Can the exhausted, angry people of Ottawa County learn to live together?

December 24, 2023 11:21 AM

All year, the new conservative Christian majority on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had been searching for a way to get rid of Adeline Hambley They complained that they couldn’t trust Hambley. They accused her of supporting mask mandates and pushing coronavirus vaccines that they believed were unproven and possibly unsafe. They said her employees had encouraged dangerous, sexually perverse behavior by attending a local Pride festival, where they tested attendees for sexually transmitted diseases and administered the mpox vaccine.

Hambley insisted that her job wasn’t to serve the board. It was her responsibility to look after the health and safety of all of the county’s residents, regardless of their moral or political beliefs. “I want to work with the commissioners so we can protect the community,” said the 44-year-old, who had sued the county to keep her position. “But I am not their subordinate.”

By Greg Jaffe in the Washington Post

Editor’s note: Litigation is ongoing, and this article by Sarah Leach in the Holland Sentinel has more information about the legal and political jockeying.

posted by bq (25 comments total)

Not directly stated in the summary, but Hambley is the Ottawa County health officer, and that job apparently brings some protections and independence with it. Good to see a career health worker standing up to local right-wingers.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 11:35 AM on December 24, 2023 [33 favorites]

The WashPo headline is sure a choice, thank you for not putting it in the post. "Can the exhausted, angry people of Ottawa County learn to live together?" You know, both sides to every story! How dare the woman in charge of the public health department be enacting uncontroversial public health measures. Can't she just learn to live with the religious zealots and let them fire her without a fight?

Fortunately the story is much better. Presumably the headline was written by some editor whose actual job is to maximize the clickbait.

We've got similar political dynamics in rural California, harmful ignorants in elected office meddling with the everyday competent work of the local bureaucracy. We are so lucky to have folks like Hambley willing to work through that shit to help people.
posted by Nelson at 11:38 AM on December 24, 2023 [50 favorites]

Can the exhausted, angry people of Ottawa County learn to live together?

Alternative headline: Can the conservative knuckle-draggers on the Ottawa Board find just the tiniest morsel of moral fortitude and stop trying to insert their sad, frightened, childish "political" "ideas" into every aspect of our lives? Please?
posted by nushustu at 11:54 AM on December 24, 2023 [42 favorites]

Ottawa Impact, the group going after Hambley, is a white Christian nationalist hate group. They have been systematically dismantling any public offices in Ottawa County which do not support the DeVos-idealized Christian nationalist vision. The closed the DEI office. They, an those like them, were instrumental in defunding at least one public library in Ottawa County.

And council for Ottawa Impact is doing everything they can to prevent the contents of the closed-door settlement meeting with Hambley from being made public. Certainly evidence of more hate-filled bigotry on the part of Ottawa Impact.
posted by JohnFromGR at 11:58 AM on December 24, 2023 [16 favorites]

"Adeline Hambley’s employees at a county health department in Michigan saw her as their protection from political interference by conservative Christians on the county board. Then the board offered her $4 million to quit." (The subtitle at the Washington Post.) Hambley's been the the health officer in Ottawa County, Mich., since December 2022.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:00 PM on December 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

More than just the usual garden-variety Christian fascism here, maybe. The person who the commissioners want to replace Hambley with appears to specialize in HVAC maintenance. Replacing a public health expert with someone who fixes air conditioners smells of political corruption: a no-show job with kickbacks to commissioners, perhaps, or nepotism to benefit a family member. Authorities in the state could probably do well to take a closer look into criminal malfeasance on the part of Moss and friends.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:10 PM on December 24, 2023 [27 favorites]

> thank you for not putting it in the post

:-/
posted by bq at 12:14 PM on December 24, 2023 [10 favorites]

A paywall-free link would be greatly appreciated, though I suspect I know most of the details already, since I have a sibling who until recently held office in Ottawa County and I hear quite a bit about the goings-on through that person.

Ten years ago we would have found this sort of thing at least mildly shocking. That it is no longer even surprising is what ought now to alarm us. If these kinds of battles are not yet being fought in your local political arenas - they likely will be soon, unless you live in a place where conservative authoritarians already have a lock down. Ottawa County, because of its demographics, is pretty fertile soil for this kind of struggle but it's coming pretty much everywhere eventually unless we find a way to decisively defeat it now.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:19 PM on December 24, 2023 [10 favorites]

Initial reading comprehension fail on my part had me a little wtf? until I realized that this is Ottawa county, Michigan, USA.

But only a little.
posted by porpoise at 2:20 PM on December 24, 2023 [15 favorites]

The person who the commissioners want to replace Hambley with appears to specialize in HVAC maintenance

In their defense, being Health & Safety Manager at an HVAC company doesn't involve a lot of fixing air conditioners as much as ensuring they can demonstrate that everyone driving a forklift, going into confined spaces, or performing lock-out-tag-out has had the required training and certification.
posted by mikelieman at 2:37 PM on December 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Headline:

Citizens of Ottawa, Canada, grateful their biggest complaint at the moment is the Light Rail system.

SB (of Ottawa, Canada)
posted by storybored at 2:58 PM on December 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

Michael Lewis's recent book about COVID-19 starts by talking about a county health commissioner in California who makes the first moves to try to react to the virus. It's actually super interesting.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:25 PM on December 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

So this drama seems to take place much later than the drama here in Spokane County, where the County Health Commissioner was fired in late 2020 in moves that were just months later determined to be illegal, and were likely related to COVID shutdown policies. This was a non-political position which was appointed to be someone with expert knowledge who was then fired because his knowledge led him to policies that others without expert knowledge didn't like.

But there do seem to be echoes and rhymes between these two situations.
posted by hippybear at 4:40 PM on December 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

They, an those like them, were instrumental in defunding at least one public library in Ottawa County.

that would be the library for jamestown township, which has now been refunded by election
posted by pyramid termite at 4:49 PM on December 24, 2023 [10 favorites]

Wayback archived version.
posted by Cuke at 5:02 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ottawa Impact, the group going after Hambley, is a white Christian nationalist hate group. They have been systematically dismantling any public offices in Ottawa County which do not support the DeVos-idealized Christian nationalist vision.

Fun fact, Betsy DeVos'/Erik Prince's dad made his billions in auto parts manufacturing in Ottawa County. Betsty married into the Kent County DeVos billionaire clan (Amway), forming a crap Voltron of white xtian nationalist families for us to deal with.
posted by GamblingBlues at 2:36 PM on December 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

We have stuff like that going on all over my county. It makes me incredibly angry.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 8:07 PM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

> both sides to every story!

the New York Times Washington Post bowed its head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
posted by AlSweigart at 9:10 PM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

What really gets my goat about the dominionists and MAGA people in general is how they wrap themselves in the flag and venerate the founders while saying that compromise will be our nation's downfall.

What these asshats fail to understand is that the USA would not exist without compromise. Our nation is nothing but a series of compromises, some good, some bad, and some utterly immoral. The colonies, to a one, all wanted different things, sometimes wildly different things, and yet came together through the power of compromise to work together to win their independence. And then they did it again when it became clear that the Articles of Confederation were untenable.

The ridiculous feelings of persecution are also infuriating, but somewhat less so because they are feelings, not statements of supposed fact that are manifestly false.
posted by wierdo at 6:12 AM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

There are two stories here. One, as mentioned, is how a slate of extremests got themselves elected specifically to change the direction of the organization, which is having an (as planned) distrucrive effect on the counties beurocratic infrastructure. The churches are sad they are losing County funds for their food pantries, but... That's what they truly desired. The opponents are angry, of course they are, they are being trounce and what was built is being thrown down.

I'm more interested in the second story. The second story is about how political revolutions that function within the system of checks and balances can only make so much change before everyone has to figure out what to do next. This story is hidden behind the outrage of the first story.
posted by rebent at 9:20 AM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I live here. AMA
posted by beckybakeroo at 7:26 AM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I live here. AMA

Can you speak freely? Do you know Morse Code and can you blink your real message to us using that while you speak words you're allowed to say?
posted by hippybear at 7:27 PM on December 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

those of us on the other side of the windmill curtain will do what we can to rescue the oppressed of ottawa county - sometimes we have to wait until lake michigan freezes and they can walk to milwalkee (at night) - sometimes we have to hide them in step vans until we can reach 131

tulip bulbs make good bribes
posted by pyramid termite at 7:53 PM on December 29, 2023

You're marrying tulip bulbs?

Oh wait. BriBes. I see.
posted by hippybear at 8:03 PM on December 29, 2023

while you speak words you're allowed to say?

Wow, you had my benefit of the doubt sometimes in other threads but I think that that is a really insensitive thing to reply with to an "I live here. AMA".
posted by porpoise at 10:55 PM on December 29, 2023