OTTAWA COUNTY — As Ottawa County searches for its next county administrator — its fifth since January 2023 — at least one candidate for the position has expressed concerns over how the process is being conducted.

“The process your consultant tried to lay out was one that was legally dubious, ‘offsite meetings’ and ‘just oral presentations,’ and obviously designed to circumvent Michigan’s sunshine laws. I have no desire to take part in such evasive measures,” wrote James Freed, city manager of Port Huron. 

Freed emailed all 11 Ottawa County commissioners at their county-owned email addresses on Oct. 25 with his cover letter and resume, saying he circumvented Grand Rapids-based search firm W Talent Solutions because the talent firm’s process was “legally dubious.”

“The process your consultant tried to lay out was one that was legally dubious, ‘offsite meetings’ and ‘just oral presentations,’ and obviously designed to circumvent Michigan’s Sunshine Laws. I have no desire to take part in such evasive measures,” Freed said.

He noted to commissioners that W Talent Solutions, “who has never conducted a search for a public position before,” required unusual criteria for candidates not typically used in municipal searches, such as a leadership/personality assessment and what he described as a “cognitive/IQ test.”

The email cited in this story was provided to SentinelLeach by a county commissioner who asked not to be named over fears of retaliation from the board majority. 

“This is not normal practice in Michigan for public positions, as the information cannot be kept private due to FOIA and subpoena powers,” said Freed, who has worked in municipal administration since 2007. “This is unlike private sector executive searches. It’s also not completed on senior level executive positions.” 

Freed said when he tried to express his concerns with W Talent staff, “I was given no assurances to privacy on such personal assessments that would comply with FOIA or subpoena powers.”

Freed told commissioners that he wished to be considered for the administrator position, but “would not sit for such assessments.” 

Freed, who became the Port Huron city administrator in 2014, has been involved in several lawsuits over the past few years.

In September, Freed settled a lawsuit with the International City/County Management Association after ICMA censured Freed in 2022 over a social media post directed at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and an email about not pursuing a vaccine mandate for city employees in 2021, according to the Times Herald.

The organization alleged Freed's actions violated an ethics tenet about integrity and stripped Freed of his designation as an ICMA-credentialed manager.

Freed filed a lawsuit in St. Clair County Circuit Court in September 2022, citing counts of defamation, civil conspiracy, and that he was portrayed in a false light.

When announcing the settlement in September this year, the joint statement said the terms of the agreement to resolve the lawsuit will remain confidential.

In August, a federal appeals court sent a case back to U.S. District Court in Detroit involving a First Amendment case that alleged Freed improperly blocked a resident from his personal Facebook page.

The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Freed, but the U.S. Supreme Court in mid-March vacated the ruling, saying a different test should be required to see if the blocking violated the First Amendment, according to The Detroit News.

How we got here

Not much is known about how the process is going after an executive search committee was created in September by board Chair Joe Moss — who appointed himself chair and populated the remaining four slots with OI commissioners, two of whom lost their Republican primaries in August.

Ottawa Impact is a far-right fundamentalist group formed by Moss in 2021 after he took issue with pre-K-6 school mask mandates and other mitigation measures issued by the state and local health departments during the COVID-19 pandemic. His group currently controls six seats on the 11-member board.

Commissioner Doug Zylstra, a Democrat, attempted to get an update from the executive search committee at the commission’s regular Oct. 8 meeting, however, Moss said it “wasn’t time yet.”

Moss then accused Zylstra of “creating chaos.”

“If you're going to just wait to create chaos at a board meeting or manufacture something that really is a non-issue …,” Moss said.

Zylstra then said: “It's an issue to me. It's an issue to many.”

Despite support from Republican Commissioners Roger Bergman and Jacob Bonnema to discuss the search firm’s process and contract, Moss insisted the conversation wasn’t necessary and the six OI commissioners voted to not allow a formal discussion to be added to the Oct. 8 agenda.

Bergman, a Republican who is retiring at the end of the year and not seeking re-election, said the non-majority commissioners had a right to ask about the process: “I believe we can ask those questions. … We should have a possibility of our input. That's part of the reason why we need to discuss this.”

Moss responded: “Or you could avoid manufacturing chaos and asking the simple question.”

Bonnema then said: “This isn't creating chaos, Mr. Chair, this is asking questions.”

He also pointed out that, per state law, the board can’t offer anything beyond a one-year contract to a permanent administrator, which is meant as a deterrent in even-numbered years for outgoing elected officials to potentially meddle with incoming members on public bodies.

“We're looking at something that might have to be completely redone with a new board,” Bonnema said. “And seeing as how we're less than 90 days from a new board being seated, I don't want to see this kind of mess being handed to the new board.”

The executive search committee hasn’t met since Oct. 2 and Moss canceled the board’s Oct. 22 meeting, meaning Oct. 8 was the last semblance of a public discussion on the topic. The board won’t meet again until Nov. 12, after the Nov. 5 general election.

What will the search cost?

Another question that remains unresolved is what the search will cost the county.

Zylstra, who posted the proposed contract details with W Talent on his commissioner Facebook page on Oct. 9, wrote that the current process varies widely from the last official search in 2021, which cost taxpayers $22,500.

Read More: Ottawa County poised to pay more than $60K to search for its next administrator

“Ottawa County’s purchasing policy is designed to get the highest quality best price vendor to help us carry out county services for residents,” Zylstra wrote. “In 2021, as a result of a competitive RFP process, we hired GovHR, a recruiting firm with deep experience in the government sector, to help us carry out our search for a new administrator. The cost to taxpayers was $22,500.”

Zylstra said W Talent, which is based in Grand Rapids, has a “strong private sector placement record,” but “unfortunately has no available record in the government sector.”

He also said the proposed contract shows a cost that amounts to “approximately three times the amount we paid in 2021. I do not believe that paying a search firm 30% of first-year base salary, which in 2022 for John Shay was $210,000, makes sense for Ottawa County taxpayers and will be opposed to this contract if it comes before us.”

Zylstra only posted one page of the contract publicly; it was unknown as of publication if there are additional pages that are included in the draft contract language. It also isn’t clear if a contract has been finalized and signed with W Talent, as the topic hasn’t been discussed by the full board of commissioners.

The page that Zylstra released said the county will be required to pay $5,000 upon signing the contract as a non-refundable retainer fee, which is applied to the final fee. The county also would agree to pay 30% of “guaranteed first-year base salary.”

The past two administrators earned $210,000 in annual base pay, meaning if the contract was signed as proposed, the county stands to pay a minimum of $63,000.

Revolving door of administrators

The executive search process comes after the incoming OI commissioners fired previous administrator John Shay on Jan. 3, 2023 — the day they took office — after he had been in the job for only seven months.

They immediately used their majority to vote in former Republican Congressional candidate John Gibbs, who worked in the role for 13 months before he was fired Feb. 29 this year; he has since sued for wrongful termination and claims Moss defamed him.

The OI majority then appointed county Republican sheriff candidate Jon Anderson as interim county administrator.

The appointment was controversial because Anderson didn’t have any prior experience as a county administrator and he already was a declared OI-backed candidate for county sheriff, prompting critics to claim at several public meetings that the decision was intended to elevate Anderson's profile to better his election chances. 

Anderson lost to Undersheriff Eric DeBoer in the Aug. 6 primary by 20 points. 

The primary election also determined that OI will likely lose its board majority at the beginning of 2025.

Anderson submitted a resignation letter on Friday, Sept. 6, to the board of commissioners with a final day being Oct. 4. However, Moss said at the board’s Sept. 10 meeting, for which Anderson was not present, that he asked Anderson to stay on “through the search process.”

Moss created the executive search committee at the board’s next meeting on Sept. 24. After Anderson initially agreed to remain in the role, he resigned a second time on Oct. 13, effective immediately.

Moss called an emergency meeting of commissioners on Oct. 16 to appoint Deputy Administrator Ben Wetmore as the interim county administrator.

The move came two days after Wetmore signaled he plans to move forward with making hires for two key department head positions — county public defender and human resources director — internal emails show.

Read More: Wetmore wants to make key hires. Moss wants to name him interim administrator.

The decision, however, was hotly contested by the minority members on the board.

Zylstra made a motion at the Oct. 16 meeting to alter a resolution that granted wide-sweeping hiring and firing powers to Wetmore, including full authority over all county employees for “behavior” and “discipline.”

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Zylstra specifically asked that the language saying the administrator “shall supervise the operations and performance of all county departments and department heads, except corporate counsel and elected officials” should be replaced with verbiage from the past two administrators’ contracts that keeps board approval in place.

That sparked a contentious discussion with members of the OI majority, with Moss insisting that promoting Wetmore was the “next natural step” to fill a leadership void while the executive search committee plays out.

— Contact Sarah Leach at SentinelLeach@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @SentinelLeach. Subscribe to her content at sentinelleach.substack.com.