This is the first weekly edition of The BCC Weekly, a weekly column that discusses the government activities of Josephine County in an open and transparent manner that shares the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because the County and those on the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) responsible for news distribution have only been willing to share the good of late and try to ignore the bad and the ugly.
One would think the BCC and other Josephine County officials such as the Finance Director would be interested in reporting that Josephine County’s budget is generally more fiscally healthy than it’s been in almost 15 years because we’re headed into the annual budget season. But that doesn’t fit the narrative of the current BCC and republicans overseeing government agencies throughout the local and federal government that desire to tear down certain parts of government or penalize any program that may not fall in line with their political agenda.
Yes, you read that right…Josephine County is currently in a relatively good financial position. Who knew? Not the BCC, apparently. And Josephine County has been complaining about being broke since the timber hay days of the 1970s and 1980s when environmental regulations started curtailing timber harvesting activities. A lot of people out there believe the County still is broke, because this mantra continues to be repeated so often even in recent years.
By pretending the County is broke or predicting that “bad times are coming,” the Josephine County Commissioners have used these opinions and various forms of misleading statements to justify cuts to government programs that they desire to tear down. Or in some cases Commissioners are grasping at straws to fulfill campaign promises since they don’t truly understand the current financial position of the County.
If your goal is to attack the Library District by making a huge increase in rent for the Grants Pass library building owned by the County, as former Commissioner John West tried to do right before he was recalled from office, it would be an inconvenient truth to disclose the real financial position of the County. The increase in rent has to be because the County is “broke,” and the County cannot afford to continue to cover the maintenance costs for the exterior of the building.
Former County Commissioner Herman Baertschiger made countless pontifications in recent years about the frail state of the County’s budget in Commissioner meetings, weekly radio show comments, and when justifying random cuts made to certain budgets in last year’s annual budget process. And as he spent a lot of time working on State budgets as a former State Senator, his peers believed in and trusted him. But most of his statements regarding the frail state of the County’s budget were misleading at best, downright false in some cases. Local budgets don’t work exactly like state government budgets, and in the case of Grants Pass and Josephine County budgets our local budget revenue sources for main operations are more reliable and predictable that revenue sources for State budgets, at least in recent years.
Former Commissioners Baertschiger, West, and others like to warn that something close to 80% of the County’s budget comes from grant sources, which is grossly misleading. While a big chunk of the County’s budget does come from State or Federal sources (more so State than Federal other than timber-related federal funds), most of these State and Federal funding sources are relatively reliable revenue sources. The State is not likely to make any major changes to allocations of gas tax/DMV fee revenue sharing which supports road maintenance, is not likely to make major reductions to what the State provides for County departments such as Community Corrections and many components of Public Health, and the 1930s era O&C timber revenue sharing agreement is still in effect.
But that’s another inconvenient truth if the BCC desires to follow in the footsteps of President Trump and use the excuse of federal budget cuts to justify cutting certain County budgets. Despite comments by certain former and present BCC members, County operational revenues that support the main operations of the County have been increasing in recent years and not decreasing as they say.
The misunderstanding of the County’s current financial position is no more apparent than in the language of Order 2025-013 which the BCC approved a few weeks ago creating the County Employee Voluntary Resignation Program. Up to 32 County employees could have received a large buyout to voluntarily resign under this new program, and the BCC’s approved Order 2025-013 had the following language:
WHEREAS, these federal programs were never meant to be a permanent solution, and the county has struggled to secure other tax revenue.” This is a completely false statement. Between the Adult Jail/Juvenile Justice levy approved by voters starting in 2017 and the new permanent Law Enforcement Services District approved by voters in November 2023, the County has replaced most of the previous federal timber funding that it lost years ago.
WHEREAS the Board believes Josepine County will be facing reduced budgets countywide in the very near future; and it is necessary, in order, to prioritize public safety funding, offer an opportunity for a voluntary resignation program for a reduction in force, now, therefore….” There have been no recent facts or budget projections released that would lead any prudent person to expect reduced “countywide” budgets at any point in the next year or two. In fact, to the contrary the BCC recently met with representatives of the O&C Association and received the good news that federal timber harvesting revenue sharing this year will be about the same as it was last year and about $1 million higher to Josephine County this year than what they thought last year was likely the worst-case scenario for 2025.
Today, the biggest funding source for County Law Enforcement and the County General Fund is property taxes, which is the most reliable and predictable revenue source that local governments have in Oregon. Because of the common differences between the assessed value and real market value for many properties across the County and state along with the unique constitutional limitations on annual increases to the assessed values of properties in Oregon, annual property tax revenues usually increase a little bit each year even in times of recession. Even in the historic housing market downturn and great recession of 2007 to 2009, the City of Grants Pass (more reliant on property tax revenues than the County) didn’t see any decrease in total year over year changes to total assessed values during those otherwise difficult financial years.
Here are some more inconvenient truths (or should I say, “good news?”) for the BCC as it relates to the County’s current financial position. This may not sit well with the current BCC if they are looking for reasons to increase the rent for the GP Library branch building.
1. The County budgeted to start FY25 with a General Fund balance of $14.3 million and actually started the year with $15.5 million, a positive budget differential of $1.2 million in extra funds available in the General Fund this year.
2. Now that the County has achieved a very healthy fund balance in the General Fund, the annual budget can withstand some volatility in SRS/timber funding. With the new Law Enforcement Services District, the County actually has much more annual operating revenues for general fund and Law Enforcement operations, even if SRS goes away permanently because the O&C agreement is still in force.
3. The Adult Jail & Juvenile Detention & Residential Fund budgeted to start the year with a fund balance of $3.1 million in FY25 but actually started this year with a fund balance of $3.9 million, a positive differential of about $800,000.
4. The Property Reserve Fund started this fiscal year with a fund balance almost $1.4 million higher than budget this fiscal year (although with capital funds sometimes this is just because capital projects didn’t move as quickly as they could have).
5. Generally speaking, the County’s Property Reserve Fund and ability to tackle major capital needs in recent years is in good shape, thanks in part to allocations of the $17 million ARPA funds the County received towards various building and capital projects that in many cases would have been paid out of the property reserve fund.
Therefore, if the County in negotiations with the Community Library for example, continues to say they can’t afford the estimated $100,000 in roof and HVAC repairs needed, as they said right before Commissioner West was recalled from office, this is in no way a truthful statement based on the real financial position of the County.
Furthermore, the Voluntary Resignation Program recently approved by the BCC looks like it will be mostly cost and no benefits. Instead of waiting to see what happens with federal and state funding levels that support certain smaller programs of the County and then making targeted reductions in force accordingly, the BCC took a misguided shotgun approach that allowed employees from any department to take the early resignation program buyout. And now, certain departments such as HR have lost most of their staffing due to this voluntary program. And losses of certain other key employees through this voluntary resignation program will be either hard to replace or costly to replace and train.
When approving this resignation program, it’s unlikely that the BCC expected to lose nearly their entire HR department as a result. The County needed more staffing in HR before this new program, not less, according to recent comments by the former HR/Finance Director a little over a month ago when she sought approval to add one more position to HR. Now both she and two others in the small HR department have all resigned.
It’s imperative that the new BCC members learn more about the County’s budget and the County’s current financial position before they make other large personnel changes. It looks to me that when the dust settles on this voluntary resignation program, the County will have had an estimated $700,000 more in expenses than was necessary this year just because of this ill-timed early resignation program.
