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Mayor and city council recall, Baker, Oregon (2022)
| Baker mayor and city council recall |
|---|
 |
| Officeholders |
Jason Spriet |
| Recall status |
Resigned (Kerry McQuisten) |
| Signature requirement |
| See also |
| Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2022 Recalls in Oregon Oregon recall laws Mayoral recalls City council recalls Recall reports |
An effort to recall the mayor and five of the remaining members of the city council did not go a vote in Baker, Oregon.[1][2]
The officeholders subject to the recall were Mayor Kerry McQuisten and Councillors Jason Spriet, Joanna Dixon, Shane Alderson, Johnny Waggoner Sr., and Dean Guyer. The seventh member of the council, Kenyon Damschen, was not eligible to be recalled at the time the effort began.[1]
McQuisten resigned in November 2022 after moving outside the city limits and becoming ineligible to serve in office.[2]
Recall supporters
Former Baker firefighter Casey Husk initiated the recall campaign. Husk said that he was trying to recall the council members in order to replace them with people who would vote to fire City Manager Jonathan Cannon. Husk said that Cannon had been wrong to contend that the city could not afford to continue operating its ambulance service. In a meeting on March 22, 2022, the city council, following a recommendation from Cannon, decided to notify Baker County that it planned to end the city's ambulance service, which prompted the county to seek alternative providers of ambulance services for the city.[1]
Husk said, "Every single one of us said don’t do this, this is bad, there’s not enough data. ... You’re putting the public at risk based on very little information. And it wasn’t that the city was going broke, it was that we wanted to spend money on golf courses or bathrooms or streets. So it became an issue about priorities, not about public safety.”[1]
Recall opponents
Council member Jason Spriet gave the following comment on the recall campaign: “I encourage that from anybody because that’s why we are where we are in this country. ... I don’t hold anything against you [Husk] on that whatsoever. If the people who voted me in here want me out now because they don’t feel like I represent their interests anymore, then that’s fine with me. That’s their choice.”[1]
Mayor Kerry McQuisten and City Councillors Joanna Dixon and Johnny Waggoner Sr. filed a lawsuit on October 7, 2022, against recall organizers Casey Husk and Debbie Henshaw. The lawsuit alleged that the recall petition made a false statement, namely, that each officeholder "directly sanctioned the dissolution of the professional fire department in Baker City, destroying the network of public safety that has been in place for more than 100 years."[3]
Path to the ballot
- See also: Laws governing recall in Oregon
To force a recall election to have been scheduled, organizers needed to collect 680 signatures for each council member. If organizers had submitted the required number of signatures, the officeholders subject to the recall would have had the opportunity to file a 200-word statement responding to the campaign. A recall election would then have been scheduled within 35 days, unless the officeholders resigned.[1]
The recall ended after organizers did not submit signatures by the deadline of December 6, 2022.[2]
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Baker City Herald, "Former firefighter asks city council to fire Cannon," September 14, 2022
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Baker City Herald, "Baker City Council members won't face recall election," December 19, 2022
- ↑ Baker City Herald, "Three city councilors file civil complaint against leader of recall effort, one other," October 10, 2022
