Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-16-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

04-16-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years Find out more about them at Clouser Drilling.com Here's Bill Myers. I want to check in with Kevin Sterrett of Oregon Firearms Federation and get the latest on the bills that are slithering through the slimy gut of the state legislature and getting ready to plop out of the bird-butt cloaca legislature and getting ready to plop out of the bird-butt cloaca onto the people. I guess I'm kind of expressing a little bit of bias about our state legislature. Kevin, I can't help myself, okay? It's good to have you back on though. Welcome. Thank you, Bill. All right. It is Senate Bill 1015 was one I wanted to ask you a few questions about because anytime that you see, and

what we have to remember is that the only bills that are really moving are Democrat bills because that's the way it works when you have Democrats in the majority, correct? Are we to assume this, right? No, that's exactly correct. And there will be bills that have Republican sponsors, but those are approved by the Democrats because if they aren't approved by the Democrats, nothing's going to happen. And then of course you have people who will vote with the Democrats, like Dick Anderson, who will vote to protect porn in schools for reasons no one can figure out.

There are bills that Republicans have their names on or that they sponsored or co-sponsored, but nothing's moving without the Democrats' approval. So when Christine Drazen puts out an email yesterday, and I got that from Christine, that no Republicans vote to cut taxes. It's like that's really nice, but it doesn't matter, right? No, it makes no difference at all. You know, Drazen and the other people there are constantly putting out emails saying,

we voted this way or we sponsored that. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you sponsor. What matters is what gets a hearing. And virtually none of what they're doing gets a hearing because they're not in charge. But they rely on what they think is the ignorance of the voter who believes that the introduction

of a bill means something. And they introduce, you know, there are 3000 bills out there. Most of them never see the light of day because it's as easy for them to get rid of because it's easier for them to get rid of a bill than it is for you to press delete on a spam email. So I've even seen them send out emails bragging about bills that they introduced after the deadline for the bill to be dead. Which means it really can't get passed. There's no way that it legally could happen. Okay, all right.

But I guess this is about massaging voters' expectations, or at least giving the illusion that our opposition party is actually fighting and opposing the agenda in Salem. Is that a fair... I don't like putting it that way, but that's just realistically what we're seeing here Right. Well, I mean they're they're greasing the skids for the Democrats over and over and over again. They're voting for their bills. They're

They're expediting their bills and then they'll put out a notice that you know We introduced something that that is utterly meaningless or you know, we voted against this Well, if you're on the floor typically it's very very unusual. For a bill to get to the floor of the House or Senate meeting meaning it's moved through the process. It's been

through the hearings and one or more committees now it gets to the floor for a vote. It's extremely rare. For a bill to get that far until the Democrats are assured that they have the votes to pass it. Now, if it's a Democrat bill, they have the votes to pass it, because Democrats do not

vote against Democrat bills. That's really unusual. So, if it gets to the floor, it's already a done deal, which means if the Republicans are there, they're voting yes. Because you're providing quorum. We're going to continue to pick this scab because I know, and I've talked to state legislators about this, believe me, junkyard dog, Dwayne Younger understands this, and he's willing to go out and deny quorum, but he's not going to go out and deny quorum unless everybody

else goes out because you all have to leave if you're going to use that power to stop this nonsense. Of course, you know, there has to be enough of them to leave to actually deny quorum. And there at this point, you know, all the indications I have from the communications I've had with several of them, either directly or indirectly, is that there's no expectation of that happening. So what people need to understand, and you're right, you know, we're beating this thing to death, but if you are on the floor for a vote, you are voting yes, because the bills that are there are no longer in play. The Democrats have the votes lined up and it is going to pass. And the only way to fight the Democrats, if there are some of these worst bills that are

coming out there, is that you have to stop the legislature session and negotiate a return in order to happen and I know it's hard but that's the reality. The only card they have to play and yet I continue to get fundraising emails from Vicki Breeze, the Ivarsons and all of these other people that are involved in the process about sending money to us and will fight. And I'm thinking, well, the fight, and I've written back some of them saying the fight means you must stop the session when you have the worst of this stuff coming up for full floor votes. But I don't get much response to that. Do you?

You know, the question is if you're in the legislature, now I get constant fundraisers from Bozart Davis and from Jeff Halfridge. Yeah, I do too. I don't know how they get away with this since it seems to be violating the House rules that says you don't raise funds while you're in session, but it's always about send me more money and we'll fight this. You're in the legislature. If I sent you a million dollars, what would you be doing to fight this that you can't do now?

Now if you're running for office, of course You're raising funds because it costs a lot of money to run for office Absolutely, and let's you're like in a solidly Republican or Democrat district. We get that but Bozart Davis and health rich have this endless stream of requests for money. Bozart Davis is saying I'm protecting truckers Send money to my truckers pack health rich is raising money for everything, like if you just send me more money, I'm going to fight this stuff. Well, the only means they have to fight it is to either walk out and negotiate something with the threat of a walkout. But as bad as it is that they won't walk out, they're actually helping them. I mean, this Senate 1015 which passed out a committee. And this is the one I wanted to talk about you know right now

Senate bill 1015 it looks you know it looks fine until you actually read it and this is about we're going to help do what is it the purpose is to is to you know spread some money around to stop community gun violence isn't that about the basics of it? Well, what the bill actually says is it requires the Department of Justice to develop and implement a grad program toward monies to eligible entities to reduce community violence and communities experiencing disproportionately high rates of community violence. But if you read the bill, it only applies to violence with firearms.

They're forbidden from giving any money to police or for any program where anyone goes to jail. In other words, nothing goes to law enforcement. That is the real clue that what this is about is paying off the Democrat crime gang. This has to be. Precisely. They are forbidden from giving any money to the police and they're forbidden to give any money for any program that confines individuals in correctional facilities. So kind of there's a tip off there. But then it's perfectly clear if you look at the people who are supporting this, where the money is going. The money is going to anti-gun organizations and they've raised, you know know the anti gun organizations

nationally and locally as we've seen from. Leftist organizations for years now get massive grants and funds from your money you know we pay for left wing quote media outlets we pay for all these left wing organizations to our

tax dollars and this is one of the things that the anti gun groups have done is they've they've published their agendas. And before the session even started, and we have all this documented on the website, they published the list of things they want. One of the things they wanted was to shut down gun stores. They said that right going in, and that's what we got with 3076. They wanted to implement 114. They got that with 3075. They wanted to raise money for themselves, and now they have this with 1015. And the problem is that this is not past

the floor yet. This is just out of committee. But it got passed out of committee with a Republican vote too, didn't it? With two Republican votes. And it's okay if it's a Democrat bill that says anything about community violence, you have to like look behind the curtain. And you know, the instant response to be, well, I'm not voting for this because I know they didn't say who's getting the money, but we know who's getting the money. Well, all you have to do is look at, in fact, you sent me the link to the witness list of the people who were invited to testify in favor of this bill, right? That's where you find out who really wants this. Yeah, if you, all of this stuff, if a person wants to take a few minutes to go on on the legislative website and look at the bill, look at the amendments,

then look at the witness sign-up list and then and when the other thing is is that the the testimony that was uploaded against this bill was overwhelmingly in opposition to it massively in opposition to it and yet it's still the Republicans still voted it out of committee now these are the people who are constantly telling us don't bother us Republicans you've got to contact the Democrats and flood them with emails. Well, when the people express their opposition to something, which they do with uploaded testimony, which is what we can see, obviously we can't see the emails that go directly to legislators, they're ignored. But they're not just ignored by the Democrats, which we expect they're being ignored by the Republicans

Now if you have 300 pieces of testimony against something and 20 in support of it Wouldn't you think that you should be voting no on that and stopping that bill? I think you should certainly be giving a second look at the bill, you know and and They listen they've done this with 1191 to which is another bill that if you look at the witness registration it's all extremist left wing organizations. It's Mark Knutson, the author of Measure 114, the League of Women Voters, Viva Inclusive Migrant Network, Centro Cultural, and American Friends Service Committee, you know, which close ties to commun communist for years.

And if you say, well, but the bill just says that, oh, I can go tell someone his rights if he's being arrested, go and look at who these people are, who they support, where they come from, who they've aligned themselves with, go look at their social media pages and say, wait a minute, that bill, 1191 is all about protecting illegal immigrants. Exactly, when they're saying, hey,

that anybody can go up there and say that you have the right to, you know, telling the cop what to do, I guess, essentially, right? That's what this is all about, protecting illegal aliens. It's a sanctuary city bill, in essence, is what it's really about. Absolutely, and look, we all want people to be aware of their rights. Now, it seems to me that we don't need a law to say that

someone can speak to someone, but you know how this will be used just as the bills that Drazen has supported to protect Antifa so they can no longer be prosecuted for interfering with a cop. This is not going to be someone across the streets yelling out, saying, you have the right to remain silent. This is going to be people interfering with the arrest of illegals and other people who

are committing crimes. And they will use this bill, if it ends up being passed into law and signed by the governor, as the cudgel against people going after illegal aliens in this country, in this state, rather. OK? And so my question is, why are the Republicans expediting all of this? I

mean, this 1191, the only Republican who voted against this bill was Dan Bonham. You know, our most conservative Republicans voted in favor of this bill. Which bill is this again? And was this out of committee or in... No, this was on the floor. This was Senate Bill 1191. And they all passed for it? They all passed it? Yeah. I'll get that. Yeah, yeah. Now, the bill that we started talking about, I realize this could be confusing trying to keep up with this on the radio. 1015 is out of committee and hasn't been voted on the floor yet but eleven ninety one passed the Senate and I mean. Dan bottom

the only one who voted against this. What is going on are people looking or you know they saying well we have so many bills we can't keep track of it well if the end you know no one told me that. But if that's really the issue then you better

vote no reflexively. You know I mean if it's a if it's a bill that's sponsored by a Democrat, you probably should just be voting no. This bill was sponsored by Jim Manning and Patterson. Now, Manning is one of the most racist legislators that we have there. Manning is an extreme racist. He's barely literate. He cannot complete an English sentence. And maybe that's the problem is that if Manning... If you go against a Manning bill, he calls you a racist. Isn't that essentially what happens? You better not vote against it because you know Manning is a black man and you know if you're black, you know it's absolutely insane.

And the crap that this guy introduces that people go along with but these two bills in particular you know you you've got to look beyond what the summary of the bill says but in certainly in the case of 1015 where it says we're gonna with Department of Justice is gonna award all this money now bill this is your money this is the money that belongs to your listeners. That's right. That they're putting no limitations on how much money is spent and they're going to decide which organizations are fighting gun violence. Well, who's fighting gun violence? Well, those are all the anti-gun groups and

they're the ones that would be in line for all of this grant stream funding that some Republicans are even helping to pass. This is just, it's total nonsense is what this is. Well, I mean, if you start wondering, like, have these, are these people reading the bills? Are they doing it? Like I said, there's a lot there to do, but they have staff. There's committee staff that's supposed to be researching these things. Now, I look at this bill, I look at the people who are supporting it.

It doesn't take me very long to go to their websites, see who they're friends with, who's coming to speak at their events, look at their social media pages, to look to see it's all about white supremacy and white nationalism. And these are things we used to call a clue. And these are the people with whom our Republican legislators are aligning themselves. And if they're doing it inadvertently, then they really need a different line of work. And they really need to have someone digging through these bills a little more closely if they're going. But you have to assume, you should be assuming from the start that if you're getting to vote on a bill on the on the

floor, it's something that the Democrats want. And if the Democrats want it, you should be very concerned as a Republican as to why they want it. And it's the lack of curiosity or maybe the go-along that concerns us most about this legislative session. Yeah, and I think that certainly there are gonna be bills that pop up that a Republican can legitimately support. I don't think there'll be many, but there will be some. I think that you should be skeptical of anything

that the Democrats do, but there will probably be innocuous bills. I mean, they just passed a bill that said, you can't move a foster child's belongings in a garbage bag. And you know something, I thought that's, it's an innocuous bill, it's reasonable as someone, I get the symbolism of not moving the kids around stuff in a garbage bag, I get that.

Yeah, okay. Now, whether or not this required legislation, anyone can make that decision themselves. But there's a bill that no one's going to vote against right I mean although I will say you know I mean I have grandchildren and there have been times when I've had to move their stuff in a garbage bag just because you know they're three and five and it's like I gotta move something quickly. But no one's going to object to that you know foster kids have enough problems, something that is positive for their, for their self-esteem. I'm all for that. But anything else, I mean,

certainly something that's sponsored by the people who sponsored these bills is highly suspect. And if you're not even going to slow them down when they get on the floor, for God's sakes, vote against them. You know, I mean, throw the people a bone and apparently they're not even willing to do that. And that's why we're saying, hey, you know, great, if you're against these bills, and you should be against these bills, you can go ahead and write to the Democrats if you want. You also understand that you're going to be up and speaking to a brick wall. Our challenge has been for getting our opposition Republican people to behave like opposition Republican legislators. That's it. You're not speaking to a brick wall when you talk to the Democrats. You're speaking to a brick wall when you write to Republicans.

I mean, if they're insisting that the answer to these problems is making your voice heard, you make your voice heard loud and clear and you get ignored by your own people. What does that tell us that you know it is a serious problem and I said are are they reading these things and if not. This is like they can basically slip through anything they want but I mean certainly 1015 it's so obvious where this is going. What's not obvious is what it's going to cost. You know, the way this whole thing works is that the Republicans get donations from nonprofit left-wing groups. If they get a $5,000 donation from a left-wing nonprofit, they can then turn around and direct $5 million

into that nonprofit because it isn't their money. And that's why it is so important that Republicans not just vote no, but not vote to pass this garbage out of committee. That's the importance of this, Kevin. Yeah. If you're going to have a bill that says the Department of Justice gets to give away your money, can you please tell me how much money that's going to be? Is it, well, it's going to go to Ways and Means, they'll figure it out. Well, Ways and Means is totally dominated by left-wing Democrats. Are they going to figure it out? Well, maybe, but it's still going to cost, it's the money of the taxpayers that's going

with absolutely no accountability to groups that are going to come and take away their rights. And this is why we continue to pound this, folks. Your mission is to get in touch with the Republicans for the reason that Kevin has demonstrated, because everything's getting passed and everything's there to fund the left-wing people who are still attacking us. Final question before we take off here. I noticed that Oregon Live reporting that Measure 114 is going to be appealed to the state Supreme Court again with Tony

Aiello. You've talked about him in the past and it's just a petition to say, hey does this actually comport with Oregon's Second Amendment? Any chance of a different outcome there? Yeah, the appeal has been filed and now it's up to the Supreme Court to decide what they want to do with it. They can say, now we're not going to listen to this. They can take it. If they take it, frankly, we don't know what happens next because as we've mentioned in the past, there is a bill to implement all the elements of 114. 114 was a ballot measure.

This bill repeals 114 and replaces it with worse language. So the question which is unanswered and which there's some disagreement of amongst the attorneys is, is there even a case that can be argued in the Supreme Court if 114 has been repealed? Now the lower courts, as Tony pointed out and as we pointed out in the past, the lower courts, as Tony pointed out, and as we pointed out in the past, the lower court reached some conclusions that are completely unsupportable. For example, they said, magazines are totally protected, but you can restrict them. It really, really, they literally said- Yeah, the contradictory rules.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I think Tony has made a great case, but we don't know if it will make any difference if 3075 passes. All right. I appreciate the take on it. Thanks so much.

And stay in touch and OregonFirearms.org. I wish the news were better, but our mission is to hold the Republicans and tell them start acting like an opposition party. I mean, otherwise there is no reason to vote for Republicans and I don't want to be that way. I know it sounds defeatist. Bill, why are you always going after Republicans? Hey, Democrats are acting like the Democrats do it. You know, the Democrats tell them to act this way. They're doing it. But not all of our people are, are acting like, you know, that they're actually representing us. And so this is the, this is the issue. This is the rub. This has been the major problem of this state legislative session. Okay, Kevin, thanks so much. Have you back, okay? Be well. Thank you, Bill. This is the Bill Meyers show. Millet Construction has been a general contractor. Visit MilletConstruction.com. Hi, I'm Michael with Gaja Construction and I'm on KMED. Chris Barnett joins me from the Josephine County Commission. Well, Chris, good to

have you back on and have you figured out the secret handshakes, the restroom keys, and all the other little codes of being a County Commissioner. Now that you've been in office a few months, how you been? Well, I'll tell you what, it's been a great, what, 90 days, just over 90 days now, and I can tell you that I'm really enjoying the job the challenges um you know the politics you got to work through that is the part that everybody hates is the politics part but I can tell you Bill that we're doing some great things at Josephine County and this is another way for us to reach out in the community by picking the Bill Myers show as an

additional way to get the word out about what we're doing. Okay, we appreciate it. Well, happy to help you get the word out here. Now, how are things going as far as right-sizing? I know I'm using that horrible term that the big corporations used to do. We're going to right-size, meaning that, yeah, we're going to have to, you know, lay off some people or trim some expenses. Even back when I was talking with Herman Barchigger about Josephine County, we knew that 2025 was going to be a big tough deal. 2026 could be even tougher because it's just the realistic idea of how much money is coming in versus how much has to go out. And what is the status of the trimming and getting things readjusted as far as personnel in Joe County. What can you say?

Well, we do have a little bit of a reorganization going on, but every company, every business in America goes through this. So, and the county government is no different. You know, when I was in the military, the same thing happened was, hey, we're not going to get the funding to fly our jets. So, what do we have to do? We ground those jets for a little bit longer. Didn't mean we get rid of them. We just reorganized and said, hey, what else can we do to fill in the gaps? So I think with the reorganization, we're kind of going to internal audit, seeing what we are doing and how we can be more efficient. And I think the people that voted us in, they want more efficiency in government. They want things to run faster and quicker, and they want us to be good stewards of their tax paying dollars. And so we've got to go in and look out for fraud, waste, and abuse. And those are the things that we're looking at right now for the taxpayers that voted us in. I mean, they really want to see government work for them

the best they can. In essence, Chris, are you do are you dozing the place without getting Elon Musk involved? Is that kind of where you're where you're coming from right now? Is that what you're alluding to? Well, every good manager is kind of going that direction. Absolutely. Because you got to run more efficient. If you don't have the money coming in, what do you do? You have to trim, right? So every single business, I know me being a business owner as well, I understand it. But just being the yes man to everything, I can't do that. Not when you have serious issues at hand and we're bleeding and I want to stop the bleed and run it efficiently with the people that we do have. All right. How much bleeding has there been and how much

have you had to trim? And I know that there were some buyouts that were offered and many haven't taken up on that if I understand correctly. Isn't that right? Yeah, absolutely. There was an incentive to leave early, buyout program, and we had 18 people bite on that and they did leave. And that left some positions wavering going, what do we do?

Everybody panics at first. And then we find out those people that really stepped up within their organization to become the next managers. So instead of having all the top heavy wages, we kind of trim that out and go, hey, you know what? These managers are doing the job. So let's give them more responsibility in their positions to lead. They know their departments the best and that's what we're seeing going on. So some of those positions are not getting filled back and then some of them we're looking at who wants to step up. So it really kind of gets the organization realigned to go, wow I can step up and here's

me. I've been here a long time and look what I do and those people are starting to shine and you can see it. What is Michael Sellers role now? it's been kind of a work in progress and I know that when the emergency manager position ended up going away he took that on and What is the story? What is Michael doing right now? Boy Michael Sellers has really stepped up He really cares about the county and how we do things there and try to run more efficiency. He is the director of operations, so that is his job. He oversees the other departments and he definitely gives us briefings and updates and it kind of takes the process

of supervising more efficient and the Director of Operations is doing that and then it gives us more time as commissioners to be out in the field, do the things that people want us to do, meet them, go see their problems, attend meetings, get involved. And what's happening right now is you're so, you're you're managing your employees so much at the top where you don't get that chance to do the other things that people want us to do. Is there a case to be made that Josephine County folks will be a little more, is it right to say a little more self-directed here in this efficiency move or or just having one chief rather than many chiefs I guess maybe that's the way to put it. Exactly, just one to supervise all the other managers

and directors. So that's what's kind of like a focal point. So they can go to him, he comes to us, we put things on the agenda, and then we direct and talk to them. And the way it's running now, it just takes so much time, the way it was running, just took so much time. the way it was running, just

took so much time. And we're like, why are we dealing with these same problems week after week after week? All right. Is it almost the equivalent that he's like Danny Josephine County version of Danny Jordan? I don't know. He's not an administrator. He's not the county administrator, but he's performing a lot of those duties. Is that it?

He's performing a lot of those duties without being the manager. He's not the county manager at all. He's a director of operations. It's a new position and we are testing that out to see how that works, how to run efficiently. And so far, Michael Sellers is wearing many hats right now and he is doing a great job, I have to say. It's really becoming an efficient position. Will there be any danger of burnout? Because there comes a certain point, having been involved in a corporate structure, even personally, that you can sometimes only speed the conveyor belt up so much. You know what I'm getting at? Oh, absolutely. And I check in with him daily.

And I said, hey, we have to find replacements for these other positions that you're overseeing. And we're doing that. So yeah, you definitely don't want burnout. That's one thing that we check with everybody. And I go, hey, you're taking on a lot. Can you handle it? Well, of course, people can handle a lot.

But there comes the breaking point, like you said, where it's like, oh, this is getting too much. And so we're looking out for that. We're gauging that and we're filling in those gaps for those people that have left, trying to find ways to fill those positions. But in the meantime, we are saving some money out of it. So it is working. It's just doing more with less.

All right. 751, talking with Chris Barnett, Josephine County Commissioner. We appreciate you coming on and it's kind of just an update on status. We haven't had a chance and I know that you're all getting your sea legs now after two, three months in office here, Chris. We'll have this conversation probably every couple of weeks or so and rotate around the the various board members there. What about, probably one of the biggest sticking points, and especially if I go over to Josephine County Democrats or if I read Daily Courier or anybody else out there, a lot of this is, a lot of focus has been placed on what's going to happen with the

library negotiation and what can you tell us? And you know, is the library going to be evicted from the county property right now? You have said no or gone on the record. What do we know right now? What's the current status of where we're going? Absolutely. Fielding calls on a daily basis. There was some bad misinformation that went out there that the library got evicted. Our board never said that nor has there been any statement on that. So somebody ran with that and we know where that happened and it shouldn't have happened but it was misinformation. So there is no eviction of the

library right now. We look forward to a hopeful outcome of renegotiating the lease that ends December 31st of this year and looking at ways how we can work together. If they want to stay, we want to hear it from them. We want to hear what they propose going forward, because it's been seven years since they set up this previous lease. And all it is is a building lease. It doesn't matter what tenant is in there.

It's not personal at all. It's just like, hey, what can we do to accommodate? And how can this be a win-win for the county and for the library? What would a win-win for the county and for the library? What would a win-win for the county look like? Because I think the lease term is pretty generous right now, if I recall correctly. It is. It's basically free.

It's a dollar by contractual. You've got to put a dollar amount. It's a dollar a year. The county maintains the building, provides yard service, and this has been going on for seven years and the county's getting to the point where there's got to be some big repairs done to that building like a roof some HMAC systems and stuff like that so we're trying to figure out a way like do we pull more money out to keep sinking in and or where this has

come to a negotiation and that's simply where it's at I'm just one commissioner but I'd love to meet with the board of Directors. I know that that is going to happen someday in the future. Right now we're focused on budgets now, but I think this all got started early because commercial leases, they do start a year in advance. Okay, so you're working through the budgets here right now. When do you think you'll have that buttoned up so we can, you know, figure out where the Josephine County Library is going to be and just make sure they have a home or that there's time to prepare one way or the other.

Yeah, I think in July, July is going to be a good month that we can all get together. I think that we're going to propose some dates and see what dates that they can attend and let's see if we can sync our schedules. Right now, it seems like everybody's in different directions. I know we've been trying to meet and every time something comes up. So why is that so difficult? That doesn't make sense to me, Chris. Yeah, I think, you know, they have an attorney involved. They're being represented by the attorney. Their attorney talks to our attorney and we're kind of out of the equation right now of

negotiating directly. And I don't like that. I wish that we could just all come to the table and talk. That's what we did have one productive meeting that was very cordial. And we said, hey, moving forward, let's get to the table and talk. But for whatever reason, it's become a little bit political and I don't like it that we're hurting the library. We're doing no such thing. I want, moving forward, that everybody can come to the table and work on extending or renegotiating this current lease that's been in place for seven years. That's all. I've been reading that city of grants passed, I know it's not your jurisdiction there, but they're talking about raising pay rates dramatically, you know, from the talk

about it. They haven't done it yet here. Is there any, is there any brain drain in Josephine County which people are saying, hey, I'm going to join the city instead? I'm just curious. No, have not heard that at all. Josephine County is a great place to work and I know that those raises that they did talk about are on hold. They did not pass it like you said. They've been kind of keeping up on what they're doing over there. But in the county, I mean, our employees were paid very nice wages and nice benefits, and it's a great place to work. And I think that the people that really love their jobs, it's not about the money, it's about the environment and where they work and feel comfortable. And we're trying to make this a very good

place to work. And we're doing a lot of morale events and certificates and comfortable. And we're trying to make this a very good place to work. And we're doing a lot of morale events and certificates and awards. And we're doing different things. We're going to have a company picnic, a county picnic with all the employees. We're looking at fun things to do, Bill, to really boost morale.

So trying to build up the morale of the teamwork that's left. It's a much smaller team from the sounds of it, though. Exactly, exactly. We're still like the fifth or sixth largest employer in the county. How much smaller will Josephine County employment be by the time everything's all buttoned up? You know, I don't, I can't look into that. I know that we have Simon Herr, he's our budget officer right now. He's in there going to all the departments looking at ways, making sure our budget is good. So if the budget is good, a balance out, we're not going to see that many cuts if at all

any. So that's what we're hoping for. Now I can't control what the federal and state level does, how it affects our county, because those rumors of Doge coming around, cutting some certain funding for some of the things that we do have, all comes from the state and federal. Yeah, well, the pass-through dollars in Medicaid, which would be Oregon Health Plan, that could put a pretty big crimp in county health, couldn't it? It could, absolutely. And that's what we're kind of talking, preparing for, and we're trying to learn that route. What if, what if. And we're always trying

to do that prediction thing in government, preparing for the future, and that's what we're doing. All right. Chris Barnett, Josephine County Commissioner. Hey, good talk for just a preliminary, and we'll do this every couple of weeks or so, kind of catch up on what is going on there. Appreciate your time as always Commissioner. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you Bill. We look forward to talk to you in the future. You bet.