Contents of the complaint –
The Coos County Commission formed a “structure advisory committee” that meets the definition of a governing body=
The advisory committees meet the definition of a governing body and are governed by Oregon statutes 192.660 – 192.690
(3) “Governing body” means the members of any public body which consists of two or more members, with the authority to make decisions for or recommendations to a public body on policy or administration.
The statutes clearly state, “The Oregon form of government requires an informed public aware of the deliberations and decisions of governing bodies and the information upon which such decisions were made.” They also address all electronic communication which includes phone calls and emails.
192.670 Meetings by means of telephonic or electronic communication. (1) Any meeting, including an executive session, of a governing body of a public body which is held through the use of telephone or other electronic communication shall be conducted in accordance with ORS 192.610 to 192.690.
(2) When telephone or other electronic means of communication is used and the meeting is not an executive session, the governing body of the public body shall make available to the public at least one place where the public can listen to the communication at the time it occurs by means of speakers or other devices. The place provided may be a place where no member of the governing body of the public body is present. [1973 c.172 §7; 1979 c.361 §1]
Earlier this year the Coos County Commission formed several advisory committees including a seven member “structure and organization advisory committee” presumably to streamline and improve county government functions. The committee has made radical recommendations including the hiring of a county manager, additional commissioners and the sale of public property. Since its inception the committee appears to have committed multiple public meetings law violations, some detailed below and most recently this is evidenced in a draft report prepared by the committee and outside of public view. The attached report states – “A detailed discussion of each department would make this report far too lengthy to be meaningful to its readers. To the extent the Commissioners want to discuss individual departments in greater depth, members of the committee stand ready to do so. Instead, the Committee will provide herein a summary view of findings for those departments it deems critical to the County’s operations. “ While it is not clear whether the “reader” is the public or the commissioners to whom they are advising the public is not provided access to the information from which the committee claims to derive its conclusions. During a recent public meeting committee co-chair, Al Pettit, admits that a lot of information has been passed back and forth via email, effectively forming an electronic quorum outside of public view. Video may be viewed at http://coosmediacenter.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=3f8df59f4de1a1d176cccf086ecdfe51 a portion of which is quoted below.
Al Pettit –
“The by-laws made the rounds, but so did a lot of emails. So, you got a chance to download those or have a look at those but, uh, we have a copy here and why don’t we just take a moment and look these over…” [Begins at 1:18]
Another exchange occurs between co-chair Jon Barton and an unidentified member-
[Begins 2:09:00]
MEMBER – Do we send it just to you two or to everybody?
BARTON – Well, we can’t circulate to everybody…
MEMBER – That’s what I thought
BARTON – Yeah
MEMBER – I’ve got no problem with that…
BARTON – I do…[meaning he DOES HAVE a problem letting the public see it]… laughs
The committee has also withheld results from employee questionnaires releasing only subjective summaries to the public.
We, the undersigned request that the Government Ethics Commission obtain copies of all emails between committee members related to the structure committee. Further we request detailed citations for claims made in the report. For example –“State-wide, solid waste disposal has dipped to 1993-94 levels and Coos County has experienced a similar dip in disposal. “
The solid waste facility is a multimillion-dollar incineration plant paid for by a bond measure voted in by the people.. It has become apparent that Commissioner Cam Parry, Fred Messerle and Bob Main have deliberated outside of public view about the fate of the Solid Waste Department. Committee member co-chair Al Pettit told a witness that the commissioners were “leaning toward turning it into a transfer station” and Pettit further indicated that Parry and Messerle were “working hard” on the project, however, this work is also not occurring with full knowledge and understanding of the public.
We ask that OGEC obtain all email communications including from the commissioners personal email accounts between the commissioners and members of the structure committee and between Messerle and Parry and Main relating to the solid waste department.
On November 29, 2011 the structure advisory committee met again and concluded with a request from Al Pettit that members submit their recommendations to Jon Barton via email so they could present a finished product at the next scheduled meeting on the seventh of December. Video can be found here – http://coosmediacenter.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=93541d9dc06ff84b9bb384affc96a103
Beginning [1:19:20]
PETTIT – We have to have this into a presentation by the 7th. If anyone has any additional thoughts after reviewing this please submit those to Jon before, say, at the latest, Sunday
BARTON – Yeah
PETTIT – At the latest
BARTON – And I appreciate the help I got from everybody, it was good
SLATER – I guess the only other thing I would add to that is read it a number of times because I know a couple of items I didn’t see it initially read through it again then saw a couple of sentences and went, “oh, okay that’s how we put that issue in there”
…
PETTIT – So our job on the 7th is to get some of these issues across to them in a concise, consolidated presentation and to some degree throw it over the fence to them. As the governance committee they need to look at the challenges and their job is to come back and make some recommendations about how this thing will be structured.
On December 1, 2011 the committee posted a DRAFT conclusions document that could only have been formulated after the November 29 and on December 1, 2011 a newspaper article in The World entitled “County analysis complete” available online here – http://theworldlink.com/news/local/article_d1c90ebf-e007-51ae-9fa7-53460d53861b.html
None of the supporting material used by the committee to reach its conclusions or to support the analysis reported in the local paper have been made available to the public, nor have the deliberations that formed this summary been conducted in public view.
We the undersigned, will provide a copy of this form with the information above, and with our signatures and contact information, by pdf and mail to your office by Friday, 12/9/2011.
Mary Geddry Coquille, OR
Robert Fischer Bandon, Oregon
Harry Stamper Charleston, Oregon, 97420
Holly Stamper Charleston, Oregon, 97420
Randy Sanne North Bend, OR
Ken Johnson Myrtle Point, OR
Kate Jones North Bend, OR
The following individuals are involved directly or indirectly in these violations
Cam Parry, commissioner
Fred Meserle, commissioner, liaison member structure advisory committee
Bob Main, commissioner
Al Pettit, co chair structure advisory committee
Jon Barton, co chair structure advisory committee
Daniela Kellum, Coos County staff, member structure advisory committee
Timm Slater, member structure advisory committee
Craig Zanni, Coos County Sheriff, member structure advisory committee
JJ McLeod, member structure advisory committee
Bryan Laird, member structure advisory committee
Oubonh White, Coos County Counsel
Al? Please post your models used to make your decision to privatize Coos County, just show us where it is working, who knows? Perhaps we might join you, but as it is, you give us nothing but words.
Show us the successes, please.
Mary – I don’t want to steal any of your thunder, so I’ll let you update everyone on the State’s response to the second ethics violation submission against the Structure Committee and the Commissioners. (They must have a form letter for this sort of thing. The second response is almost identical to the first…)
Look at the list of non-profits that are represented as board members of SCDC, Then look at how many are represented on these special committees.Same names are spread all over these groups. All SCDC and BACC members, all are connected through Barton. All are getting their share of tax dollars, or want a share.
Government entities, non-profits who get any form of tax dollars, and non-disclosure agreements, are a certain recipe for corruption. Non-disclosure agreements and tax dollars should not be linked at all, ever.
Parry is nothing but a pitchman and a blithering idiot
Yes, Gene, there are some “non profits” involved and plenty of conflicts of interest including the relationship between Fred Messerle, co-chair Jon Barton and Fred’s wife Sandy Messerle who works for Barton. The first rule of government ethics is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety but these guys appear to be oblivious to how unholy they appear to the public.
Pettit, like Parry is more of a follower than a leader and probably genuinely believes he is doing something helpful for the entire county by following the lead of his business buddies. Not so sure I can give Parry the same credit, I think he knows he is working for special interests over the greater good although he probably justifies it somehow
Non-profits and fraud, there are a lot of non-profits involved here.
About 89% of occupational frauds involve asset misappropriations. Cash is the
targeted asset 83.7% of the time. These are down slightly from the 2006 study.
• Methods of asset fraud found in not-for-profits in the 2006 study: unauthorized
benefit, 29.3%; expense reimbursements, 28.6%; billing, 28.6%; check tampering,
24.5%; skimming, 24.5%; cash larceny, 17.7%; non-cash theft, 14.3%; payroll,
12.9%; and fraudulent statements & wire transfers, 5.4% each.
The sum of these percentages exceeds 100% because several cases involved multiple schemes.
• The dollar impact of fraud increases by level of responsibility while the frequency
of fraud follows the opposite order. Most frauds are committed by the accounting
department or upper management. About 81% of the fraudsters were first-time
offenders.
• Perpetrators often display behavioral traits that serve as indicators of risk. The
most commonly cited red flags were perpetrators living beyond their means or
experiencing financial difficulties at the time of their frauds.
• The most common methods for detecting fraud in non-profits is by a tip from an
employee, customer, vendor or anonymous source followed by accident, internal
audit, internal controls and external audit, in that order. The typical scheme lasted
2 years before discovery.
• The implementation of anti-fraud controls appears to have a measureable impact
on the organization’s exposure to loss. The lack of adequate internal controls was
most commonly cited as the factor that allowed the fraud to occur.
http://www.kellerandowens.com/resources/FraudBooklet.pdf
The list of Board members at the SCDC site is out of date, the whole site seems to be pretty neglected, but the who’s who of businesses supporting this corrupt organization is pretty up to date. I would urge them to quit their membership, before they are linked permanently to the corruption and fraud this organization represents.
Why wait until the $#!+ hits the fan
He’s not dumb, just late to the game. Jon and crew have used up all the free money (tax dollars) this area can afford. Their bought politicians (conservative democrats) are going to be an endangered species if the rest of this county gets tired of the plundering. I think you arrived too late to reap the same kind of income Jon and the Messerles have been experiencing from tax payers…nice gig if you can get it, But I think there are many, who will try to slow you down a bit.
“helping the community” consists of more than sucking at her teat Al. Did you guys really think this community would sit by and watch you and Jon pull this over on us?
“helping the community” my big old arse. What rubbish. Free rent ain’t gonna be a part of business as usual any longer Al.
Chamber of Consorts and SCDC occupying OUR new Visitors Center still chaffs me. How can you guys look at yourselves in the mirror Al and Jon, taking money from those still working in this county to build brand new digs for yourselves, of course you did it with Other Peoples’ Money didn’t you, and you have the gall to come on here and call others names.
Wankers.
No one appreciates a hostile takeover, Al, and by now you should realize that very few value your opinion
Yep, this is the help, root-em out. stop the corruption, start over, reset. You can’t have your way with this county, its not gonna be that easy.
This is it?!!! This is your idea of helping the community and your answer to the County’s budget issues?
Wow. Thanks for the contribution. It is incredibly underwhelming.
That “paper”, run a story against Jon’s gang, would be like fox news running down the repubs. They are in this crap up to their foreheads.
Not likely
Nice work! Wonder if the paper will report it
My thanks to all.
These guys act like Coos County is their own Private Litter Box.
Excellent work. As professional as the gang thinks they are, they’ve just been checked. This whole story has been played out better than any script writer could imagine. Everything Jon has done was foreseen and the results predicted many times, yet the train could not stop.
When the loyalty interviews by Jon were announced, was the last chance to stop the charade. The state would be wise to step in and take over Coos County while the loyal employees get their job’s done, and we get some elections ASAP.