Why is Fifth District Supervisor Madrone sponsoring an item against Second District Supervisor Bushnell, there is more to this complaint and the County hiding the identity of the alleged complainant is not transparency to the public

 

Last Saturday, I was the first one to report on this agenda item regarding Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell.

https://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2025/10/humboldt-county-and-bos-have-ignored.html?m=1

The County still has a few days to respond to my PRA. I will see what they release but I am not holding my breath.

There was another closed session meeting last Thursday and now this Tuesday, there are two items on the Board of Supervisor's agenda, one sponsored by Fifth District Supervisor Madrone in which one of the recommendations is to remove Supervisor Bushnell as chair and from Commissions.

You can read those staff reports just like I can. Let's just say, I received tips, I am doing my own investigation. Seeing Supervisor Madrone's name on the agenda as a sponsor was not a surprise. He is not running for another term. So why is he involved? That is the real investigation.

There should be an independent review as suggested. The staff report states nothing about these allegations, does not identify who the complainant is and all we know is, "On May 6th, 2025 and May 7th, 2025, the Director of Human Resources received two (2) separate complaints alleging violations of the Board of Supervisors Code of Conduct by 2nd District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell.  As required by the Board of Supervisors Code of Conduct, the Committee met, reviewed the complaint, and determined by two-thirds vote that an impartial third-party investigation should be conducted. The Director of Human Resources subsequently initiated an investigation through Kramer Workplace Investigations. Attached to this report is an Executive Summary outlining the sustained findings from that investigation."

In a small County full of so many conflicts, jealousy, petty people, the public deserves better. In a court of law, a defendant gets to cross examine his or her accuser. I find it hard to believe that there have only been complaints about Supervisor Bushnell. The first change the Humboldt County BOS needs to make is to recuse themselves from voting about another fellow Supervisor.

A reader and I were talking about this post & we discussed in 2006 when former Humboldt Supervisor John Woolley was going after the late, former Supervisor Roger Rodoni. 

Rodoni said this from the dias during a BOS meeting, “It’s an attempt by a mid-level bureaucratic whore to bitch-slap me in public because they don’t like the way I voted.”

It made the Times Standard's best quotes of 2006.

Without even knowing the details but spending decades at the Courthouse and in local politics, this is probably an employee who got their feelings hurt, Supervisor Bushnell probably did not express herself in the PC Humboldt way and looks like Madrone is making a big ado about nothing. Grow up, with people out in the private industry struggling to put food on the table, Humboldt politics like this are tone deaf from entitled Madrone and an employee who aren't missing a paycheck. This employee would never make it in the real world and private industry.