Ottawa Impact, you so crazy

March 5, 2024 10:50 AM

You may remember Ottawa County for the national headlines it made when Jamestown Township defunded (and then re-funded its library.  or perhaps you remember reading about the takeover of the County Board by a slate of ultraconservative political newcomers.  Since they've come to power 'Ottawa Impact' has both flailed and failed, alienating community groups and provoking numerous lawsuits. See inside for the latest updates.

The Board has engaged in a messy power struggle with top county employee Administrator Gibbs:

July 26, 2023: Citing ‘deep concern’ over Ottawa County leadership, deputy administrator resigns - Waterman says ‘effective working relationship’ with Gibbs is ‘not possible’ (Anna Gustafson in the Michigan Advance)"Gibbs is a far-right Republican who defeated former U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Grand Rapids) in the August 2022 GOP primary after landing an endorsement from former President Donald Trump and vehemently criticizing Meijer’s vote to impeach Trump over the former president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He went on to lose the race for the 3rd Congressional District seat to now-U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids) in November’s general election. Previously employed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Trump administration, Gibbs has repeatedly promoted the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and has railed against women’s suffrage."

Feb 23 2024: Threats, incompetence: Allegations fly between Ottawa County and John Gibbs (Sarah Leach, Holland Sentinel) Less than 24 hours after placing Ottawa County's top employee on paid leave, Board Chair Joe Moss published fresh allegations against Administrator John Gibbs, ranging from bugged offices to lewd comments to threats of physical violence.(...) The hiring of Epperson and Wetmore sparked their own controversies. After hiring Epperson in August, Gibbs was accused of age discrimination after a more qualified finalist for the position went unselected. That finalist, Ryan Kimball, filed a lawsuit against Gibbs and Ottawa County in October.(...)Wetmore, who has an extensive history in conservative political activism, has taken part in several political stunts over the past 20 years, including staging undercover encounters on video for right-wing nonprofit Project Veritas. Wetmore also made headlines for a 2010 plot to lure a female CNN reporter onto a boat where another conservative activist planned to faux-seduce her on camera." The Board voted to fire Gibbs on Feb. 29, 2024, who is threatenng to file yet another lawsuit.

The Board's power struggle with Health Officer Adeline Hambley seems to have come to an end (they lost).
Feb 26, 2024: Ottawa County Board votes unanimously to retain Hambley as health officer (Mitchell Boatman, Cassandra Lybrink, Sarah Leach for the Holland Sentinel). All litigation is dropped, a multi-session termination hearing will end with no determination, a judge will decide how much of Hambley's attorney fees will be covered, and there will be no monetary award for damages. Previously 12/24/2023: Can the exhausted, angry people of Ottawa County learn to live together?

The County is also being sued by a local Pastor:

October 4 2023 Pastor files lawsuit against Ottawa County claiming religious discrimination (Sarah Leach, Holland Sentinel) The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners is facing a third lawsuit — this time in federal court over allegations of religious discrimination.(...)"Commissioner Bergman advised Rev. Cramer that Defendant Moss alone now selects those chosen togive the invocation before commission meetings." (...) Moss founded the far-right fundamentalist group Ottawa Impact in 2021 after he took issue with controversial pre-K-6 school mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Feb 13, 2024: 'I know we can do better': Pastor suing Ottawa County gives invocation in tense meeting (Mitchell Boatman, Holland Sentinel) Months after filing a religious discrimination lawsuit against the board, Rev. Jared Cramer was in attendance Tuesday to give the opening invocation. A pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Cramer filed his federal lawsuit in October 2023 claiming Board Chair Joe Moss used his position as chair to “endorse a particular set of religious beliefs and exclude a particular set of religious beliefs.”  He claims to have emailed Moss in May and sent him a letter by certified mail in August requesting to lead the invocation and received no response. An invitation to lead the invocation was extended in November, after the lawsuit was filed. The lawsuit remains active. In his prayer Tuesday, Cramer directly referenced previous actions of the board, including changing the motto and closing the DEI department.  “God, in particular I pray for those who have been and continue to be impacted by decisions of this board,” he said. “I pray for families in households that are struggling because of reduced resources in the health department, especially those who will be more food insecure [ed. note:  see last item], those who will struggle to get the mental health support they need.

Feb 14, 2024: Ottawa Commissioner Belknap displays problematic sign during long-awaited invocation (Sarah Roach, Holland Sentinel) As Cramer delivered his comments, OI Commissioner Roger Belknap displayed a sign that said "SaveTheChildren.com," a reference to the documentary “The War on Children” created by prominent right-wing activists Robby and Landon Starbuck.The Board is up for re-election later this year. 

Feb 14 2024: Which Ottawa County commissioners will seek re-election? wonders the Grand Haven Tribune.  At least the list will include the Board's only remaining Democrat, Doug Zylstra (profile by Sandra Leach, Holland Sentinel)

Meanwhile (Feb 7 2024),  County approves audit of ARPA funds, but Ottawa Food request goes unanswered (Mitchell Boatman, Holland Sentinel) Tuesday marked the committee’s second meeting since Ottawa County Department of Public Health Deputy Administrator Marcia Mansaray officially requested funding for the Ottawa Food coordinator, a role eliminated by budget cuts for the new fiscal year. The item was not included on the agenda Tuesday.

posted by bq (16 comments total)

Well, at least it's some other local government's abject failures giving Ottawa a bad name for a change.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:25 AM on March 5 [7 favorites]

Whenever I see Boebert and MTG, or the sort of thing in this post...
I just keep thinking Nirvana's Recess:
"Won't you believe it's just my luck... You're in high school again... you're in high school again... no recess"
posted by symbioid at 12:28 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

When do the bears show up?
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:02 PM on March 5 [7 favorites]

The Hambley situation is hilarious. The Ottawa Impact members who wanted her out negotiated a $4m payout for her, tried to go back on the deal then somehow got this into arbitration where Hambley basically said "no $4m, you don't have a deal to get rid of me," and she goes back to work. The Gibbs shit is just sad as they tried to bring him in as an ideological crony but found out he was also incompetent to go with his bugfuck crazy. Crazy, incompetent and messy.
posted by GamblingBlues at 1:36 PM on March 5 [5 favorites]

I have a number of family dwelling in Ottawa County and until fairly recently, a close relative was an elected official there. I'm sad for what's happening in the county but somewhat relieved that my family member is no longer in office, as I heard quite enough about the effed up political climate there even before things reached this current stage.

What I have learned from the situation is:

• To the extent that people are paying attention at all, most attention is focused on national and, to a lesser extent, state scale elections. But local elections matter and can have significant and rapid effects on the quality of life in smaller communities.
• The lack of scrutiny and general lack of organization makes it much easier than you would expect for extremist groups with an agenda to seize control of local government if they put their mind to it.
• Some of the worst people in politics debut their ideas and policies at the local level and then work their way up.

No reasonable person wants yet more political fights to which they have to pay attention and put up a fight but it is clear that most of us ignore local politics at our own peril.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:37 PM on March 5 [16 favorites]

Today I learned there is an Ottawa in the US; I showed up expecting to be reading about Canadian municipal politics, not American. You learn something new every day.
posted by Canageek at 3:47 PM on March 5 [3 favorites]

Canageek, both places are named after the Odawa. They are cool.
posted by rebent at 4:38 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Because there have been a couple of previous write-ups discussing some of the shenanigans there, the author of the post may have assumed that saying "Ottawa County" would be sufficient to distinguish it from the capital of Canada but actually it doesn't even uniquely identify it within the United States, which has four Ottawa Counties, one each in Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Kansas, each of them presumably deriving their name from the Odawa people. (n.b.: there are also communities named Ottawa in Cote d'Ivoire and South Africa but we have to draw the line somewhere, wouldn't you agree?)

The Ottawa County under discussion is located in West Michigan, along the shore of Lake Michigan, and is a generally prosperous part of the state with an economy balanced between agriculture, tourism, and light manufacturing. It tends towards political and religious conservatism, due in considerable part to a significant part of its population being made up of descendants of Dutch farmers who settled in this portion of the state, bringing with them their very conservative Reformed Church.

For as long as I have been aware of Michigan politics, West Michigan, in particular Ottawa and Kent Counties (Kent County being home to Grand Rapids, the largest and most prosperous city in West Michigan) have been a conservative Republican counterbalance to the more Democratic-leaning (and historically, though not consistently, labor-friendly) population centers in Southeast Michigan. Grand Rapids, in many ways, is the conservative political pole of Michigan, and for long stretches of the past several decades has held dominance over Michigan politics, with the conservative voters in agricultural parts of the state, the Reformed Church, and the wealth and influence of several prominent families, in particular the DeVoses and VanAndels of Amway plus the Princes (from whom both former Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos and mercenary warlord and Academi/Xe/Blackwater founder Erik Prince arose.)

Readers who are not familiar with this historical balance may therefore not appreciate how incredibly huge a screw-up it was for John Gibbs to have lost Michigan's 3rd Congressional District seat to Democrat Hilary Scholten in 2022 (following Gibbs' successful primary challenge to the incumbent Republican office-holder (himself a member of a different aristocratic billion-dollar West Michigan family) for being insufficiently detrimental to Trump) but that was a surprising shock at the time and maybe provides a bit more context about what kind of person this story is about..
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:51 PM on March 5 [17 favorites]

Today I learned there is an Ottawa in the US;

Before Greyhound Canada closed up shop a few years back I occasionally had occasion to book travel between Toronto and Ottawa. The booking engine on the Greyhound Canada website, if you plugged the names of the largest city in the country and also the national capital, would default to trips between Toronto, KS, and Ottawa, IL.

Useful.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:16 PM on March 5 [13 favorites]

The Gibbs shit is just sad as they tried to bring him in as an ideological crony but found out he was also incompetent to go with his bugfuck crazy. Crazy, incompetent and messy.

At least they got rid of him. Florida's current Surgeon General is incompetent and bugfuck crazy and we're stuck with him. His anti-vax bullshit is bad enough, but his response to the recent measles outbreak was just "Quarantine? Nah, you do you." So not only is he against vaccination, but he's against public health measures of any kind. It's fucking ridiculous that this man is being paid 600 grand a year.
posted by wierdo at 6:12 PM on March 5 [7 favorites]

These [redacteds] also dissolved the DEI office and fired all the staff because of "frustrations over social issues, such as diversity, equity and inclusion".

My home county is an embarrassment and I hope all of these people suing wild success.
posted by youknowwhatpart at 6:54 PM on March 5 [5 favorites]

I'm not a fan of religious invocations at government meetings but if you're going to have them they sure better be open to all. That pastor's invocation was fantastic and makes it seem like he might actually have read anything ever about what that Jesus guy was all about. I hope it made the board members who tried to keep him out as uncomfortable as I imagine it did.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 8:06 PM on March 5 [2 favorites]

I'm not a fan of religious invocations at government meetings but if you're going to have them they sure better be open to all.

This Reddit post claims the Satanic Temple have announced “The Satanic Temple-West Michigan is proud to announce that our Ministry has been selected to give an opening invocation at the Ottawa County Commission. We are excited to represent our growing community by taking part in the tradition of invocation.”
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:53 AM on March 19 [1 favorite]

I didn’t even include information about this case which had been dismissed, but it’s since been appealed to the state Supreme Court. Basically some residents accused the commissioners of violating the open meetings act bc they met to coordinate their actions (by which I mean all this clownitude) in private before taking office. The earliest the case could be heard is October.
posted by bq at 7:44 AM on March 19

A fixed version of bq's malformed link from the previous comment.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:40 PM on March 20

Whoops. Thx.
posted by bq at 5:14 PM on March 20