Ottawa County names top 2 picks for administrator, then 1 immediately withdraws
Just hours after Ottawa County announced it had narrowed down its county administrator to two finalists, one of them publicly withdrew from the process.
OTTAWA COUNTY — Just hours after Ottawa County announced it had narrowed down its county administrator to two finalists, one of them publicly withdrew from the process.
On Thursday morning, an executive search committee met briefly to discuss their top picks from four finalist interviews that took place earlier this week.
During Thursday’s meeting, board Chair Joe Moss said his top picks were Sparta city manager Jim Lower and Port Huron city manager James Freed and the other three members of the committee agreed to advance Lower and Freed to a second round of interviews to take place Friday, Nov. 22.
Hours after the decision, however, Freed sent a letter to commissioners formally withdrawing from consideration.
“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.
Freed withdraws237KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadOttawa County finalist Jim Freed withdrew from consideration on Thursday, just hours after he was named one of two top finalists.Download
He said that after interviewing with Ottawa’s search committee, he and his wife reflected on their future and that his family had “an irrevocable bond” with the city he currently serves.
Freed’s withdrawal means only Lower remains as a finalist and presumably will be the recommended candidate the committee will advance to the full board of commissioners for consideration to hire.
How we got here
The executive search process comes 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 has 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.
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 is continuing with the hiring process despite some of the new incoming commissioners not affiliated with Ottawa Impact asking the board to wait.
Commissioner-elect John Teeples of District 7 asked the board at its meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 12, to not hire a county administrator during their lame-duck session before the new board takes over.
"Please don't make an imprudent decision by hiring the wrong person as our next county administrator,” Teeples said at Tuesday’s meeting.
What’s happening now
The committee on Friday, Nov. 15, met for the first time in six weeks to publicly discuss the candidates and to narrow the pool down to a list of finalists to invite for a series of formal interviews.
The finalist list included Lower, a former state representative, Ionia County Administrator Patrick Jordan, former credit union CEO Chris Estes and Freed.
Thursday’s withdrawal wasn’t the first time Freed emailed the Ottawa commissioners. On Oct. 25, he emailed them saying the administrator search process through Grand Rapids-based W Talent Solutions was “legally dubious.”
Read More: Candidate for administrator calls Ottawa County's process '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 wrote in the email.
“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.”
It was unclear during Freed’s interview Tuesday if he had completed the requirements the search firm laid out and the Ottawa committee didn’t address Freed’s complaints nor the search firm’s criteria during that meeting.
With Freed’s withdrawal, only Lower remains in consideration.
Lower, 35, served as an Ionia County commissioner from 2011 to 2012. At the time, he was one of the youngest elected officials at age 21.
In 2012, he unsuccessfully ran for Ionia County clerk; in 2013 he took a position as legislative director for the Michigan Senate. He served in that role for one year, then ran successfully for the 70th state House district, where he served for four years. Lower then became the director of strategy and operations for the Michigan House for two years.
Last year, he became the village manager for Sparta. He holds a master’s in business administration from Grand Valley State University.
Read the live feed from the interviews here.
The committee meeting is scheduled to meet 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22, at the county administration building in Fillmore Township. The board of commissioners has just two meetings left on the calendar: Nov. 26 and Dec. 10.
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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.
— Contact Sarah Leach at SentinelLeach@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @SentinelLeach. Subscribe to her content at sentinelleach.substack.com.
