The BCC Weekly – Taking the “Blind” out of the BCC
In the last year, journalists at the Grants Pass Tribune have reported on countless controversial issues related to both the City of Grants Pass and Josephine County that elected officials of each would have liked to have swept under the rug. And kudos to the Grants Pass Daily Courier for doing the same.
Vickie Aldous of the Daily Courier earlier in 2025 was the first to break the news of proposed salary adjustments for many of the Grants Pass top managers and department directors which were significantly higher than what most cities and counties in our region pay to their directors and key management staff. This resulted in what could be called a robust public debate as well as the City Council forming a task force to dive deeper into this issue.
John Oliver and I of the Grants Pass Tribune have broken countless news stories over the last year that many of our elected officials and even elected official candidates would have preferred to never have seen the light of day. It may seem like the Grants Pass Tribune has it out for Josephine County and its public officials, but in our view there are simply many more controversial actions and decisions that have happened over the last year in Josephine County government as compared to other local governments in Josephine County.
Certain Josephine County elected officials or former elected officials have gone to great lengths to attempt to silence local journalists. Those attempts to silence us have been particularly intense in recent weeks. Personally, I find it ironic that a couple of our elected officials have sworn to uphold the state and federal constitution but in their actions are doing just the opposite.
Josephine County Commissioner Chris Barnett has been excelling lately with actions that go against local journalists’ and local citizens’ First Amendment rights to free speech. Barnett brought a lawsuit against the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune last fall for allegedly printing false statements about him while he was campaigning for office. I haven’t seen any facts printed about Barnett by the Grants Pass Tribune that were false, and in fact some of the facts Barnett didn’t like seeing in print were just upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court.
Shortly after Chris Barnett started his term as Commissioner in January 2025, Barnett decided to take matters into his own hands by creating several of his own “news” outlets. News is in quotes there because from what I’ve seen those news outlets only pass on announcements from other entities and post generic and likely AI-written news pieces without naming an author that attempt to discredit other local media. Of particular concern was the creation of the “Josephine County Tribune” by Barnett earlier this year which appears to be a direct attack on the Grant Pass Tribune. Barnett himself appears or speaks in most of the videos posted to these “news” pages and in at least one video Barnett claimed to be a reporter for “Real Live News and the Josephine County Tribune.”
A couple weeks ago Barnett’s “news” pages even posted negative “articles” about the Grants Pass Tribune owner and I with generic references to fake news and false facts. Once again, ironically the articles didn’t cite an author and the “news” articles didn’t list any specific facts that were allegedly false.
Just last weekend the Grants Pass Daily Courier reported on Barnett’s inappropriate use of his new local “news” pages which were registered with the Secretary of State and primarily operated on Facebook. Within minutes, Barnett himself posted a rebuttal to the Courier’s article which in my opinion was another attempt to discredit and silence local media anytime we print something that is critical of the behavior of our local elected officials.
Recalled former Commissioner John West, longtime business and political ally to Commissioner Chris Barnett, to this day continues to attempt to suppress our State and Federal Constitutional Rights. Just last week John West filed a ridiculous $2 million lawsuit against two of us that vocally supported his recall while that campaign was going on last fall. We have a federal constitutional right to free speech and a state constitutional right to bring forward a recall petition and campaign for the ouster of an elected official. Last fall John West sued the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune, implying he was the mastermind of the recall. Not long after that, West sued the recall committee’s chief petitioner for statements made in the recall petition. Now nearly 8 months after the recall vote, John West brought a new lawsuit against two other individuals that served as volunteers for the recall campaign.
In my opinion, John West and his political ally Chris Barnett are simply trying to use their money and power to silence critics. And again, in my opinion, based on statements John West has made to Daily Courier reporters, he appears to be attempting to silence some of us because he plans on running for Commissioner again next year. If that’s true, we’ll see West continue to lose court cases brought against his critics and continue to appeal those losses over and over again. West appears to have no choice but to continue the many lies he’s made in public about the language of the recall petition and the alleged false statements made against him during the recall campaign. West has already been proven wrong on most counts in Josephine County Circuit Court as it relates to the recall petition language and has already chosen the appeal route in two cases he brought – one against the chief petitioner of the recall and one against the County Clerk based on the method used to verify signatures on recall petitions.
West and Barnett have a long history of working together. Last fall Barnett stood up in a Weekly Business Session of the Commissioners saying he has “no business” with John West. Then in a radio interview not long after, Barnett admitted he has been John West’s real estate agent for the last 15 years. And West made a sizeable donation to Barnett’s commissioner campaign.
And let’s not forget that in the BCC’s Weekly Business Session of December 18, 2024, the day after the John West recall election where nearly two thirds of County voters said that West should be recalled from office, Commissioner Andreas Blech stated that he thought Josephine County Voters “made a mistake” in removing West from office. Going against what two thirds of the County voters just said and in a near landslide vote should have been a warning sign to the public before Blech was reappointed to the Commissioner seat again in January after the recall was certified. And sure enough, in my opinion Blech’s actions and votes to date in 2025 have been pursuing a similar agenda that County voters said no to last December.
Several public records requests submitted to Josephine County this year in our pursuit of truth have either been delayed, only partially answered, or ignored completely. And it has appeared to me in 2025, the more controversial the issue the more likely a records request would be delayed or ignored.
I recently grew tired of these improper responses or nonresponses to public records requests. I appealed three of the denials to the District Attorney, and thankfully the DA responded swiftly and correctly.
Two of the denied or partially denied public records requests dealt with the controversial story of the salary and benefits of IT/Emergency Management Director Michael Sellers who was temporarily promoted to be the Interim Director of Finance and HR by Commissioner Andreas Blech earlier this year in addition to his many other duties. And according to the County’s former Finance/HR Director who took advantage of the County’s newly approved voluntary resignation program, Mr. Sellers didn’t have any professional experience in these areas and was given a salary rate much higher than the previous Finance/HR Director who had many years of experience in these areas.
After Josephine County’s former Budget Officer resigned in protest to make it public that Commissioner Blech was attempting to pay Michael Sellers a total compensation package including taxes and benefits of about $388,000 per year for a newly created position of “Director of Operations” to continue overseeing all these areas, Mr. Sellers quick resigned his new position and went back to being the IT and Emergency Management Director. Since the DA upheld these two record request appeals, we will likely be reporting more facts about this story soon.
Not coincidently, the Grants Pass Tribune was the first to break the story last fall about Michael Sellers working two full-time jobs at the same time – one for the State of Oregon serving as a staff member under two State Senators, and one full-time job as the IT/Emergency Management Director of Josephine County. This again should have been a warning sign for both the public and Josephine County’s elected officials, but the warnings were ignored.
In fact, last fall I asked all four County Commissioner candidates what they thought about a full-time department director of the County working another full-time job with the State legislature and whether they would favor the County implementing a new moonlighting policy. Commissioner candidate at the time Chris Barnett was the only candidate that completely refused to answer this question. In case more shouts of fake news appears by Barnett’s “news” pages, I have the written communication with Barnett to prove this. Unlike Barnett, we have documentation to back up everything we claim as fact.
The third public records request that was denied in part and appealed to the DA was a request for a list of expenses the County has had over the last three years in maintaining the exterior of the Grants Pass library branch. As County commissioners voted in January 2025 to unilaterally cancel the Library’s lease about 11 months before the normal expiration date of the lease and cited market value and maintenance cost concerns, I thought seeing what the County’s maintenance costs actually are would be an important factual data point for this ongoing story.
The County’s original response to the request for three years of maintenance cost data was to provide only one year of data. After multiple requests for the other two years of data and after paying a hefty records fee and being denied, I appealed to the DA. The DA upheld my appeal and in less than one day I was provided with the other two years of data.
As it turns out, County officials’ claims of how much it costs to maintain the exterior of the GP Library branch building were inflated cost estimates. The real data showed that for the last three calendar years, County staff spent an average of 110 hours per year on work orders related to the exterior maintenance of this building. At an extremely generous rate of $125 per hour to include supplies, the County is only spending about $13,750 per year on average to maintain the exterior of this building. This is almost half of the $25,000 per year cost estimate cited during related library lease discussions in December 2024 and January 2025. And in my opinion, this is completely immaterial to the budget of Josephine County in total.
Stay tuned as we continue to report the facts and speak truth to power. No amount of money, intimidation, or lawsuits will cause us to surrender our constitutional rights.