This week’s Southern Oregon Government Watch contains both facts and opinions. In full disclosure 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.
Imagine a hypothetical scenario where you want to build a house in rural Josephine County. You buy a rural residential-zoned lot where you are allowed to build a home. You pay a significant amount of money to design your dream home, and begin turning in permits to Josephine County to begin the building process. A County Commissioner then refuses to approve your permits even though you meet all the code requirements to build your dream home because you’re not a political friend of his and once upon a time you spoke out against a decision he made. You’re not a political friend, so you don’t get permits to build your home.
You try to appeal to the other two commissioners to get the permit approval you are due and even bring this concern before the Josephine County legal counsel. But a second commissioner also doesn’t consider you a political friend and so your complaint goes nowhere. You are out all this money you invested in the property to date and can’t build your dream home. Then the commissioner that stopped you from building your dream home sues you for $2 million because you spoke out publicly about this corruption and you participated in a lawful political campaign to recall him from his elected office.
While there are land use laws in place that would prevent this theoretical scenario, this is very similar to what happened the last time John West was a commissioner in 2023 and 2024 before he was recalled from office by voters. A local company called American Mineral Research (I am a minority shareholder in this company) spent three years on a mineral exploration permit on a 76-acre County timber property, documented a significant mineral reserve located on the property, met all code requirements to be guaranteed a mining lease from Josephine County, and former commissioner John West refused to even act on a mining lease application that was submitted to the County in 2023.
American Mineral Research met all code requirements to be guaranteed a mining lease from the county. And John West, as Board chair in 2024, refused to even hold a hearing and decide on the lease application. And after several requests by American Mineral Research for action on the lease application, John West led an effort to try and sell this property before the mining lease application was even acted on by the County. American Mineral Research had no choice but to bring a lawsuit against the County in 2025 for not acting on the lease application. The County settled this lawsuit in 2025 right before it was set to go to a hearing in court, admitting that the County erred in not acting on the lease application according to the county code. And now American Mineral Research has a second lawsuit against the County for not following the code when making the decision and is claiming over $2 million in damages from the 2-year delay on the lease application decision and not following the County code when making the decision.
Josephine County has already incurred at least $38,308 in outside attorney legal costs in defending this second case, just for work by the County’s attorneys in the first few months of defending the county in this lawsuit. Many more legal bills are ahead for this single case as the case schedule is currently expected to last until at least December this year. This is all because former commissioner John West and to a lesser extent former commissioner Herman Baertschiger simply refused to follow the County Code and refused to act on this lease application. As the County admitted in the first case that it erred, and again refused to follow the code when actually making the application decision, in my opinion this is going to be a very costly case for Josephine County just because an elected official discriminated against an applicant that wasn’t a political friend of his.
And unfortunately, this is just one of several costly legal cases the County is now facing due to the allegedly illegal actions of county commissioners between 2023 and 2025. Various legal challenges seemed to begin with the lawsuit brought against the County in late 2023 by the Josephine Community Library District, then expanding into several costly personnel-related decisions and actions in 2024, then an even wider variety of lawsuits in 2025.
Josephine County is now facing at least one multi-million-dollar lawsuit from a local company and at least three multi-million-dollar lawsuits from former county employees who allege they were illegally fired. All four of these major lawsuits originally began because of actions or votes made by former commissioner John West during the two years he was commissioner.
CIS Oregon, who insures most of the cities and counties in Oregon, has long said that the biggest risk area for cities and counties is lawsuits from employees for things like improper terminations. Not coincidentally, in a recent discussion by the Josephine County Commissioners in preparation for budget season this year, there was a warning about the CIS rates going up significantly this year. Just the increase in insurance premium costs for Josephine County this year will likely be in excess of $100,000 and this is likely due in part to an increasing amount of lawsuits the county is now facing.
Josephine County has a few internal attorneys that work in the county legal department and handle the day-to-day contract and other routine legal issues. But things like lawsuits against the County or against the County’s officers often require hiring outside attorneys. And amounts paid to outside attorneys have exploded in the last three years.
Oregon law (ORS 294.250) requires the county to publish a schedule of expenditures that total over $500 to any one vendor in the prior the month. We downloaded and sorted all these monthly reports from 2023 and 2025 and compared the amount paid to outside attorneys in 2023 compared to the amounts paid to outside attorneys in 2025.
In calendar year 2023, Josephine County paid at least $45,984 to outside attorneys. In calendar year 2025, the amount Josephine County paid to outside attorneys ballooned to at least $359,755 for the year. This is a 682% increase in outside attorney costs over the last two years.
In recent years, Ogletree Deakins has served as the county’s outside labor attorneys. In 2023, total payments to Ogletree Deakins were at least $20,522. In 2025, total payments to Ogletree Deakins increased to at least $128,509 for the year.
According to the over $500 in payments monthly reports, in 2023 payments were made to only three outside legal firms. Josephine County paid at least ten outside legal firms for services during 2025.
As Josephine County doesn’t have a County Manager, the three elected county commissioners serve as both the chief administrators and chief legislators. With two of the three commissioner positions up in May’s primary election, Josephine County voters would be wise to keep this in mind.