Jim Olney Battles the Courthouse

MARCH 2009

His accusations, however, don’t live up to scrutiny

Like everyone else who gets the Ashland Daily Tidings or Medford Mail Tribune delivered to his or her home, I first read about the “Jim Olney Controversy” on Friday the 13th when Ashland resident John Kloetzel wrote a letter titled “Heavy-handed tactics in the county commissioner election?”

In the letter, Kloetzel accused County Manager Danny Jordan and Commissioner C.W. Smith of forcing Jim Olney out as Director of the Jackson County Library Foundation. At the time, Olney was challenging Smith in the election campaign for his seat as a commissioner.

Kloetzel asserted that “sources at the Foundation’s Board of Directors was told, early this past summer, that the foundation would have to relinquish its office space if it continued to employ Jim Olney as its executive director.”

Olney did indeed resign and after losing to Smith in a spirited battle, he learned that “the Foundation would not be allowed to rehire (him) and still retain its offices in the library.” He has since left the community and accepted a job as Director of the Eugene Public Library Foundation.

Kloetzel ended the letter with an admonition: “If indeed Mr. Smith has been involved in these behind-the-scenes maneuvers, he deserves to be censured for operating in such an underhanded and malicious fashion.”

Since the daily newspaper (I consider the Tidings and Mail-Tribune to be the same entity) made the command decision to make these accusations public, I considered it my duty as a reporter to follow up and at least give all the parties involved a chance to tell their side of the story.

It took a couple of days to track down Jim Olney since he had moved to Eugene. A worker at the Jackson County Democratic Headquarters graciously gave me Olney’s cell phone number, and I talked with him last week. He basically agreed with everything the letter writer had said. He also said that Mail Tribune reporter Damian Mann had contacted him. It was good to hear that my colleagues at the daily newspaper were doing their own sleuthing.

“When I announced my candidacy in February, I had a verbal agreement with the Library Foundation not to use my office for any campaign purposes,” Olney said. “The office in the library is provided rent-free to the Foundation by the County.”
After Olney won a hard-fought battle in the Democratic primary in May, things changed dramatically.

“County manager Danny Jordan informed the Foundation that he wanted to have a meeting with them without me present,” he said. “That had never been done before. He then told them that the County was not pleased that as a candidate I had an office in the library.”

According to Olney, the Foundation was given an ultimatum: either Olney resigned or they would not be given the free office.

“I met with Colette Boehmer and Becky Versteeg, the President and Vice-President of the Foundation, and they asked if I would step aside,” he said. “I said yes, mainly because I didn’t want them to lose the office space and also because I wanted to devote more time to my campaign.”

Part of the agreement, Olney maintains, is that he would get his job back after the election if he lost. “They also asked me if I would help them find a replacement if I won,” he said. “I said yes, absolutely. Well, I ended up losing the election by a small margin, and a few days later I called Colette Boehmer. I asked if they were going to honor their verbal agreement to take me back, and she said no, things have changed.”

Olney admits that he has no proof that there was a conspiracy to “get him,” but he feels all the dots connect perfectly.

“I’ve heard through the grapevine that C.W. was angry at being challenged and having to work to win reelection,” he said. “Danny Jordan works for C.W., and he told the Foundation I had to go, and the Foundation didn’t have the backbone to stand up to them. I’d even volunteered to run the whole thing out of my home. I mean, C.W. Smith also had an office space paid by the County, and you can’t tell me he wasn’t doing any campaigning out of that office. If he tells you otherwise, he’s not telling the truth.”

Clearing Up Some Confusion

On February 20, two days after I interviewed Jim Olney, the Mail Tribune came out with a front page article on the controversy, laying all the dirty laundry out in full public purview. That was followed up with an editorial two days later, and a “commentary” by Olney complaining that the article was “incomplete and confusing.”

Hoping to clear up some of the confusion, I began calling those involved in the story. The first person I called was County Manager Danny Jordan. He absolutely denied all the accusations and innuendoes leveled by Jim Olney.

“After the primary, my office began receiving multiple phone calls and e-mails from people complaining that Jim Olney was using his office for campaign purposes,” Jordan said. “I reported all of that to the commissioners at a meeting. I mentioned that I didn’t know if the accusations were valid or not. C.W. Smith abstained from all conversations, arguing that he didn’t want to get in the middle of something involving his opponent in the election.”

Commissioners Dave Gilmour (a Democrat) and Jack Walker (a Republican) weren’t so reticent. They instructed Jordan to set up a meeting with the Foundation Board to discuss the matter.

“That’s exactly what I did,” Jordan said. “Actually, I talked with Library Advisory Committee member Jim Kelly, who set up the meeting. When Jim Olney says it’s the first time a meeting had been organized that excluded him, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve been with the County for two years, and that was the first time I’d ever met with the Foundation Board.”

Dave Gilmour is adamant that nothing underhanded took place in the meeting, and that C.W. Smith recused himself from anything having to do with the problem.
“The County had received complaints that Olney was using his office for campaign purposes,” Gilmour said. “They were only rumors, and the purpose of our meeting was to let the Foundation know that campaigns cannot be run from offices supported with taxpayer moneys. That’s all that happened.”

Jordan concurs with that assessment. “We basically informed the Board of the complaints and updated them on election rules,” he said. “Every election cycle we send out information to all County employees about how no public resources can be used for campaigning. While the Library Foundation is not part of the County, they are a 501(c)-3 nonprofit, and they have to be extremely careful not to violate the rules against political advocacy in elections.”

According to Jordan, the meeting that he and Dave Gilmour had with the Foundation lasted only 15 or 20 minutes. At no time, did they pressure the Foundation to send Jim Olney down the road.

On July 1, 2008, Jim Olney announced that he was quitting his job to run for county commissioner. In a Mail-Tribune story, Olney said he was quitting the $50,000 a year job “because public service requires personal sacrifice.”

In that same article, Foundation Board chairwoman Colette Boehmer, a Medford attorney, said the Board was “very satisfied with Olney’s performance” and that they hadn’t decided yet whether to fill his post. Olney was quoted as saying he “enjoyed the job immensely” and “would like to return to it.”

Did the Board have a verbal agreement with Olney to give him his job back? When I called Colette Boehmer for a response, she said, with an audible Al Gore-like sigh, “What’s the matter with you reporters? I can’t talk about this. Talk to Damian Mann and he’ll tell you what I said.”

“Okay, I replied, “but let me ask you one question. What’s brown and black and looks good on a lawyer?” (Silence). “A Doberman.”

Actually, I’m just kidding about that last part, but I felt like saying it. I didn’t mind having my profession maligned, but coming from an attorney, it seemed like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.

Danny Jordan thinks Olney’s conspiracy theories are all wrong. “As far as I know, the Board never told Olney he’d have his job back,” he said. “After he resigned, the Foundation went through their recruiting process, and it was open to the public.”
In fact, according to one library insider I talked with, the Foundation published the job opening last summer and had candidates apply from all over the West Coast and locally. For Jim Olney not to know about the job search seems highly implausible.

Jordan reiterated that C.W. Smith stayed completely out of the controversy. “C.W. refused to be a part of the whole thing,” he said. “He felt that no matter what happened he was going to get blamed, and I guess he was right.”

And in This Corner: C.W. Smith

For C.W. Smith, the November election was his 13th race for political office. After beating Olney, he’s now 11-2 lifetime, losing once in the 1978 Republican primary for county commissioner and to Wes Cooley in the 1994 primary for U.S. Congress. He’s totally mystified about the accusations that have been leveled against him.
“When I read that letter to the editor, I immediately called the guy and chewed him out,” Smith said in a phone interview. “I told him it was absolutely not true, that I had recused myself from anything having to do with it, that it was Dave Gilmour and Danny Jordan who met with the Foundation Board, and all they did was inform the Board of the complaints the County had received. The guy sounded apologetic and admitted he might have been misinformed, but the damage had already been done.”

Smith doesn’t understand why Olney didn’t resign immediately after winning the primary. “When I won the primary for county commissioner in 2004, I resigned my position as a captain with the Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “I felt it would be a conflict of interest, and that’s probably why the Library Foundation asked Olney to resign. I mean, he was executive director of a nonprofit, non-partisan foundation and was running a partisan race for political office. Ethically, he should have resigned, which is what he eventually did, but it was not because the County gave the Board an ultimatum. Dave and Danny merely informed them of complaints and rumors that were floating around.”

A seasoned veteran of political campaigns, Smith says he wasn’t the least upset about Olney’s challenge. “It’s all part of politics,” he said. “It was a campaign, although I took exception to a lot of the things Olney was claiming. But that’s just part of the game.”

Smith is also a little upset that the Mail-Tribune editorial inferred that he was campaigning out of his office. “Absolutely not true,” he said. “I do not do any campaigning from my office, and I take exception to that accusation.”
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