When caught in a crime, police officers hold people accountable. When caught losing millions of dollars, ignoring voters’ decisions, and breaking the law, the constitutional power of a recall petition is how citizens hold elected officials accountable.
If you’re not a close political ally of Josephine County Commissioner John West, over the last year you can’t do business with Josephine County. Government is supposed to serve everyone and now it is time for the citizens to have their say.
You won’t hear the truth if you listen to Commissioner John West’s public statements and false advertising in recent months. The truth is this recall petition was started by several Republicans wanting to hold one of our own accountable. This initiative quickly grew among all local voter affiliations.
As someone who has been closely watching our local government activity for 18 years, I can also say this recall petition has been one of the most popular local measures I’ve seen, and we gathered close to 7,500 petition signatures in just 90 days. Signatures have now been verified and special recall election ballots will be mailed out to Josephine County voters in just a few days.
The number of false statements made by Commissioner West since the filing of this recall petition in early August has been off the charts. I am one of several authors of the recall petition, and I can say we spent almost two months carefully crafting the wording of the recall petition to make sure each point in the petition was factual and accurate.
Therefore, I can also say that West has made countless false statements on radio interviews, video interviews, and in paid advertising in local newspapers since the filing of our recall petition. But when it came to filing his Statement of Justification filing form for this recall election, West did not dispute any points in the recall petition. My guess is that West saw the warning on the top of this elections form that says, “Supplying false information on this form may result in conviction of a felony with a fine of up to $125,000 and/or prison for up to 5 years.” If you want to see how West worded his Statement of Justification before your ballot arrives in the mail, see the last two pages of this document posted on the County website: https://www.josephinecounty.gov/R-2024-1%20Recall.pdf
John West bullies political opponents, threatens independent journalists with lawsuits when they don’t write favorably, and makes false statements about any local measure or candidate that doesn’t favor his personal agenda. In the most recent general election, West funded smear campaigns full of false statements about other local Republicans running for local office.
Meanwhile, Commissioner West lost over $6 million due to poor decisions in his first 20 months in office. West has also voted to decrease funding to law enforcement and safety programs, and repeatedly failed to follow the law.
West brags about cost cutting initiatives such as combining the Emergency Management and IT departments. Except, in the first annual budget season after West voted to combine these two departments, these two departments showed a total combined budget increase of $835,400 or an increase of 35.3% in fiscal 2025 versus the fiscal 2024 budget. It’s fair to say that a 35% budget increase was not a successful cost-cutting initiative.
We can’t let West’s illegal, unethical, and costly decisions continue for 2 more years. Please join me in voting yes to recall West.
