The BCC Weekly – Taking the “Blind” out of the BCC
About 8 years ago local community members and community leaders gathered in the GP High Performing Arts Center to hear a fantastic presentation by Stephen M.R. Covey on the cost of trust in Leadership and Business. A low-trust work environment is a very costly and inefficient work environment. Covey is one of the world’s experts on this topic and Josephine County Commissioners (BCC) would do well to rush out and buy one or more of his books on the topic of trust as this high cost is playing out in Josephine County government as we speak.
Rather than take the Ronald Reagan approach of saying “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally,” many decisions by the BCC in recent months and years seem to stem from an attitude more like a “100% my way or the highway” type approach. In other words, many costly decisions have been made by the County Commissioners due to the low-trust environment that has been prevalent in the last couple years and continues to be perpetuated in 2025.
The 2024 recall of Josephine County Commissioner John West documented at least $6.4 million worth of increased costs and lost revenues that in my opinion were the result of such a low-trust environment. The list that makes up this amount can still be seen on the fact sheet at www.recalljohnwest.com. Since developing this list, we now have well over $1 million in additional costs that have surfaced from questionable actions and decisions by Josephine County leadership.
If you were following local November elections and local candidates closely last fall, you know that County Commissioners and the former County Finance Director manufactured an accusation that former County Treasurer Eve Arce was withholding bank statements and trying to hide certain bank activity from the Finance Department. Certain local political operatives used this bogus allegation to smear a highly qualified treasurer that had been serving Josephine County faithfully for almost 30 years and had been the elected Treasurer since 2013. Now with a new and reportedly underqualified elected treasurer in office, another job position in the department had to be upgraded at an additional cost of about $30,000 more per year to retain the proper amount of expertise the department needs to do its job.
Taking this bogus allegation one step further, County officials, likely the County Commissioners, also authorized a secret audit to follow up on these bogus allegations in the Treasurer’s office. And public records recently received show that the secret audit cost paid to audit firm Moss Adams totaled $31,400. What did we taxpayers receive for this large audit cost? Likely nothing given this secret audit was completed at least a couple months ago and nothing has ever been said about the audit in public meetings. Not only that but any purchase or contract in excess of $25,000 is by County purchasing policy supposed to be approved by all three commissioners and this one was never discussed in an open session of a public meeting.
Breaking the County’s $25,000 purchasing policy limit (the amount where all three Commissioners must approve) seems to be more commonplace lately. The recent crony hiring of former Commissioner Simon Hare by contract to be the County Budget Officer without even discussing it in a public meeting is another example of breaking standard County purchasing policy.
And while a records request is pending, it appears the BCC risked spending nearly $1 million of our tax dollars on an early resignation program for County employees without even doing a financial analysis on the proposed program. The final tally for the employees who accepted this offer is probably closer to $700,000 but significant additional costs have ensued. The County lost almost all its Human Resources staff in this resignation program, the Airports Director, its Finance/HR Director, its public records officer, and many other highly experienced and highly qualified staff members. One employee we interviewed said it was another blow to employee morale and there was no pending budget need for this County reduction in force (in my opinion).
As reported by the Grants Pass Tribune on January 22, 2025, an internal investigation conducted by Mountain Lakes Employment Investigations which was finalized in a report dated December 31, 2024, confirmed and upheld allegations of retaliation and bullying by former Josephine County Commissioners West and Baertschiger. Just the investigation cost alone was about $43,000 and given the allegations were upheld the final costs could end up significantly more.
And then there was a sudden firing of a former BCC office staff member Wendy Watkins a couple months ago. Wendy had worked faithfully in the Commissioners’ office for over 10 years. In my opinion, the reasons cited for the termination didn’t add up to something even close to an offense that would or should result in termination and it appeared that proper progressive discipline procedures were not followed. A municipality just north of us lost over $300,000 in a lawsuit related to a similar improper firing and the BCC put the County at a similar risk through this recent action.
Sources tell us that the County has been served with several tort claim notices in recent months (a required process before someone sues a local government agency in Oregon). And there are several recent actions which could result in additional tort claim notices or lawsuits against the County in the near future. One source is considering a multi-million dollar claim against the County for a recent action, and if it becomes official you’ll read about it in the Grants Pass Tribune.
What is the solution to this costly low trust County work environment? Learn from past mistakes (so far 2025 is looking to be a repeat of many mistakes made in 2023 and 2024). And take at least two Stephen M. R. Covey books on Trust and call me in the morning.
