorrectly over and over again on his weekly appearances on the Bill Meyer show and Sellers worked for Baertschiger during Baertschiger’s 8 years serving as State Senator. Baertschiger and Sellers may be good at analyzing state budgets and state legislation, but that clearly doesn’t translate into knowing the ins and outs of Josephine County’s budget. The recent layoffs and voluntary resignation program were done without legitimate financial reasons, which Simon Hare also confirmed in his resignation letter.
As the Bill Meyer / Sellers interview went on, Meyer started asking better questions. But Sellers did not do himself or the County any favors in how he answered the questions, and in many cases did not even directly answer the questions. What Sellers said about how the County sets compensation levels appeared to be partially inaccurate, and Sellers admitted to currently being paid at a D15, step 6 level. Typically, when a government employee gets placed in a position where they have no experience doing the job, that employee starts the job at step 1 or step 2. Therefore, there are several questions outstanding about why Sellers was placed in the top County spot without having experience working in these types of roles and also why he was placed in step 5 (as shown in the budget document below) or step 6 as he stated he was at in his radio interview.
Sellers also claimed on the radio interview that there is a civil or criminal investigation that is being launched into Simon Hare’s release of personnel salary and benefit information which shows Sellers’ proposed salary and benefit package of approximately $388,000 in total compensation. However, since it was posted all over Facebook I also took a look at it and it appears to me that it’s just information that is public information and could be obtained in a standard public records request. Doing an investigation into this matter seems like a complete waste of time and money.
Firing back, Simon Hare did an interview with Mike Jones which was released on YouTube on Sunday April 27th and can be seen here. Simon Hare stated that Mr. Sellers was the one that gave him the budget documents he released, stated that Mr. Sellers was weeks late in turning in his recommended budget documents for this next fiscal year, stated BCC Chair Andreas Blech is the one that told him (and John West) that the $388k compensation package is what is being proposed, and generally reiterated many of the red flags that we at the Grants Pass Tribune have been throwing up for months now. Simon also claimed that after seeing these budget and salary documents he then had about a one-hour conversation with Commissioner Barnett, pleading with him to rescind the unilateral personnel action authority that the Board gave to Chair Blech alone for 90 days, due to this Sellers issue and a potential pending written contract to place Sellers in this role permanently. Then a couple meetings of the BCC came and went without Barnett taking any kind of action at all towards doing the right thing. Watch the interview for yourself on YouTube. I found that I agreed with just about everything Mr. Hare said.
Last but certainly not least, as we’ve reported several times and as mentioned by Simon Hare, there have been many instances of the County breaking its own administrative or purchasing policies in recent months. We believe that according to County policy, the BCC can’t even sign a contract with Mr. Sellers without the approval of the full Board in a public meeting. Why they would even want to without going through a typical hiring process for the County’s top appointed job is also a major question, but there are legal reasons to believe that any major contract signed by just one Commissioner could potentially be voided. This is a concern because we’re now hearing rumors of a multimillion-dollar land purchase contract that was done without the full BCC’s approval in a public meeting, which reportedly happened about seven weeks ago today. Mr. Hare stated one other behind closed doors decision that was just made a couple weeks ago without any public input, and that was to combine the Community Corrections and Juvenile Justice programs under one single director.
In summary, the public’s main concern is the recent secret appointment of Michael Sellers to the “Director of Operations” role, the top appointed spot in Josephine County government. Sellers’ mistakes and lack of communication with the Library District lost our community a broadband grant of almost $200,000. We may have lost hundreds of thousands of grant dollars that used to support the Firewise program due to a Sellers budget analysis mistake. Sellers told a white lie on his resume when applying to Josephine County, as documented by the Daily Courier. Many County employees have reported to us that they feel Sellers is intimidating and untrustworthy (not a great start for a position that supervises most County departments). Sellers does not have experience working as a Finance professional or an HR professional, but now he leads those departments. Certain personnel firings/layoffs that have already occurred under Sellers (he signed the layoff letters) will likely incur costly lawsuits, in my opinion. And Sellers was just appointed to the top appointed spot in County government at the top pay grade and nearly top step, despite the lack of experience working in these areas and in this kind of role…without opening up the job to any other applicants and at a pay rate significantly higher than top pay rates of County Managers in our peer counties.
Josephine County, we’re in quite a pickle here. Abuse of power (corruption) appears to be running rampant in the County Courthouse and the silence from the Commissioners is deafening. Commissioners better immediately start following their own policies and start making decisions in full view of the public and be transparent as to the reasons for making those decisions. This will not end well if transparency isn’t restored immediately, and if all these questions remain unanswered.