The BCC Weekly – Taking the “Blind” out of the BCC
Two weeks ago, a group of citizens led by chief petitioner Jim Goodwin filed recall petitions for Josephine County Commissioners Chris Barnett and Andreas Blech. Among several other things, the recall petition language for Barnett cites lack of integrity, while the recall petition language for Blech cites a lack of transparency.
While the Grants Pass Tribune has nothing to do with these recently filed recalls, this paper has reported new examples of both of these just in recent days after the filing of the recall petitions. And there are even more examples to report today.
Reading the specific language of the recall petitions, many grievances date back to situations that happened between January and April this year. A couple of the larger concerns were wasting over $700k of taxpayer funds on an unnecessary voluntary county employee resignation program and the chaos that seemed to ensue after two commissioners gave up their voting power to BCC Chair Andreas Blech for all things personnel related and department restructuring.
The County’s HR/Finance Director was one of several key staff positions that voluntarily resigned with a huge buyout, leaving the County scrambling to maintain certain duties during this “transition period.” Former Commissioner Simon Hare was brought in to be contract budget officer for this year’s budget process and IT/Emergency Manager Director Michael Sellers was tapped to fill a newly created job of “Director of Operations” which included at the time being the director over Finance and HR (even though Mr. Sellers resume showed no experience in these areas).
It was March 4th that the two Commissioners delegated their personnel duties and gave all their personnel authority over to BCC Chair Andreas Blech. Before voting to do this on March 4th, Commissioner Blech stated, “I just want to point one thing out, and that the intent of granting this authority has to do with the positions, and with the intent of reducing the workforce at the County.” Both commissioners Chris Barnett and Ron Smith nodded their heads and acknowledged this would be a transition period.
I confirmed through a records request process that no financial analysis was done before all three commissioners approved the costly voluntary resignation program in February this year and the intent as stated by Commissioner Andreas Blech was not to refill any lost positions even through they didn’t limit what departments or positions could participate in the program. Not long after the resignations were processed, Juvenile Justice requested to refill one of these lost positions because they had minimum staffing requirements. And just in the last week Commissioner Ron Smith has said on social media in his opinion the County needs to fill a public information officer type position (another one of the positions lost in the resignation program).
Interim Director of operations Michael Sellers wasted no time “reducing the workforce” starting with the Directors of Public Health and Community Development. It has been reported that these Directors are considering lawsuits against the County, because they had BOLI claims outstanding and other claims that had been upheld by an internal investigation against two of last year’s County commissioners at the time they were fired.
Then when Budget Officer Simon Hare resigned in a blaze of warnings to the public about what Commissioner Blech was trying to do, including according to Hare a compensation package in the FY26 budget for newly appointed Interim Director of Operations Michael Sellers that totaled $388,000 per year including benefits, Sellers suddenly voluntarily went back to his old job and Blech was forced to do the rest of the staff firings and restructurings himself. Commissioners have denied having a contract in place with Sellers for this (according to Hare the contract was in process of being negotiated) but Commissioner Blech has never publicly denied that there was an attempt to give Sellers a compensation package for $388,000 per year. Simon Hare provided a budget printout of this compensation package, and it appeared legitimate…as if this salary rate might have already been approved and was entered into the County’s personnel financial system.
Blech then put the Public Works Director on admin leave and eventually fired him. Blech combined the Juvenile Justice Department with the Community Corrections department and according to the previous Juvenile Justice Director did so without following state law requirements on how to appoint a new director over the Juvenile Justice program. Blech reportedly fired all the staff in the Community Development Code Enforcement and Solid Waste programs.
Neither Commissioner Blech nor other commissioners have explained why all these layoffs and department restructurings took place. They never even publicly announced the combination of the Juvenile Justice and Community Corrections department into a new department called Community Justice, but you’ll see it described as this in the FY’2026 budget document. Even the County website still has these two departments shown as separate departments, but names the department director for each the Community Justice Director.
Back in June, Commissioner Andreas Blech was kind enough to give me nearly two hours of his time to talk about various budget concerns that I had, including the Budget Committee’s decision to cut general fund budgets even though the County’s General Fund had a significant surplus projected for the next year. It was a good discussion, but he didn’t answer any specific questions about why staff reductions were taking place other than referring to a generic potential for losing some state or federal funds. I explained to Commissioner Blech that Law Enforcement programs and General Fund programs don’t heavily rely on federal funds for operational purposes these days, and those state/federal funding sources that do supply operational revenues for these programs are not at risk. I also explained that the County’s general fund had a large projected surplus for next year and coming years. He thanked me for these explanations, but it didn’t appear to change his staffing or budget decisions in the slightest.
Back in the February through April periods this year, I started having to put in public records requests to the County because several actions and decisions were being taken in private rather than in public meetings of the BCC as was usually the case in the past. And the BCC members refused to answer major questions about why these actions were taking place.
In April I put in a records request for newly appointed Interim Director of Operations Michael Sellers’ Salary and Benefit information, because I wanted to understand the cost and scope of this new position. Coincidentally this records request went in only one day before Budget Officer Simon Hare’s dramatic public resignation letter surfaced. But from start to finish it took almost three months to fill this records request.
By law, most public records requests are supposed to be fulfilled within fifteen business days at the longest. And guess who was in charge of public records requests at the County? Michael Sellers himself was in charge of public records requests back then. There were other public records requests that took months to be fulfilled as well. It seemed the more controversial the issue (like my request for Library maintenance costs paid by the County), the longer it took to complete a public records request.
We reporters hear a lot of rumors by virtue of what we do, but we sometimes have to find a way such as public records request to verify this information. Some records requests put in by the Grants Pass Tribune this year have gone completely unanswered.
It took an appeal to the Josephine County District Attorney to get Michael Sellers salary and benefit information through a public records request. But when I received it, there were inconsistencies in the information received and it seemed like the County did not provide the proper detail on all requested records. Payroll information on public employees is public information, but the County has argued and as recently as last week continues to argue this information is exempt from public disclosure. I’ll get back to that in a moment.
Commissioner Chris Barnett has attempted to control the local media’s narrative both before he was elected and after he was elected. In direct retaliation to the truth telling done by the Grants Pass Tribune, Barnett has brought a lawsuit against the owner of the GP Tribune late last year and created a series of his own “News” channels back in February of this year that use portions of the GP Tribune’s legal and operating names. News pages on Facebook such as the Josephine County Tribune, Josephine County News, and a few others are owned and operated by Commissioner Barnett.
And then several months ago the Grants Pass Tribune asked the County to be recognized as local media per the County’s media policy just like all the other local media agencies. Instead of granting the request, the BCC just cancelled the media policy and stopped doing executive sessions of the BCC. This appeared to be in direct retaliation for the truth telling done by the Grants Pass Tribune, and Barnett’s personal squabble with the GP Tribune has put the County at greater risk because the Commissioners can no longer meet in a private executive session to discuss sensitive legal issues.
Going back to the public records requests, after the County District Attorney ordered the County to fulfill my payroll records request on Director Sellers and release information from one other public records request that they withheld, BCC Chair Andreas Blech took over the responsibility for all public records requests. An email that I received on Monday of this week said that effective August 5th, BCC Chair Andreas Blech is now overseeing all public records requests. This is important, because if an elected official is the one processing the public records request and if that request needs to be appealed, the appeal now has to go through the state Circuit Court rather than through the local District Attorney.
I submitted four new public records requests on August 7, 2025. Two were follow-up requests to try and clarify some inconsistent information I received in the last round of public records requests, and two were new topics that I was investigating. And 17 business days later I had to appeal all four to the DA because the County never responded (note by law the County has no more than 15 business days to fulfill requests). Shortly after appealing to the DA, I received two denials of my requests citing inappropriate state law exemptions that did not apply to these specific requests, one request for me to pay an exceptionally large records request fee which was not justified, and in the fourth request the County simply said, “We are not the custodian of [and do not possess] the requested records.”
For the records request where the County’s response was, “We are not the custodian of [and do not possess] the requested records,” I simply asked for “a copy of all text messages and emails sent by John West to any Commissioner or Wally Hicks from January 2025 to July 2025.” I had several reasons to request these, but the primary purpose was to verify rumors I heard from a variety of sources. I knew for a fact some written communications (public records) of this nature did exist, but I wanted to see them for myself and see the extent by which recalled Commissioner John West was trying to exert his influence over the current BCC.
When Commissioner Ron Smith heard that my records request was denied, he did the right thing and sent me all the emails that he had received this year from former Commissioner John West. So, did BCC Chair Andreas Blech, who is now in charge of overseeing the fulfillment of all public records requests, intentionally withhold these records? While I can’t say for sure one way or the other, I have completely lost all trust in the County public records request process. I find it very hard to believe that the BCC Chair was not aware of all these emails that former Commissioner John West sent to him, and from the records I received from Ron Smith, Commissioner Andreas Blech was included in most of these emails. Most of them went to all the commissioners.
I also know for a fact that former Commissioner West does a lot of texting, and I’ve texted with all three current commissioners (before they were commissioners) so I know all four of them text regularly. I find it hard to believe that West never sent any text message to the current commissioners this year regarding County business. These texts are public records that should have been disclosed in my recent public records request, but BCC Chair Andreas Blech says the County does not possess such records.
Making matters worse, BCC Chair Andreas Blech, the relatively new records request administrator, denied two of my other records requests citing exemptions in state law that don’t apply to these two specific records requests. But on Monday of this week, I received an email from the District Attorney saying that all records request appeals must go through Circuit Court. While reporting this, the DA also confirmed that the exemptions cited in one of those requests are not applicable. I have emailed Commissioner Blech asking him to process this specific request since the DA weighed in on it. As of the date and time of writing this article, I have received no response from anyone other than the DA on processing this specific records request since the DA effectively already ruled on the appeal request.
And it just so happens that for both public records requests that were inappropriately denied in the last week, they both deal with a topic that could potentially be a politically sensitive topic for Commissioner Andreas Blech. The DA has already ruled that one of these denials was incorrect, according to state law. And now I must wait and see if Commissioner Blech will release the records or if he will force me to file an appeal in Circuit Court. This will likely be costly for the County, because state law says if the court rules they didn’t process a records request in the timeline required by law or illegally withheld the requested records, the County will likely have to pay a small fine for each instance as well as pay the legal and filing costs of the party that appealed if the appeal is upheld.
So we have a BCC Chair that has stated in the past he does not read or listen to any local media or social media, has repeatedly declined to answer questions from both the public and local media on several topics of public interest this year such as the firing of several department directors, restructuring departments, and firing other County employees, and now the BCC Chair is in charge of public records requests and already has a record of denying several legitimate public records requests. The BCC Chair has also recently put himself in charge of reviewing all vendor service contracts in all amounts from all departments, the BCC Chair is currently the acting Public Works director, and this is all above and beyond the very busy daily duties of being the Board chair. In my opinion, this concentration of both power and duties coupled with lack of transparency is already causing significant problems.
In the meantime, over the last several weeks Commissioner Chris Barnett is attempting to rewrite history, putting his integrity on the line once again.
In the August 21 Weekly Business Session of the BCC, Commissioner Chris Barnett in response to public comments stated, “I just want to say one thing about the budget of Josephine County. We passed the budget in the green. We paid for every single thing the taxpayers wanted without laying off one employee.”
It must be Christmas season with all this talk of red and green and getting everything the taxpayers wanted. Except the truth is, many County staff members were laid off towards the beginning of the budget season this year. As reported by the Grants Pass Tribune just yesterday, “Perhaps most striking is Barnett’s assertion that the 2025–26 county budget balanced without layoffs. Public records contradict this outright. The county eliminated its entire Code Enforcement and Solid Waste staff while also terminating or demoting several department heads, including directors of Community Development, Public Works, and Public Health. These decisions were not announced publicly in advance and have yet to be fully explained by the Board. The current year’s budget document shows seven fewer FTE in Community Development, 0.5 fewer FTE in Veterans Services, two fewer FTE in Public Works, six fewer FTE in the Internal Service Funds, and eight fewer FTE in Public Health. By denying these layoffs and other reductions in the workforce, Barnett’s statement crosses from spin into demonstrably false information.”
In the BCC’s Weekly Business Session of August 14 in leading up to the discussion related to the Library lease proposal, Barnett stated, “The original intent in January, on January 6th was simply to clarify responsibility for building repairs that were superseding and accruing. That’s why we wanted to get to the table and that’s why this whole thing came up. And mind you, Commissioner Smith and I, 3 hours in our term and this happened. OK, I apologize, but I have to say that, you know, getting the information that we’ve gotten now, trying to work on a resolution, I think the intent of what that was got blown out of proportion. The more I look back at it, the more I look back at it. And I think Commissioner, Commissioner West at the time was there and it was just simply trying to get the library and the board back together to discuss some repairs on the building. And that’s what I see….But I just want to say the original intent was to simply clarify responsibility for building repairs.”
Except, if you go back and watch the actual video of that January 6th meeting where Barnett, West, and Smith voted to cancel the Library’s lease 12 months before the written lease end date, former Commissioner John West clearly had more in mind than just to make the Library pay for maintenance of the exterior of the building. West arranged this whole meeting agenda, brought in the County’s real property specialist to explain what the going market lease rates were of similar type commercial buildings, and West’s clear goal was to force the library to pay a lease rate of what he felt should be about $15k to $20k per month (which would not be affordable for the Library District).
West’s goal had been and continues to be to financially attack the Library District, and Barnett is either intentionally trying to rewrite history or is completely oblivious to this fact. Or given that Barnett was West’s real estate agent for 15 years before becoming commissioner, it could be both.