Thumbnail photo: Curry County commissioners Lynn Coker, Jay Trost and Patrick Hollinger. | Screenshot
Recall efforts against Curry County commissioners Jay Trost and Patrick Hollinger have fizzled out due to a lack of signatures, André Bay, chief petitioner in the Hollinger recall, told Redwood Voice Community News.
Bay said he and Lt. Jeremy Krohn, chief petitioner in the effort to oust Trost, only received about 1,600 signatures and “ran out of time.” There will be another recall attempt after the holidays targeting the entire Board, including appointed commissioner Lynn Coker, Bay said.
“It will be a much more intensified effort this time,” he said Thursday.
However, Krohn, who is the Curry County Jail commander, declined to comment on whether or not he will be involved in a future recall effort.
“(There are) too many unknowns in the next few months to really say yay or nay,” he said.
Curry County Clerk Shelley Denney confirmed Thursday that her office had received withdrawal forms for both efforts. She said she never received a petition or saw how many signatures the proponents had gathered.
Trost called the failed recall effort reassurance that the community “appreciates and agrees with” the work the Board of Commissioners is doing. However, he said he’s also received written and verbal testimony that the proponents, “including the sheriff himself,” had been misrepresenting the recall petition as a petition that supports the sheriff’s office. This includes stating the number of sheriff’s sergeants or deputies would increase, Trost said via email Friday, while failing to state that it was a recall petition.
“Reports have been filed with the (Oregon) Secretary of State,” he said. “This is extremely disappointing if shown to be true. If anyone was approached under these pretenses, please contact the clerk’s office and report it.”
Hollinger could not be reached for comment on Friday.
Krohn told Redwood Voice that the petition he and Bay circulated was clearly labeled as a recall petition. He said those circulating the petition were also instructed to allow people to read it before signing.
“Never once was there mention of the sheriff’s office funding,” Krohn said.
Bay said he also didn’t know anyone who was representing the effort as anything other than a recall.
“With the recall and the new commissioners in there, we hope to have more sheriff’s deputies,” he said. “That’s our hope. So it will increase law enforcement because our new commissioners will listen to us or they’ll get recalled.”
Bay said the aim of the recall was to install a new Board of Commissioners that will agree to allocate more money from the county’s Road Department reserves to “put the sheriff’s department back together.”
The now-halted recall effort came amid conflict between the Board of Commissioners and Sheriff John Ward that started after the failure of a tax levy in May 2024.
In a press release on Friday, commissioners announced that litigation they had filed against the sheriff was concluded. After issuing an opinion earlier this month, Oregon Fifteenth Circuit Court Judge Martin E. Stone presided over a trial in Gold Beach on Wednesday. At issue was whether or not the sheriff was required to provide “all records, information and supporting documents” to the Board upon request.
Stone is expected to issue a formal decision soon, the press release stated. Earlier this month the judge stated that while the sheriff is required to comply with a Board of Commissioners order governs compliance with Board policies and access to county property, he wasn’t legally required to attend BOC meetings.
“While the past year has been very difficult for all of us, it has certainly taken a toll on county staff and the community at large,” the Board of Commissioners stated. “Challenges, especially when elevated to litigation, create division and we understand that some may have even been pressured to ‘pick a side.’ The reality is there is only one Curry county and we will move forward together.”
On Thursday, Bay said the chief petitioners in the recall effort against Trost and Hollinger received a mixed response from the people they spoke with. Some declined to sign the petition because they knew their signatures would be public information and they feared retaliation, he said, while others didn’t know about the recall.
“A lot of people don’t even know who our commissioners are. That’s the really sad situation,” Bay told Redwood Voice. “But a lot of people want law enforcement very bad, especially in the Harbor area.”
Bay criticized the Board’s reluctance to use Road Department Reserve dollars to fund the sheriff’s office following a failed tax levy in May 2024. The sheriff was forced to make drastic cuts, telling commissioners in July 2024 that only three deputies were working for his office.
The Board had approved a budget transfer of $1.18 million in interest revenue from the Road Department reserves to the sheriff’s office. In July 2024, there was about $17 million in the Road Department reserves, then-finance director Keina Wolf told commissioners.
In June, tensions between the Board of Commissioners and the sheriff thawed enough for both parties to agree on a staffing plan that included employing a lieutenant in the patrol division who would oversee four deputies, a forest deputy and a marine deputy. A community resource officer, a part-time civil processor and three sergeants in the jail were also part of that staffing plan.
Trost told Redwood Voice in an Oct. 16 article that the sheriff had not provided public safety updates to the Board since the 2025-26 budget process.
