OTTAWA COUNTY — Ottawa County is inching toward appointing a new county administrator — its fifth in the past two years — before far-right fundamentalist group Ottawa Impact loses its controlling majority on the board of commissioners in 47 days.

The finalist list includes a former state representative, a county administrator, a credit union CEO and a candidate who criticized the county’s administrator search process, describing it as “legally dubious” in a letter to commissioners last month.

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 OI majority 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 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.

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 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 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.

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 regular 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 list includes:

Jim Lower

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.

Patrick Jordan

Jordan, 59, has worked as the Ionia County administrator for two years. He previously worked as the city manager of Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula. In 2022, the city wanted to modify Jordan’s contract that would have reduced his pay by nearly 30% because he had “not made any progress to correct issues the council identified during his more recent performance review,” the Daily Press reported. Just weeks later, he accepted the position in Ionia. Jordan previously worked as Wexford County administrator as well as several municipal administrative positions in Alaska. He holds a master of public administration from Western Michigan University.

Christopher Estes

Estes, 57, is the president and CEO of Security Credit Union in Flint. He previously worked as the vice president of operations of Dow Chemical Employees’ Credit Union in Midland and as vice president and chief operating officer at a banking corporation in the South. Estes holds an MBA from Northwood University.

James Freed 

Freed is the current city manager of Port Huron. Freed, 39, previously served as city manager for the city of Stanton as well as the village manager of Lakeview, Michigan. On Oct. 25, Freed emailed the Ottawa County commissioners, saying the search process through 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.”

Commissioners’ discussion

Moss said he wanted someone who was “a strong leader with a proven track record leading teams.”

“For me, personally, when I look through all the resumes, there are four people who really rise to the top,” he said, listing the four finalists by name.

Commissioners Allison Miedema and Sylvia Rhodea also listed the four. Commissioner Gretchen Cosby was absent. 

Commissioner Roger Belknap proposed adding Ottawa County’s Director of Strategic Impact Paul Sachs. Sachs was on the list of finalists in April when Moss and Rhodea leveraged their majority to hire Anderson, who was then the OI-backed candidate for sheriff.

“I was glad to see Paul Sachs on this list. … For what it’s worth, I’d like to hear from him if we get that opportunity,” Belknap said. “I always like the idea of casting a wider net.”

Ultimately, the four commissioners named their top picks with only Belknap including Sachs as a recommended finalist. Next steps will be scheduling interviews and developing a “consistent list” of questions, according to Moss and Miedema.

Before the meeting was adjourned, several public commenters criticized the process thus far.

Bob Spaman, of Blendon Township, was an applicant for the position. He noted that his resume didn’t appear in the committee’s public packet until hours after the initial public notice posting on the county’s website; he also noted that the deadline for applicants was Nov. 15, making Friday’s meeting “premature.”

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Dave Barnosky, of Port Sheldon Township, said the current board is trying “to continue to control the commission beyond your ability to have a majority on the commission — by appointing an administrator to your liking.”

“Stop. Don’t do this. Stop trying to control everything. Try to return to a democratic process,” he said. 

If the current board successfully hires a new administrator, state law prevents the board from offering anything longer than a one-year contract in an even-numbered election year.

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