OTTAWA COUNTY — Ottawa County’s search for a new permanent administrator will now have to wait after the last of two top finalists withdrew — just three days after the other top finalist bowed out. 

What’s happening now

At a Monday meeting of the county’s executive search committee, board Chair Joe Moss announced that Sparta Village Manager Jim Lower, the last remaining top finalist in the county’s search, had withdrawn.

The meeting had been intended for second-round interviews for Lower and the other top finalist, Port Huron City Manager James Freed. On Friday, Freed announced he had withdrawn from the process, leaving Lower as the sole remaining top finalist.

Read More: Finalist who withdrew: Ottawa could issue $250K contract to next county administrator

Instead of advancing in the process as the presumed selection, Lower sent a letter to the commissioners withdrawing as well.

The reason, he said, was that incoming board members — who will assume a controlling majority next year — “began reaching out to me, both directly and indirectly, to express that I would not be given a fair opportunity to succeed in this role.”

“They explained that, regardless of my qualifications or efforts, they were committed to terminating or otherwise forcing out whoever is hired. This would be the case even if it resulted in significant costs to taxpayers through severance payments, search fees, and renewed turmoil,” Lower said. 

“At this moment, I believe it is time for someone to take an off-ramp. As such, I am withdrawing my name from consideration for this position. I do not wish to cost Ottawa County taxpayers additional money or be placed in a role set up for failure, thereby contributing further to division in the community,” Lower said.

Commissioner Allison Miedema claimed that Commissioner-elect John Teeples and returning Commissioner Jacob Bonnema, both Republicans, “intimidated” Lower into dropping out.

“He began receiving intimidating phone calls from John Teeples and Jacob Bonnema,” Miedema said.

Miedema also claimed Teeples “will likely be” the next chair of the board and that Bonnema “may be” vice chair in 2025. 

Teeples said Monday that he never intimidated Lower, and that Lower actually initiated the communication.

“He was looking for assurance that we would not have another recruiting process if he did a good job over the next 12 months,” Teeples said. “I told him that I personally could not support that because the public needed to see a process of transparency similar to what was done when the board interviewed and hired John Shay” in 2022.

Teeples said Lower was hoping that if he could prove himself to the new board, a fresh search wouldn’t be necessary, in 2025 or 2026.

“I told him I would not hold it against him in any regard for having applied at this time, and that we would be fair to him, in my opinion, but he said he was hoping that if he did a good job, we wouldn't have to go through the next transition review process,” Teeples said. “And I told him, for the sake of the community, I could not support that, that he would have to make his own decision.”

Moss said Lower withdrew because of the “intimidation” he ascribed to Teeples and Bonnema,  “not because he did not have the proper qualifications to be county administrator, but because he participated in a transparent, public search process by the current board.”

“The current board is acting in the best interest of the county in search for a permanent administrator,” Moss said Monday. “It is unfortunate to find someone that is supported by the community that feels he must withdraw due to the intimidation he's received.”

“The treatment Jim and his family received was unfair, unethical and unjust,” Moss said at Monday’s meeting. “This behavior is also creating a toxic and toxic environment for the transition between the two boards.”

Teeples said he and Lower “never discussed the merits of his qualifications” and that Lower was welcome to reapply when another search process begins.

“There was no intimidation, but he must have re-evaluated the reality of what I see will happen in the future, or what I personally would recommend as a commissioner going forward, because the community needs to see another process where he could apply equally and be fairly treated,” Teeples said of Lower. “That's how the conversation went. He made a decision. I don't know how that's intimidating. It's just laying up how I saw the facts.”

Teeples said the claim that he would be chair and speculation that Bonnema could be vice chair is inaccurate and premature.

“We will all know, including me, who will be the chair starting in January,” Teeples said. “We certainly haven't gotten together and discussed it.”

How we got here

The executive search process came after previous interim administrator Jon Anderson resigned — twice — in September and October. 

Read More: Interim Ottawa County administrator resigns — again

Deputy Administrator Ben Wetmore was named as the interim administrator as the search process played out, however, the Ottawa Impact majority on the board unexpectedly opted to broadly expand Wetmore’s powers to no longer include board approval for department head hires and fires — a rule that has been featured in all previous administrator contracts.

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

A search committee was created in September by Moss — who appointed himself chair and populated the remaining four slots with OI commissioners, two of whom lost their Republican primaries in August (although Commissioner Gretchen Cosby has not attended the last several meetings).

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.

The group has had as many as seven seats on the 11-member county board, but currently controls six, and has made a series of controversial decisions over the past two years that led to six lawsuits — two remain ongoing — and a brief investigation from the state attorney general's office.

Ottawa Impact commissioners fired previous administrator John Shay on Jan. 3, 2023 — the day they took office — after he had been in the role 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 also was fired Feb. 29 this year; he has since sued for wrongful termination and claims Moss defamed him.

Several members of Ottawa Impact lost their bids for re-election and OI’s representation will pare down to four seats when the new four-year term begins in January. The current majority continued with the hiring process despite some incoming commissioners like Teeples asking the board to wait.

"Please don't make an imprudent decision by hiring the wrong person as our next county administrator,” Teeples said at the board’s Nov. 12 meeting.

Bonnema, who initially was aligned with OI during the 2022 campaign season but publicly split from the group in March 2023, also asked Moss and other OI commissioners earlier this month not to move forward with the process.

“I formally request that no final decisions or offers regarding this position be made until the new board is seated in 46 days,” Bonnema said in a Nov. 17 email. “We currently have an interim in place, offering us the luxury of time. Rushing this decision could undermine your standing with the incoming majority.”

Bonnema said the current board majority only has themselves to blame.

“The Ottawa County administrator process has been rushed, frantic and flawed before it was even announced. The current, OI majority has been eager to “own” the process, but not the mistakes they made which brought us to this position,” Bonnema said in a Monday statement. “They chose to exclude re-elected commissioners and act in opposition to the clearly stated wishes of the incoming board majority.

“This lame duck commission hired an inexperienced agency to run a search they couldn’t support, for a job that could not provide stability or longevity for the candidates. As a result, there are no candidates remaining.”

A chaotic week

Lower, 35, withdrew from the process just three days after Freed, 39, publicly announced his withdrawal at a Friday press conference in Port Huron. 

Freed said he was recruited by a “head hunter” as Ottawa began the search for its next administrator — its fifth in less than 24 months. He said he “went through the process” because “Ottawa is a premiere county.”

“It would be unfair to your organization and your residents to continue in the process to become your next county administrator,” Freed said in the letter.

At the Friday press conference, Freed said he spoke to Moss on Wednesday, Nov. 20  — the day after his first interview, but one day before the executive search committee met to publicly discuss and decide to advance Lower and Freed as the top finalists — a possible violation of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

“(On Wednesday) the chair of the board called me and essentially said, you're moving on in the process. It'll be announced tomorrow,” Freed said at the Friday press conference. “And we began talking about where I can enroll my kids in school and where I can buy a house, and how fast I can get to Ottawa County, because they wanted me to start pretty quick. That's when things got real, real, real.”

Freed said he was told by Ottawa County representatives that the administrator position pays a quarter of a million dollars annually — $40,000 more than what the previous two administrators received.

“The position pays $250,000 a year with an immediate 12-month severance of $250,000, so it's about a half-a-million dollar proposition to be the Ottawa County administrator,” Freed said Friday.

What happens now

Lower, a former state representative for Michigan’s 70th House district, said he plans to remain in his administrator role in Sparta; Freed said he plans to do the same in Port Huron.

It is unclear if Moss plans to hire a permanent administrator before the end of the year. 

Teeples said he has repeatedly suggested to Moss and other commissioners the appointment of outgoing Republican Sheriff Steve Kempker to serve as an interim administrator until a thorough process can be completed early next year.

Teeples said he didn’t receive a response.

“I don't know what they're going to do,” he said.

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The board of commissioners has just two meetings left on the calendar: Nov. 26 and Dec. 10. If the board opts to hire an administrator before the end of the year, state law limits them to offering only a one-year contract — a provision in the state statute that prevents outgoing boards from undermining incoming elected officials.

Terms for county commissioners in Michigan also change at the beginning of the year, going from two years to four years. Ottawa Impact is set to lose its controlling majority at the end of this year.

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