$25K Controversy? Treasurer Candidate Faces Tough Questions | Season 2 Episode 19

 I sat down with a Josephine County Treasurer candidate Simon Hare and got into what people are already asking about. 

We talk about the $25,000 issue, what happened, and his side of it. We also get into county finances, leadership, and what voters should be paying attention to right now. 

If you’re local, take a listen and decide for yourself. Like and subscribe if you want more interviews like this. 

See the VIDEO interview here : https://youtu.be/TzdF1n-9Lcg

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Josephine County Republican, ladies and gentlemen. So I just had an interview with uh Simon Hare. He is running for treasurer. Let's get into it. Uh I'm sitting here with uh Simon Hare. Yes. Thank you for coming on the show. My pleasure. We had a ninja find a little office somewhere. Right. Um a cubby. Yeah, you know, ty typically I do these interviews uh for via Zoom, and you know, but we we're here and we're gonna make it work. Totally. So uh glad to be here. Yeah, thank you. Um and and you're running for commissioner. I mean sorry, treasurer, right? But you were a commissioner.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Well, I was a commissioner, and I actually filed to run for county commissioner position too. Okay. Uh that was a seat that Chris Barnett resigned from, and um he kind of caught me off guard that he was resigning. He was in a recall petition and in an election, and so I came into Grants Pass and I filed right away. I wanted to be the first person to to showcase and express my interest in serving in that intern position that he was vacating. It felt as though there was somebody, you know, who had experience that was net that that was necessary on the board and kind of lacking of people who know what to do. And so I I offer I filed to do that, and then I withdrew because when I filed my paperwork, prior to that, Wally Hicks had told me that it was a for a four-year term, and then when I filed, Rihanna told me it was for a two-year term. And so there was the confusion about that situation, um, and I I subsequently withdrew, and then I decided it doesn't matter whether it's two or four years, I don't really care. I filed again for that, and then um the committee selected um Gary Richardson and Colin Martin for those those seats, um, two freshmen. And I I just uh I I want them to be successful for sure, but it it seems like the board is full with just people who are learning the job. I got it. That's expensive. Yeah, that is the taxpayers of Josephine County. Um so yeah, I had served for two terms. Um eight years. Eight years, longest serving county commissioner that's alive um right now. And uh I made two appointments in my freshman year when I was elected. I served with Dwight Ellis for a minute and he resigned in April, and then subsequent after that, Sandy Castanelli was recalled before the end of the year. So um I made two appointments in my freshman year, and I didn't really see the angst that Ron Smith was having in his his need to fill those seats. Um that's kind of the role of our commissioner. And uh and so anyway, I did that in my freshman year, and then the next year serving with Dwight Errol Dwight uh um no Don Reedy and Harold Haugen. And um we made a fairly significant budget reduction because of the fiscal situation that I inherited. Yeah, we had uh well it was unfortunate we had to let off uh let go of nearly 125 people in a day. It's probably one of the largest single budget reductions in in any county's history, but certainly in Josephine County's history. And uh I live with that as it was a lot of responsibility being a county commissioner, and I was a young, young man, 32 years old when I was uh sworn into office. But I learned a lot and uh through the most tumultuous times. Um I decided to run for treasurer um because I it it all comes home when you talk about the money and where is it going. And um people might remember I um I was appointed the budget officer uh last year and I did that job for a short stint. Unfortunately, I I felt like I had no other choice but to resign in that capacity because of some things that were going on that that I didn't think were in the best interest of the the citizens and the taxpayers of Josephine County and and I and I think they feel that way. You know, I think I think I did unfortunately what I had to do, um, but it was the right thing to do. And in in that one instance it saved the county, you know, $363,000.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

The Michael Sellers thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah, and I like Michael, I mean he's a smart guy, um but what they were crafting in the way of introducing the county to really a county manager um was pretty antithetical to what I think the citizens really wanted and stuff. Spent the the budget was three hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars for his total compensation for one year and um you know it's really above my pay grade, but at the same time, it was so far out of we have eight county comparators in Josephine County. You know, there's a process with developing a job description and looking at our comparables. I call them our comps and HR doing an assessment uh amongst our comparative counties. That wasn't done. And uh it was just it could have been done a lot better. And I really wish that you know, I was trying to get people to understand that who were in the the role of making those decisions, and they just weren't picking up what I was putting down. So I uh there's that issue of the $25,000 contract.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. A lot of the people on social media are they're buzzing about that the $25,000 and and that you you know you somehow owed that uh to Josephine County because there was a contract that you had. Right. Or can so tell us about that. Kind of the timeline.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

I mean, I want to be as fiscally efficient as as possible. I mean, that was the whole premise of what I did. Article eight of the contract had misuse of funds as a justifiable reason for breach of contract, and I feel like I did everything I could to get that to not happen. Um I did get some correspondence from the current board about that. And um, although in preparation of for the budget, it was 90 plus percent done. What I needed to do was run was lead the the budget committee and the board through their through their budget process, which is actually a very small, that's what the public sees. But I worked for well over a month, almost five, six weeks, on preparing the budget. That's where the real hard work comes from. Oh yeah. That's what you don't see. And that's actually where I got those Michael Sellers budgets from was those were the last ones to come in. And so then the information was presented to me and Ruth, the interim finance director, and you know what happened. But I I have reached out to the board publicly at their meeting and said, I if there is a delta, I want to make it right, and I'm willing to come back and contribute in their budget. They're all freshmen too, except for Ron Smith. And he well, now the entire budget committee is gonna be freshmen because they just let go of all three of the experienced, the most experienced people that would have been on the budget committee, they just let go of them.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, that kind of blows my mind that that happened. It's a little wild. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

I think them reaching out about this this contract is a little political as well. Um, but what for whatever reason, I always want to, I don't work for the board, I work for the taxpayer of Josephine County. That's my obligation, it's my only obligation. And so if there's a way to make it right for the taxpayer of Josephine County, I want to do it. I I would love to come back and consult on the preparation of this budget. I even talked about when I was, you know, consulting the first time, I'm not in it for the money. I would have done it for free. Right. They're the one who came up with the $25,000. They're the one who came up with the pay it all up at front. I was like, that's not normally how we do it. But again, I'm working for you and I'm not going to negotiate necessarily against myself. Um, although I I probably would, and I I did question that. You know, like it shouldn't it be at the end and completion? And anyway, I will do whatever I can to make it good by the taxpayers of Josephine County.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah, that's what really matters. It does. Yeah. That's um, so you know, try I mean, and and that goes into this really the second question, you know, trust in handling taxpayer money. So if voters are being asked to trust you as the treasurer, um, how should they reconcile that w with the the financial dispute that that just happened? And I know you just kind of covered that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah. Um, you know, well, my main motivation is always the taxpayer. I am cheap. I'm very frugal. Right. Um I can't I can go through a list a mile long of the things I did when I was in office that reflect that. Yep. Um, all the way down to improving the lighting in the courthouse. We replaced all the old windows that were single pane uh with an energy trust of Oregon grant, and we saved about $100,000 over the lifespan in just energy costs. It's stuff like that. I've been on every roof uh for a county property. I like to get up there. I mean, I know the fact that there are 23 HVACs um units in the jail that are that are gonna come to the end of their useful life. We paid off the bond when I was in office, and that was 13.1 cents. Um there are infrastructure challenges that are going to be coming before the county that most people have no idea about. And I the numbers are super important for me, and so is transparency. Um it doesn't matter whether or not the citizens actually do anything with the numbers, they need to be afforded all of the information. And there was talk from Ron Smith about the transparency of those budget documents, that they were confidential. Good luck selling that to the taxpayer, that they don't that it isn't appropriate that they see budget numbers. Yeah, they need to. When you're spending their money, they have every right to know. FOIA request, freedom of information. Why do they have to do that?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, they don't know you shouldn't. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Every time they're spending your money, you ought to just be able to look. I want it, I want it. My advocacy is that there is nothing that anybody should want to know about how the money is being spent at the county that they can't find in under two clicks.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

I mean, or yeah, or just walk in and say, I want to see the books.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

100%. Yeah. Yep. Oh, sure. Let's open them up. Even right now, with the mid-year budget adjustment, when Chad and Hansen and Mark Kirby and Joseph Rice were on the budget committee, they sent me the preliminary, uh, or Chad did, and I'm going through it, and I'm like, man, I've done eight budgets, nine if you count the one I was a budget officer for. This is not clear. It's super confusing. Yeah. Interesting. There should be no room for people to have to speculate on where the money's coming from, where is it going? Why is there all this angst in the community about did they hire 21 people or did they not? Are they just promotions? It should be crystal clear.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yeah. So and we're we're coming to the end of some of the funds too. I know that there's like what is it? OHA, OHA, I forget there's a there's a ONC. ONC, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

The secure rural schools.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah, and that's coming, that's the final check is gonna hit, right? That's that's coming to an end.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, there's it's always it's always been coming to an end. Yeah. You know, there's just reauthorization after reauthorization, but there will be there will be a day when it doesn't get reauthorized. And being honest and not crying wolf with the citizens is super important. And so I challenge people who, you know, say, well, what's the proof of him being fiscally transparent or good with our funds? Go back over the eight years that I was in office and improve the bond rating twice. I improved every reserve we have by serious margins. Uh, when I inherited, when I came onto the board, there were three programs that were operating on a multi-year deficit. It was public health, parks, and the fairgrounds. You can only have that for three years until it's illegal to be fronting those programs money out of the general fund and be operating at a deficit. When I left office, we didn't have any program that was doing that. But when I came back as a budget officer, public health had been operating, they hadn't even finalized the previous year's technically budget. Public health is runs on a two-year budget because of the state, it's a state program, and they're a biennium, so there's two years. And so it's wild how stuff is behind the scenes. I'll just be perfectly honest, it's not going well financially, yeah, and transparent, yeah. Doing it properly. Yeah. The the staff, I'm not saying they're they're malicious or they have any any intent, but the whole point of having a board of commissioners is not so the staff has another cheerleader necessarily on the board. Yeah, it's so the taxpayer has a cheerleader on the board.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, they should be out of the way. And honestly, the citizens.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

They fail, they look, they feel like just the answer is always yes to everything. And they don't they don't know the questions to ask. And that's it's always the taxpayer getting it in the shorts with those kinds of situations.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So uh you know, accountability going forward. I mean, you're really covering that already. I mean, you if you're if you're gonna be uh I'm hyper passionate about yeah, definitely I could see that.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Even if even if I don't have the authority at the treasurer's office, all of the transactions go through the treasurer's office.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Nobody gets to see everything. Pretty much, I mean, the finance director, but what's in the bank? The finance director doesn't know that. The board doesn't even know that. I looked on the website for the treasurers, and there's no quarterly reports. The treasurer's required to provide the board quarterly reports on the financials, the bank accounts, the bank statements.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

They should be on the website for the last five years. Yep. I don't understand why it's not there. And there's no intent or you know, the the the appointed treasurer, he's a nice guy, but he's not looking it through the lens of the people who want to know the taxpayers and the voters. Dustin Calvo?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah. Is that the guy? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Nice guy. Yep. You know, he he he chipped in in a pinch, and I'm not really running against him. He's not technically an incumbent. By state statutes, state incumbents have to file early. Yep. I don't know what that's about, but he doesn't have to because he's not an incumbent. Um I just there's so much room for improved transparency in that office. Everything goes through that.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah. So I think that the people, that's what I that I I push on my podcast is do your research, people. Yeah, you know, there's so much misinformation on social media. It's a very toxic environment. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

You know, I hope it's not reflective of the citizenry in our community because it is really toxic. And I hear that across the state. People that I ran with, you know, elected my first term, they're still in office and they're like, it is wild salmon. This is not like it used to be. The accusations that people Mark Twain said Lyle will get around the world before the truth gets its pants on.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

It gets the shoes on. Shoes on, yeah. The Lyle travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on. Yeah. And that's exactly what's happening.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

And Chad Hanson gives out his phone number. Nobody calls. Yeah. Nobody wants clarification. They love to run with speculative mistruths and lies.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And that's what I'm, you know, hopefully I can reach out to Chad and get an interview with him.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

He wants to sit down with you. Yeah, just talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

So uh Simon here, everybody. Yeah. Thank you again. Um, you know, I didn't know you coming into this interview. I just had these questions. You know, we met one time before. Totally. Um, and and so I thought, hey, let's just get to the to the nitty-gritty. What are people, what are people talking about on social media? That's it. You know, that's it's so thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Anybody want to ask anything? You know, I get Mark Seligman calling. Yeah, anybody, just reach out and I'm happy to kind of go step by step about what happened. Cool. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks a lot.