The Southern Oregon Government Watch Weekly
Once again this week’s Southern Oregon Government Watch should be considered an opinion piece and the author is a defendant against a lawsuit filed against him by John West, one of a few subjects of this article. But like all the author’s articles over the last two years in the Grants Pass Tribune, the author stands by all statements which are presented as fact. John West, recalled by 62% of voters that cast a ballot in December 2024, has brought a lawsuit against four different individuals that supported his recall campaign. In our opinion, these are frivolous lawsuits that are trying to take away our constitutional rights to free speech. As of today’s publication date, no court of law has ever reviewed a claim made against a writer or article in the Grants Pass Tribune based on the merit of the claim and judged any such writing was false or defamatory.
As most readers know by now, recalled commissioner John West is running to get his commissioner seat back again. A key phrase in the John West recall petition was “ignoring the will of the people” along with various other concerns. West running for office again is just the latest in a series of ignoring the will of the people.
John West has started running a radio ad in the last week or so that in my opinion has a major false statement. The questionable statement, is with “a proven record as a county commissioner, John has already saved taxpayers over 2 million dollars.” While the ad is spoken with a lady’s voice, West himself says at the end of this radio ad that he approved this message.
West doesn’t ever answer any questions from the Grants Pass Tribune, but we encourage voters to ask him to detail how he saved taxpayers over $2 million. He won’t likely be able to answer truthfully. From our perspective, he cost taxpayers millions of dollars during his first two years as commissioner before being recalled by voters. By our count, there are no net savings and only higher costs such as various lawsuits originating from West’s time in office and millions of dollars in lost revenue opportunities.
But let’s take a closer look. And again, since John West is lawsuit happy, this analysis is our opinion.
While West was campaigning against his recall, he did try and brag about some budget savings measures he helped to implement or was trying to implement. There are only two of any significance that were actually implemented. West, along with former commissioner Baertschiger temporarily defunded the 4H/OSU Extension Service District (no taxes levied for Fiscal 2024 and Fiscal 2025) and also combined the IT and Emergency Management departments under one director rather than two.
As for the 4H/OSU Extension Service District, eliminating this voter-approved tax levy for two years in a row technically did save taxpayers about $852,000 for those two years combined. The tax rate for the Extension Service District is only 4.59 cents per $1000 of assessed value. A lot of people were upset about the services also going away in the second year of eliminating this levy, but technically it could be called a savings to taxpayers.
Now West in his new campaign is bragging about being able to lower tax rates and saving taxpayers even more. But what he conveniently doesn’t discuss is that County property tax rates for all areas outside the City of Grants Pass increased by about 56% during the two years West was in office before being recalled. The total County property tax rate including County service district tax rates was $1.6726 when West came into office and was $2.6167 when West left office. This is due to a new Law Enforcement Service District with a tax rate of 99 cents that West and other commissioners put on the ballot and voters passed it.
But we’ll still give West credit for eliminating the 4-cent 4H/OSU Extension Service District levy rate. It’s the new Law Enforcement Service District that created the “$2 million problem” for the County, but more on that later.
As for savings related to combining the IT and Emergency Management Departments in 2023, there were none. While West claimed this was a budget savings move, these two departments showed a total combined budget increase of $835,400 or an increase of 35.3% in fiscal 2025 versus the fiscal 2024 budget. So much for any money savings there.
What West also conveniently doesn’t discuss is cost increases that were a result of his votes and actions (usually along with the vote of one other commissioner). In summary fashion, some of the larger cost increases and lost revenue opportunities during West’s time in office were as follows:
- Lost a $3.1 million revenue opportunity by refusing to act on a mining lease application by a private local company called American Mineral Research by not acting on this application according to requirements of County Code. The Company has brought two lawsuits against the County, the first of which was settled by the County admitting they were in the wrong by not acting on the application per code requirements. Now a second lawsuit is pending against the County with over $2 million in alleged damages.
- A third-party internal investigation showed former Commissioners West and Baertschiger bullied and retaliated against two County department directors. A few months later after West was out of office these directors were fired and now two multimillion lawsuits are outstanding against the County from these former directors.
- West sued the County and the County Clerk for the method of verifying recall petition signatures before certifying that the petition had enough signatures to force a special recall election. West lost the case at the lower court level because the Clerk followed all the state law requirements when verifying signatures. West then appealed the loss, causing even more costs for the County. While records requests are outstanding, this likely caused tens of thousands of dollars of additional legal costs for Josephine County.
- West voted against selling the Pipe Fork timber property at a price that was well above the federal appraisal value. This property didn’t even sell when put out for public auction at a price that was 10% less than the previous offer. So the County lost out on $2.3 million of property sale proceeds that could have been used to invest in more productive timber property for the benefit of future county timber revenues.
In the end, John West’s two years in office as a county commissioner before being recalled by voters cost the County millions. West didn’t save taxpayers anything, West only added costs net of all things considered.
So why is West bragging that he saved taxpayers $2 million during his time in office? In my opinion, it’s simply because the County’s General Fund balance increased close to $2 million during his time in office and West appears to be calling this a “savings” to taxpayers. Except this General Fund balance increase does not translate into any savings to taxpayers and there was no reduction in General Fund tax rates or fees that directly impacted taxpayers.
John West, even in what I call his frivolous defamation lawsuit against me for the language of the recall petition (which I helped to write) and articles I wrote for the Grants Pass Tribune points to this $2 million increase as evidence of his budgetary prowess. Sandy Novak, the County’s former Finance Director, submitted a sworn declaration on behalf of West which stated, “During his term as Josephine County Commissioner the General Fund balance increased from $6 million to $8 million due to management decisions led by John West.” While I admit that the General Fund balance increased during West’s time in office, the total General Fund balance was closer to $20 million at the end of FY’2025 so even this figure in Ms. Novak’s declaration is not correct.
And the real reason the General Fund balance increased is that former commissioners West and Baertschiger effectively took General Fund revenues away from the Sheriff’s office right after voters approved a new service district for the Sheriff, once again ignoring the will of the people.
As the Sheriff was campaigning for the new Law Enforcement Service District, the Sheriff stated that if voter approved, the 99-cent tax rate would boost the staff in the Sheriff’s office by about 27 more officers and Sheriff’s office total staff. This was calculated assuming the County Commissioners would not take away other revenues from the Sheriff’s office, which is what ended up happening.
Below is a chart prepared by the Sheriff during the first annual budget process after voters approved the new law enforcement district. The recommended budget took close to $3 million of general fund revenues away from the Sheriff’s office and had zero new staff members in the original recommended budget for FY2025.
In the end of that budget process, the Sheriff ended up getting the equivalent of 5 new staff positions even though he wanted to start with 10 new in that first year. At one point during budget deliberations, John West advocated to only give the Sheriff 3 new positions. The General Fund revenue reduction to the Sheriff’s office in the final adopted FY25 budget (as compared to recent years) was more than $2 million.
That $2 million problem still mostly exists to this day, because even in the current year budget the Sheriff only has about 11 new staff positions as compared to before voters approved the new Law Enforcement Service District. As the Law Enforcement Service District tax rate of 99 cents now brings in close to $6 million of new annual tax revenues to the County, and we’ve only been given about 11 new Sheriff office staff members as a result of the new district, taxpayers are paying close to $545,000 per new staff member in the Sheriff’s office. This is a result of Commissioners taking away General Fund money from the Sheriff’s office two years ago and again in last year’s budget.
We’re paying the new tax rate, but we’re not getting what we were promised with the new district ballot measure. This is not the Sheriff’s fault; this is squarely on the shoulders of the Commissioners in each of the last two years.
And now John West is campaigning on being able to cut tax rates. But West has so far refused to release details on how he plans to do this. Will West play a shell game and give law enforcement back the General Fund revenues that should have been going to Sheriff all along and cut tax rates a little bit as a result?
Other than law enforcement, General Fund revenues are largely allocated to mandated services. While many County Commissioner candidates make the unfounded claim that there are budget efficiencies to be found, Josephine County has had financial challenges for as long as most of us can remember and there isn’t a lot of fat to be cut in General Fund programs.
Unfortunately, the County’s current commissioners don’t seem to be aware of this $2 million problem as two of the three commissioners prepare to go into their first annual budget process since being appointed to the commissioner seats. In a weekly update released by the Commissioners on April 10, 2026, the following statement appeared: “The Board is considering increasing the amount reserved for future expenditure on the General Fund to twice its current level over the next five years.”
In other words, commissioners are considering increasing the fund balance of the General Fund significantly more over the next five years. This is a mistake, in my opinion, as the current General Fund balance of over $20 million is a sufficient fund balance that does not need to be grown any more.
If we move to grow that balance even more, essentially we’re overtaxing our citizens without providing the level of law enforcement services that were promised to voters when they approved the Law Enforcement Service District back in November of 2023.
Commissioners, we’ve saved enough for a rainy day and now it’s time to fulfill more of those law enforcement voter promises.
Many citizens and I said just that in budget committee meetings last year. We’re not getting what we are now paying for, and that needs to change as we enter into the next annual budget process.