The decision was made after multiple failed attempts to hire a replacement for the officer who was fired over a year ago without cause. JPR’s Roman Battaglia spoke with journalist George Winship of Redding-based news website A News Cafe. Winship’s latest article digs into the controversy behind the board's decision.
Roman Battaglia: For those who don't know, we're talking about Dr. James Mu's appointment to the public health officer position. Could you tell me why that appointment was so controversial in the first place?
George Winship: Well, the controversy started several years before when they let go Karen Ramstrom, who was a public health officer for Shasta County, right after COVID. In fact, early 2022 was when she was let go, she was quite popular. But the alt-right group, which now has a majority on the board of supervisors, didn't like her and fired her without basically cause, other than following the rules for COVID. And that ticked off a lot of people and created an even more charged atmosphere.
So 18 months later, we now have an appointment of somebody who was judged by the selection panel to be totally unprepared for the job. He didn't have any background in epidemiology – the transfer of diseases from one group of people to another. He didn't have a master's degree in public health. He wasn't even board-certified. Although we're learning now that he has been board-certified in the past in California. And those three things were all required originally. But when they were having so much trouble hiring for the position, they wrote those requirements out of it.
RB: So you were able to get the names of the people on the search committee for a new public health officer, which were supposed to be confidential. Patrick Jones was on that committee — the chair of the Board of Supervisors — along with more moderate member Mary Rickert and some doctors. What did you learn from talking with the people on that search committee that we didn't know before?
GW: It was confirmed that it was purely an autocratic, single person's — Patrick Jones’ — decision to move Dr. Mu forward, the other seven members had voted in a bloc not to [recommend] Dr. Mu over this other more qualified candidate, because he was totally unqualified. The other candidate they didn't name, but he was fully capable of handling the job. He met all the requirements. And they took two votes. The first one was to select their top choice, who was really their only choice. And then the second time, an anonymous source told me that the human resources person for the county had come into the meeting and asked the advisory panel, “If this other person wasn't there, would Dr. Mu be your second choice?” And they said no; he is not our choice because he's not qualified.
And then while I'm writing the story, somebody found some documents for campaign financing. And that just added a whole other dimension to this story. Because if only Patrick Jones had voted in favor of this guy, he never would have gotten picked. But the two [supervisors] who align with him most closely also voted for him, but none of them disclosed that they had received campaign financing from him within the last year.
RB: Wow. So you learned as you were writing the story that Dr. James Mu, who the board hired to be the public health officer, had actually donated to two of the supervisors campaigns, Kevin Crye and Chris Kelstrom. But that wasn't disclosed at all during this. Normally, it seems like something like a donation to a campaign might be a reason to recuse yourself from a vote which in this case, could have meant Mu wouldn't have been hired.
GW: I don't know if it's proper or improper. I mean, the FPPC rules say it's not. But the county council never had a chance to weigh in because neither of the candidates revealed it. Maybe I give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn't remember but it was clearly stated in their reports. And somebody found them and gave them to us.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
