Josephine County leadership is again the laughingstock of Oregon.
The recent terminations of two employees involved in an Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries (BOLI) complaint will certainly end up in court which the county will likely lose.
The complaint stems from an issue in Community Development, where Director Mark Stevenson allegedly was told by John West in his capacity of commissioner to pull a permit from a property adjacent to a property owned by West. Stevenson told former JoCo Punlic Health Director Mike Weber about the conversation and when Weber pressed for him to file a complaint with the state, Stevenson used retaliation as his reason not to, Weber stepped forward and filed the claim.
Trish House was also released last year after it became known she was a witness for the case filed by Weber.
Part of the complaint is that Information Technology Director Michael Sellers was monitoring video of who was going in and out of department offices. To call a spade a spade, he was spying on department heads and other elected officials. It’s likely House had knowledge of this and would attest to what the commissioners were up to.
Employees can even file complaints to the state ethics board but it seems based on outcomes, they lack the appropriate ethics to do their job.
As an example, in one recent ethics complaint, Commissioner Dan DeYoung testified to the board that commissioners were doing what was alleged in the complaint and still, the ethics board found no evidence! Yes, you read that right.
The current commissioners seem to be fine allowing that cabal to run the county.
I’m flabbergasted by Barnett’s behavior; he spends a lot of time on social media reporting misinformation about news events. It seems he loves the attention.
Barnett fails to realize all of his posts on his personal and fictional news sources are public record. Ron Smith has been smart enough to stay off Facebook.
Happy Easter! I hope you celebrate the day with friends and family. ~djm