Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-18-25_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

SOme open phone talk, Jo County commissioner Barnett talks the quorum denial and other issues toward getting a 3rd commissioner on the board.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. We'll have some open phones on Conspiracy Theory Thursday, 770 KMED. I'm running a little late. When am I not? Especially on Conspiracy Theory Thursday, but I'm not going to turn down a call from Wild Salmon. How you doing, Steve? Morning. Good morning. Good morning. Great topic, Bill.

Oh, good. I'm glad you enjoyed that. This whole thing about the, you know, price transparency. and the insurance battles, and yeah, it's really come to a head in our culture, that's for sure. Well, and there's a unintended result of all of this, and that is there's just no doctors and nurses available. I think that's why the Ashland Asante closed, they don't have the staff. Well, the claim was that they were losing money and not technically, yeah, not technically on a cash basis. but once you include the expenses of the corporation, they weren't making so much money then. But everything has to pencil.

Everything has to generate more income than you need for the expenses or else it can't work. It can't stay open. I've been in the hospital quite a bit recently, and my wife was in quite a while before she finally passed away. And the thing with Obamacare is there's deductibles and co-pays. you don't, they sell the plan as being less expensive, but there's more expenses to it than you see, and it. Which is not all that different from Medicare in some cases, isn't it? You know, I have original Medicare, and it is a significantly better insurance. It seems to me than the Obamacare.

So there are fewer surprises, but yeah, my experience with the ACA qualified policies has not been real good either. And, of course, employer-provided cares, or plans, I should say, also have to be Obamacare qualifying, right? They all have to go through that same thing. They have to cover all sorts of things, and all we're arguing about is maybe the differences of the costs in the co-pays for, you know, your share of it, so to speak, but it's tough. And then the provider ends up in the, trying to figure out what code to put on it. And the insurance companies, there seems to be like a tension between the insurance companies and the providers as far as what code they will accept.

Yeah. And there is an entire ecosystem that has grown up, you know, around this to, well, you have the AMA racket, the American Medical Association, their racket is creating the codes. And then they force the hospitals and the doctors to buy that service and use the codes. And then you have the insurance company, which is going to make sure and find some way to deny the use of that code. Right. And, okay, when you get the bill, you cannot decipher what the hell is going on. What you can't see is if some procedures approved, you know, Medicare pays less than what they bill it for.

The actual amount that they get from Medicare is maybe 25% of what they bill it for. And then you have a, with Medicare, you have another insurance that you buy to cover the rest of it. And you just can't figure out, if you want to know what the actual cost of a hospital stay or a procedure, you can't figure it out. You just cannot. And how can you actually make any kind of political legislation with such a system? Nobody knows. Nobody knows what it costs.

You can't figure out what it costs. How do we know? And if it's that way, it was designed that way. Which means it's designed to fail. And this is the part, this is my conspiracy theory Thursday style on this. The whole thing about Obamacare making it so impossible. to figure out what something actually costs was designed to fail so that it pushes us into the Canadian-style care. And then, essentially, you'll be waiting six to seven months for your cancer treatment,

and then they hope that you die on that way, on that journey, so to speak. You know, that's the other thing they talk about these days. Everything is a journey. Have you noticed that in today's culture, Steve? It's happening right now with the closure of Ashland Asante, because the doctors had, people had, you know, surgery scheduled and whatever, and I just saw one of my doctors, and they said, they're just inundated with people who said, well, I had scheduled surgery for January. Now what do I do? Well, he's got patients, and, you know, it just goes on and on. So as you say, it ends up being a failure. because people who have life-saving needs or needs because of pain get pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. Yeah. Thank you for the call, Steve.

Thanks for sharing your experience about that. You're welcome to do this, too. Thank you for the call. 770563. We'll check Fox News here in just a moment, hand of the update, and then back to your calls. It's 770K-M-E-D. And, by the way, hey, that's it. maybe here as we're getting close to the end of the year in the final bits of the show,

what is a word that is being overused at our culture that maybe you're tired of? For a while, it was always at the end of the day, right? That was one phrase that was always being used. Well, you know, at the end of the day, and usually talking about COVID lockdowns or something like that, at the end of the day, well, that's kind of gone away. The one that I'm hearing right now, everywhere is the journey. Oh, it's time to get going on your addiction recovery journey. If you're on your addiction recovery journey or you're on your journey to self-actualization.

It used to be a journey was something that you were looking forward to and you were excited about. Now it's your alcoholism journey, your drug addiction journey. Have you noticed that? So to me, I would have a journey tax every time someone uses journey, unless you're talking about Journey the Band, then that's okay. Journey the ban is fine. But if you're just saying the word, well, I'm in this journey and you're not talking about actual travel, then, you know, maybe there should be a tax on that. We impose a tax.

I know it's a combination of conspiracy theory Thursday and pebble in your shoe, but we can do that if you want. Hi, this is Ryan with Klauser Drill. And breezy tonight, 52 Friday. 717, taking your calls at 7705-633. And I was just musing right before the newsbreak about what is going on with certain words to get overused in the culture. And it always happens. And for the longest time, it was at the end of the day. And even people start catching themselves now where they say at the end of the day.

And then, oh, wait a man, I don't want to say that, right? And I was thinking that one that I'm hearing time and time again is the journey. Now it's the journey. Everything is this feel-good journey as, yes, you decided to take. fentanyl, and now you are on a addiction recovery. It's my journey. It's my journey into this, my journey into the weight loss. And it's just like, I just want to do a little smack every time I hear that done this way.

But gently, because I'm not a violent person, but sometimes I, you know, want to channel my inner godfather. But Jeff writes me this morning, Bill, fortunately, it's past its peak, but it's still sensitive. me up a wall. There's another one, but it is what it is. Yep, that's another one there. It is what it is, but then again it is what it is, Bill. Elaine says, things I'm tired of hearing, you can't make this

stuff up. Good one. That's a good one, Elaine. Do you have one? 770-MED, 770 5633. All right. I have a few books here that I wanted to give away here in the next day

or two because maybe you want to read it over a Christmas holiday or maybe you just want to you can re-gift it to someone and I have three copies of Johnny Rousseau's Mafia Secrets. I love this book. I've been reading this book. I talked to him a couple of weeks ago. Johnny Rousseau's big Las Vegas guy and he ended up playing

Connie Corleone's husband in the Godfather, the original Godfather movie. He was good looking guy but remember he was talking about the mob and how they negotiated the deals to get the unions off of Francis Ford Coppola's back so they could actually do the movie. I love The Godfather. Always did. Always loved the Godfather movie.

But this is a fun read. Fun read, really. And everything from, I'm reading right now the part in which she was Marilyn Monroe's lover for a number of weeks because he was a good look at Italian kid. And he and Maryland were in New York at that time and having fun. This was before she got really big, supposedly. But yeah, and he, you know, he's now in his 80s, and he's telling the stories, I guess, before he kicks.

But interesting guy. But I have three copies. And so if you just want to just let me know, 770563, I think it's fun. And then we can continue on with a conspiracy theory Thursday. I have two, if you want. All right, all coming up. This hour of the Bill Meyer show is sponsored by Glacier Heating and Air, making sense of the heating and air business.

Need a roof that performs and lasts? Stephen West 770 KMED. Here's Bill Meyer. It's open comers here. Open talk. We can do it here. You can get a copy of Mafia Secrets if you want. I got two left.

Francine wanted one. Francine said she just got her cataracts done, so she's cool. She can actually read again. It's a good thing. Or anything else on your mind. Let me try it again. Hi, this is Bill. Who's this?

Good morning, Bill. Jerry from Roker. Hey, Jerry. What's going on? Good. I was just hoping I could get a copy of Cook as well. Yeah, so do you, what is your favorite thing about mafia guys? What is it about mafia?

Why is it that mafia stories are so fascinating, do you think, Jerry? I think they solved problems quickly. I've always liked that. You don't do it in a wrong way, of course, but... You know, that's a good way of putting it in a world in which everything seems to be entangled in bureaucracy. In the mob, they see a problem, and they take care of it, right, Jerry? They focus immediately, and they do an ABC, and they go with one right then and keep moving on. And if someone needs to be excised from the operation, well, you know, it's just business, right?

Just business. That's a scary way to look at it, but that's what they did. Okay. What's your last name, Jerry? I'll just put it on the winner's sheet, okay? Okay, Stephen. All right, Jerry. Jerry Stevens. You know where you are down at the station.

Just go ahead and come in during business hours. Give me a little bit of time later this morning so I get it out there. Okay? Wonderful. All right. Thank you, Bill. All right. Thanks a bunch.

We have one more copy of Mafia Secrets. One more copy. And then that's it for Johnny Russo. Sorry, Johnny. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hi, Bill.

This is Chris. Hey, Chris. Do you want to get one of those copies or something else? Sure. Okay. Do you have a mafia? story, anything that is connected with this? Or are you still looking at Chris Barnett's skinny jeans?

He's coming on this morning, you know? No, actually, can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you fine. Go ahead. Yeah, actually, my grandfather was, he's passed, that he was raised in Fall River, Massachusetts, and a lot of these Union pipe-fitter bosses in Los Angeles, the union, we're Diablo Canyon, the business managers of Local 250 and Local 403 would come and consult with my grandfather all the time, way back, like in the 50s and the 60s. When you say consult, define consult. Was he a made man of some sort or involved?

Well, he's just wise as far as building trades and dealing with people. He was in the Navy. Well, back in those days, didn't you have to really be wise to the mob in order to get a lot of those building trades done back in those days? Pretty much. He was Irish, and when his grandfather came over here, his father came over from Ireland. You know, he had a, it was a rough go there in Massachusetts, all river, east coast, you know, New England states. You couldn't be a sissy. Yes, for sure. Pretty rough and tough business, for sure. What's your last name, Chris? I'll put it down on there. okay moina m-o-y-n-a-g-h okay they don't they don't make them like that anymore yeah

what the name like moina yeah what is the background of a name like moina hmm they don't make men like that anymore oh oh like johnny russo okay got it yeah imagine not all right chris thanks for the call all right luck you're welcome see you're all right i have some more books i'm going to give away a little bit later i don't know if i'm going to give away today but you know the thing is i'll get books from publishers and i'll read mine and i'll read my review copy a lot of times what they're doing now is that they're giving me review pdfs and so i look at pdfs and instead which is not nearly as much fun but uh well i do have three books left and maybe maybe i'll do that next hour i will do that next hour because um i'll have three more there's

the gales of november remember john bacon the uh the wreck of the evan fitzgerald story remember that great guy, great book, Lucas Miles, the pagan threat confronting America's godless uprising on 100 years to extinction, another one, a free light reading, okay? We'll give those away next hour. Like I said, I just want this stuff gone, make it a clean sweep here, get it out there, you can read them, give them away, something like that, right? We'll have that all coming up. 726, Chris Barnett joins me in about 10, too, as we continue down the road of what's happening on the County Commission. Boy, that's a bit of drama. One of each K4, VIN, 235, 725, MSRP, 24, 185-8, MSRP, 4368, MSRP, 436-8-MISRP,000-59-99-Dew.

It's signing 10K miles per year, zero security deposit, all incentives and discounts to dealer, plus tax title, license, 150, registration, processing fee, trading in a vehicle, will not eliminate your debt, negative equity, applied to new loan balance, ends, 1426. Hannity for the Fellowship.org. 729, Commissioner Chris Barnett joins me afternoose. I want to do some emails of the day, though. Emails of the day are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry. Central Point Family Dentistry.com. While you wait, crowns available, good people. Just go to Central Point Family Dentistry.com.

It's right next to the Mazadlan Mexican Restaurant. And that is on Freeman Way, okay, which is down from the McDonald's. McDonald's, Mazadlan, Central Point Family Dentistry, good people. All right, all right. Randy writes, Bill, the Ashland Hospital is closing. Oregon has lost over 100 pharmacies, lots of hospitals. people in eastern Oregon have to travel long distance to seek hospital care. The consequences of the Unaffordable Care Act, we don't care, coming home to roost.

Solution is not to continue subsidizing insurance providers who have realized massive profits and thereby returned the favor by making gigantic contributions to political campaigns. The solution is to repeal the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare returning to fee for service. Obviously, that can't happen overnight, but it can be phased in over time. time. Everything the government touches goes bankrupt without taxpayer bailouts. Socialism is an economic train wreck every time it is tried. Yeah, good point. Patrick weighs in on this one. Bill, on the National Guard victims, the shootings, isn't it odd? The left was calling the shooting and killing of National Guard members in D.C. an unfortunate incident or accident. Wouldn't they normally

call this an example of gun violence? What's the difference? Somehow an illegal immigrant with an illegally obtained gun, deliberately shooting a federal law enforcement officer, was an unfortunate accident, while a U.S. citizen who gets a gun legally keeps it under lock and key is somehow contributing to gun violence. Interesting point on that one. Boy, people responding a lot here with, when I was talking about Erica Kirk, where was that? The Erica Kirk thing, I talked about Candace Owen and Erica Kirk. Granny ends up saying, or Michelle actually says, Bill, I agree. Never watched Candace. Erica, my female spiny sense says, warning, warning. That's all it is. I have nothing to add to that granny, nothing that says, oh, this is what's going on. I'm not going down the Candice Owen conspiracy theories or anything like that. I think both of them are problematic in my view. Logan says, Bill, do you know how easy it would be for Ellen DeBore to buy a car for David Everest? Yet he needs billions of dollars. Greed is a reality. I wish I could afford to do it, but the orphanage we're building in the Philippines is more of a priority.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic about that or not. You know, Logan, the funny thing is that Ellen DeBore has helped Minor Dave on certain things. And Alan DeBore is of means, but I don't think that Alan DeBore is the designated fount of wealth that needs to go to every starfish on the beach that's been beach, so to speak. And, you know, I think we can help Minor Dave with some of his problems, don't you think? And yet I know that Alan is a very, a very honorable guy. You know, gosh, okay, I don't know. Bob Hayworth writes me, Bill, I had the same feelings about Erica. I'm so glad to hear you say that.

You agree. There's something about the eyes. I say something evil or something going on there, and I can't put my finger on it, but my, just like the other call, it says, my spidey sense is on alert. I've been afraid to acknowledge that out loud, so I thank you for cracking open the door. Well, that's the way it goes.

So maybe Bob, maybe Granny and everybody else, we're feeling that way. If we feel a little weird about Candice and or Erica Kirk, maybe there's a problem with us, okay? But, yeah, I can't help myself on that one. It's 733. We'll catch up on the rest of what's going on. Commissioner Barnett will be on,

and we will continue to explore a vet, lack of quorum, administrative, a soap opera, I guess, for lack of a better term. This is the Bill Meyer Show on 1063, KMED. Great this season with the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers. Join them Friday at 7.30 at the beauty. I'm down to Christmas with savings at Coastal now through the 24. Hi, I'm Matt Stone, owner of Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on 106.3, KMED. Happy, Joy.

Happy, Joy. Joy, joy, happy, happy, joy, joy. Happy, happy, joy, joy. No, that is not really the theme for the Josephine County Commission, but, boy, be nice if it were. Let's talk with Commissioner, Chris Barnett. Hello, Commissioner, and you're the chairman, by the way, too, in Josephine County. How are you doing this morning, sir?

That's correct. Happy, happy, happy, joy, joy. I love the message, and I want that. Absolutely. All right. Now, you decided that, unlike Andreas Bleck, you're going to fight the real. recall, right? Or you're not going to fight the recall, but you are going to just go through the process, right? What's up with that? Absolutely. I mean, if Commissioner Black and I both resigned

at the same time, it really puts a county and a state of uncertainty, and I'm not a quitter, everybody who knows my background really knows me and my military service and everything I stand for, I won't back down to bullying and harassment or retaliation for something. I never done. And this is just so bizarre. I was threatened to Bill. Just on election day of last year, I have all the posts from the same recall people, a lot of them anyway, saying we're going to recall them after six months. Just wait the time. And I'm like, really? You get threatened on election night?

And they go, you welcome to politics. Well, and it's true. And now, that's not a threat like a reportable you call up the county sheriff kind of threat. But it's just, it's a political threat. But that's just part of the, that's part of the lay of the land, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Absolutely. All right. How would you answer some of the claims of the recall people? I think it's all retaliatory. We have a rebuttal of everything on support joe co-commissioners.com. And if you go to that site, there's a lot of supporters getting the facts out there. There's a lot of misinformation bill. Okay, what do you think is the biggest bit of misinformation?

Because there's differences of opinion about what is misinformation and not. Go ahead. Correct. And so I always say come to the source. And those people that have actually come to me met with me and see things and go, well, why are they doing this? And I have to say, you know, I did have a defamation case that I did win against the very own person that's still doing the misinformation. And this happened early of the May of last year when I won the primary. And he tried to derail with allegations that were misleading. And, Everything was disclosed before I got elected. So there's no criminal things. There's no bad things that affect my job as County Commissioner. And I just want to put those things out right now. Everybody that does things in their life has a life pattern of good,

and there's some things that maybe not so good. And I don't have that not so good, Callie, like some people want to say. So I just have to say I stand on good. wouldn't be in the positions bill that I, that I made. I wouldn't have made the highest rank in the Air Force non-commission officer of E-9. If I had any background worries, I've had a pop secret clearance. I'm in the Air Force auxiliaries, a command chief of the Western region. I mean, I support and serve my community, state, a nation, and I've done that flawlessly. And when people pick on your character like that, like you said, politics, you've got to have some thick

skin. So I've really gotten some more thick skin over this. I wanted to talk with you just a little bit. I haven't talked to you a lot for a while, and part of it was because, and maybe we should have talked about this another time, but I always felt that you didn't really tell the whole truth on that situation with liability for that lawsuit. And I know that lawsuit gets brought up in the recall petition there, and it had to do with whether you were actually personally liable for what happened with that property out that, you know, the, you know, remember the elder abuse?

I think that elder abuse thing is a scam, but that's the state law, that kind of thing. It's a financial elder abuse. It was not elder abuse, and that's where people get it wrong. And if that's, that's a criminal act. So if somebody actually did that, that's criminal. This is against a corporation. It's a private matter, not related to counting whatsoever, and then a different county of coups, and this all happens to be against the previous owner of Elkside LLC,

outside development LLC. It began in 2016. We bought a piece of real estate, free and clear, with a contract to prove everything that there was no such things on this property. Yeah, and this was with the lifetime camping deal that the old owner had with it, right? Well, that's his business model. We bought a brand new piece of real estate. started a brand new company. It didn't even have to be an RV resort. It could be a golf course. It could be anything.

And me being in real estate for 25 years, I know better, my wife knows better. We hired a real estate broker. This is all being still challenged after the fact. So, you know, that's the thing that people don't understand is that when you buy a piece of real estate, if I sold you a piece of real estate bill, people start jumping in your pool after you bought it. And they said, hey, the previous owner gave told me I could use this pool any time. You're like, well, show me the proof. Yeah, and I would agree with you.

I mean, I agree with you. We talked about this back then when that story was out. I just couldn't understand how anything could be done legally when it wasn't in the sales agreement, when it wasn't in the deed. It wasn't part of an encumbrance of it. But still the jury disagreed with you. And so what I was concerned about was. was, you know, you said that you didn't think you were going to be, you know, liable for that.

And I don't think that was necessarily true. Do you want to clarify that? Yeah, that's not true. So we had a bad jury. We had a bad case. And actually, the attorney that represented us is on suspension right now. That should tell you something. So there is more to this that happened because that person didn't represent us correctly

in a matter that was not even portrayed correctly. And that's why we've been so strong fighting that. And Bill, I can tell you, this was disclosed before I even got elected. This was the same suit. It was exactly disclosed before I even got voted in. So people already knew this. It's just a drum that they keep wanting to spin. And I've told people, and I'll say it again, if you could find one contract that has anybody's name on it, my wife's, me, the company.

If you can find anybody who had a landlord-tenant agreement that lived on the property, and if you can prove that I took any money from anybody, I will resign tomorrow, Bill. That's how strong of the statement I have. Okay. If you can find those things, I will resign because it doesn't exist. All right. Chris, I wanted to just go back on the commissioner stuff here now, because you have been pretty much alone except for Commissioner Ron Smith,

and you kind of getting into it having a little dust up the other day. I think it was at Monday's meeting that you ended up getting together with. Monday, when I had to get into the record, Ron Smith's statement, just because he emails the press and just because he puts it on social media, doesn't get entered into the record. So the people and legal counsel said we should get that in the record. So publicly, I had to get him to read that into the record. And when he showed up at my admin meeting, he's missed four meetings now. Today will be five.

I hope he shows up today. We're going to have another meeting today. and I just needed him to get it into the record. So doing a preemptive strike saying you're not going to do something, he never relayed that to me, never. So the courier is the one that got reached out to me and sent me this letter that Ron Smith sent out. And I'm like, well, I don't know anything about it. I do know of it now, but he should publicly state that at a meeting.

So when we had a meeting the other day, I had to get him to enter it into the record. He did read his statement. It did get recorded as just. So that just happened on Tuesday. Okay. So Tuesday, this happened, but still there's no quorum being provided here. What is on the agenda? What is your agenda item today in the meeting, today's meeting, that you're going to call?

Again, I'm giving Ron Smith every opportunity to do his job. He took an oath, and I would like to see him do his job and being a manager by showing up and participating in the selection process of a position number. one. We did this before when John West left. We did that no problem at all. How long did that take, by the way? Didn't take, but maybe 48 hours. Okay. Now, Ron brought this up yesterday that they said he wasn't consulted about moving forward on this. This is what he said on the show yesterday. I imagine you probably heard what was going on. And is it only up to you to determine being the board chair of moving forward with this? or are you supposed to consult with the other people?

I don't know what the legalities of it are, and I'm sorry to plead a little ignorance on it. Yeah, no problem. I've been in management my whole life. There was no set requirement of 48 hours whatsoever. If Mr. Smith had a problem with it, he's a commissioner. He should be proactive. He should research these things,

because if he really doesn't think he was in the know, he had a staff for a whole entire year, and he's supposed to communicate with the chair, and he has not been communicating with me whatsoever. And I don't understand why. But here's the thing. If he has a problem with a 48-hour thing, he told you on the radio show, why doesn't he say that in a meeting with me when we can have a quorum?

He has not said that in a quorum. So you may tell the public, hey, I think this, I think that. Well, why don't you talk to the chair, your colleague, and you guys decide how you want to do this process? I'm more than open to negotiate anything that he's. concerned about. So if he were to come in today and say, all right, I want to do, I would like seven days from now we make that decision. And then you could talk about it and then vote on that, right? You could decide whether. Absolutely, absolutely 100%. And that's what we're supposed to do.

We're supposed to have discussion, deliberation, in a public open meeting. And I have not had that opportunity with Commissioner Smith. All they said was I recuse myself. And I go, well, you're going to do it publicly. I recuse myself. And it's like, well, can we talk about this? at all? I just feel like there's a stone wall up. And here's the thing that really concerns me why I'm pushing to give Ron Smith every opportunity to do the right thing as a commissioner. What if I recused myself? What if I'm the chair? I recused myself. And Ron Smith could never vote. In my opinion, that sabotage of another elected commissioner. Oregon statute 244, for financial reasons.

Recusing yourself is not a reason to not appoint another commissioner. We have 30 days to do it. And it's our job to hire and manage. So here's the thing. What if he was in my shoes and he was the chair and he says, I'm going to recuse myself. He's doing that right now as a member, but what about me as the chair? And I thought about that and I go, I would sabotage my colleagues vote. And yeah, you would stop the ability to be able to move this.

foreign. What if I... Well, you know, Ron has been saying that there's been a lot of backroom dealing and arm twisting. He doesn't want to be a part of this, part of this, people coming and lobbying him on who they would like to see voted on. Have they been doing that with you, too? Look, I think you said it best yesterday to Mr. Smith, saying, hey, that's part of the

job. You're going to get lobbied. You're going to have people in your ear all the time telling you should do this. You should do that. I've been making decisions what I think is best for Josephine County, period, and for the people that voted us in. So for him to say there's a backroom deal, expose the backroom deal, what are you talking about? You getting paid? Are you being threatened? Like you said, hey, somebody putting a gun to your head making you do decisions? He's a commissioner. He is one of the highest elected officials, or is the highest elected official in the land with a board of three.

I've been in leadership and positions all my life, and I've had to make those tough decisions. Right or wrong, like you said yesterday, you're in that position. It's politics. You can't let people, you know how many people told me on the recall group that said resign, resign, resign, threats and this and that threats of saying, oh, you're going to lose this and that, and do what's best for the county. And I just let it go away because it's political. And it's like, and then all the other people that support me, the overwhelming amount, say, Chris, don't put up with that, ignore it, just move forward, keep doing what you do best. Yeah, and that's what I'm doing.

Yeah, that would be really hard. And now, I'm sympathetic to both of you on one level or another because, you know, I can choose to ignore. I'm not paid by the public, right? You know, so I don't have to listen. I mean, I do have to listen to the public. But on the other hand, I can turn off the cell phone and muted if I want, to an extent you have to listen to everybody.

So I get that. Is this, do you believe, I'm just asking an opinion at this one, Commissioner Barnett, is this about trying to avoid recalling? Is that really what it is, or is there something else in play here? Not that you can mind read your fellow board member. You know, this is unusual behavior for Mr. Smith. I have been cordial. We've gotten along great.

I like Ron Smith. I don't understand the 180. It happened absolutely 180 after Chair Black resigned. I saw 180, the character, in my professional opinion, it is awkward, it's not usual, and I wish that he was back to his old self, because I got along with Ron Smith just fine, And he knows that. Him and I compliment each other. We talk, and we want to do the best things for the county.

But what he's doing right now has never been done in the state of Oregon. No commissioner in the state of Oregon has recused themselves to appoint a vacant spot. It is legal. There's no legal precedent. That's why I'm pushing for my legal counsel to explain. There is a quorum of the board, but you can't take away my. vote by just recusing yourself. And I feel, and this is the way the charter is reading, it's a big gray area because it's never been tested. There's no, there's no precedent in law

for it saying, what if a commissioner just says, I'm not going to participate? Well, what about the other practitioner, I mean, the commissioner that's left, which would be me, is he going to sabotage my vote? And I don't get to vote for the people. Yeah, the way I understand, And the way I understand the statute that you were mentioning earlier is that if you can recuse yourself, which means you don't take part in the discussion, but I believe you still have to vote. Isn't that the way that statute talks about? You still have to do a vote on this. You have to do a vote, but my legal counsel has disclosed that I am out of the picture altogether after the 30-day mark. So is this a political thing?

I don't know. Yeah, it's just about dragging it out so that we just throw it into that. And that's kind of what I was wondering to try to get to the bottom of that. Here's the thing. Now, all Ron would have to do is come in, provide quorum. You people can talk about how many people have signed up to be the county commissioner, the temporary county commissioner? 32.

We got 32 applicants. Okay. How many of them actually have experienced? Do you know? A good amount. Okay, a good amount. Okay. I didn't know how they...

There is choices, and I think that we have a good pool. There is no reason why Commissioner Smith and I cannot find somebody in that match. Okay. Could you just actually, if Ron were to come back and provide quorum, you could, in open forum, discuss the various candidates, couldn't you? Yes, we could. Would that be part of the process? Would that be part of the process, or do you just bring it forward and say,

hey, we just vote? How does that work? We did that before, so we have the option of going, hey, who is the best candidate, in your opinion, move it forward, I'll move mine forward. Wow, we have a match. Looks like this is a no-brainer here. I hired that. I mean, you can have a interview, too, and we did that last time, but we had, you know, I think two or three candidates that we narrowed it down to last time. I had...

And you would have to narrow that down publicly, right? You have to do this all in open forum. So everybody hears it. We do it in open forum, and we shuffle the papers to each other and discuss, and then at the end, when we finalized who we both agreed on, but then we publicly said, hey, we want these two candidates or candidates to interview tomorrow at 10 a.m., for example. And those people showed up, and today we have X, and today we have X. And they're going to be interviewing for the position number one. And we did that. Look, I got three. run into this, what, two weeks into my term, and we've already did this. So to not say I don't know how to do this or this process is weird and is irrelevant because if Mr. Smith has any management skills, he knows that you have to hire and you have to also do the tough love of getting rid of people too. And that is something that we've done this year and we all have experience to do with that. Okay. Mike and, well, at this point, it's not moving forward,

but if nothing happens, if quorum is not provided at this point, what day does it get to the point where it gets thrown open that the other elected officials then weigh in? And I don't know why, for some reason, it's a conflict for Ron to have a decision about this, but it's okay for the sheriff and or the survey or anybody else to weigh in on this. I don't get that. I don't get it either because the people voted us in to make those decisions and we're the commissioners. It'd be like me, here's an example analogy I used, and I was a police officer at one time. It'd be like, okay, I get an oath, out on a crime, and I have to use my gun. Do I just tell my other officer next to me, say, hey, I don't want to use my gun, you use yours, I don't want no blood on my hands.

So that person uses a weapon, and then the other person gets to say, hey, I had nothing to do with it. I feel like that same kind of process is going on right now. I just don't want to make a tough decision. Therefore, I recuse myself, and everything I'm reading, says that's not a reason to recuse yourself. It's never been done in the state of Oregon bill, and I don't understand why Mr. Smith wants to continue to do that. But the way I understand it, though, the statute doesn't have any real penalty for him not doing it. So, in other words, it says, yeah, you're supposed to do it, but we can't hold you with painful chains, let's say. You know, in the commission.

Yeah, this will become case law. This will become precedent, is what I mean, is if whatever happens, and like right now, I'm pushing for the citizens of Josephine County to do my job and to have meetings. you know, keep doing that. I understand. I was very disappointed with Mr. Ron Smith saying a dog and pony show. There's no dog and pony show. It is an actual business of the county. It's called a meeting. And if you choose to show up, he could show up. And if he wants to go ahead and have a decision and recuse in that open meeting, he can. But we can still have a discussion. And I think that him avoiding it is just, it doesn't look good for us commissioners. I've been pressured, let's say, lobbied, to keep pushing to make sure you guys do the right thing. We don't want our vote to go to somebody

else. You know, the governor did appoint a commissioner at one time in 1990, and the citizens of Josephine County said, no, we're never going to let the governor appoint a commissioner again, who went on the ballot in 1992, and the voters said, no, we're going to let the elected officials do that. So they put that provision in place because they didn't want the governor. And that was a that we didn't have last week. That the governor could do this. And what are the situations, or what is the situation that the governor could weigh in and pick the next commissioner for Josephine County, Chris Barnett?

Well, here's the thing. If the elected officials don't want to participate, which they can elect not to participate as well, that's not my job. Why am I being part of this? I don't want this on me. So the elected officials that are also up for re-election next year, a lot of them are. are going, in my opinion, whoa, I don't want to be the one that picks a commissioner, and then they're going to start blaming me and target me on my campaign.

Think about that. It just puts a little pressure on them. Now, if they elect not to do anything, then the governor can step in. According to the legal counsel, it's never been tested. But it says if we cannot be confident in Josephine County to do the right thing, the governor will step in and appoint resident in Josephine County. Governor Kotech choosing the next commissioner in a arguably pretty red county. What could go wrong?

What could go wrong in such a situation? Well, and that's the scary thing, Bill, because if she gets to do that, and the voters here are going, hey, why didn't you just do your job? we are at a roadblock here, and I just think the best thing to do is just, hey, let's go ahead and just pick candidates. We still have time. It's been two weeks from tomorrow since Black left. So we have two weeks left, then, two weeks left in this. Okay. And we're going into holidays, so you can only imagine there's limited days. This is the last work day, a work week, full work week of the year.

So we're running out of time. All right. Well, maybe there will be a Christmas miracle. How about that? Happy, happy, Joy, Joy. I like that, me. And happy, happy, Joy, Joe, Bill. And I want to do the right thing.

I'm standing up for the voters of Josephine County to do the right thing and do my job. It's political. I don't like some of the stuff that's gone on over the past year. Absolutely not. But you know what I do enjoy? I love being a good manager. Love being a good leader for the people. And being approachable.

I'm out in the public a lot. I know you are, too. Bill. I love that. And you really get to hear the real stuff by connecting. Commissioner Barnett, Board Chair of the, well, the single board, at least as showing up, we'll see if Commissioner Ron Smith ends up popping in later today. And maybe we can find a way to get this marriage saved and get it back together and get a three-member board back in there. You know, I'll tell you one thing. You're certainly entertaining over there in Josephine County right now, Chris. What can I say? Because, you know, the Jackson County Board is so boring by comparison.

You know, that is... Well, I always thought government was boring like that, and I'm like, hey, you know what? I don't think any of us wanted to be the Kardashian show here. Yeah. Keeping up with the commissioners is the new funny show that people have been bringing up. And I'm like, look, I just want to do my job, go home to my family, serve the people, and have fun. And this recall, the balance just went out, Bill, and I'm really urging everybody to say, no. Let me finish my term.

I've done nothing that substantiates a recall, none whatsoever. John West previously, same thing. He didn't do anything wrong as well. The same recall machine. We're going to try to kill that recall machine and just vote no on the recall of Commissioner Chris Barnett. Keep me in, and I will do it honorably. All right, Commissioner Chris Barnett, thanks for the call. Good to have you on, okay? Be well. All right, thanks, Bill. See you later. This is KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Metford, KBXG, Grants Pass. And by the way, that comment about the Jackson County Board being boring. No, It's not a personal comment, okay?

Understand. This was strictly about you guys show up and you discuss and you vote, you know, but gosh, there's just no drama. No drama. It's just not making good television. You know, I'm having fun with you, right for it?