Owen Rowe’s recent opinion piece seems an obvious white-washing of what really happened when he and four Board members voted to remove Cameron Jones. As he admits, it is the Board’s job “to hire a GM,” but it is also its job to hold the GM accountable and, if needed, to fire the GM.

It seems plain to me (based on my 20-plus years of nonprofit Board experience) that the GM convinced four Board members that she no longer wanted to deal with Mr. Jones and he needed to go. Rowe admits that incoming, already elected Board members were not allowed any part in the removal. It seems likely to me that is because the four who voted to remove knew that the new Board members would not support the move. Rowe implausibly suggests that this was best because the new members “did not witness Cameron’s actions.” But Board member Juri Jennings, in her own Op-Ed, clearly states there were no actions to witness that justified Mr. Jones’s removal.

Having been president on two different Boards of nonprofits with multimillion dollar budgets, I can conceive of no

justification for the removal of a sitting Board member without, at minimum, first tasking an independent and unbiased investigation of the acts alleged to justify removal. Indeed, the newly elected Board members would have been perfectly suited for this task.

Instead, it seems like the GM said “it’s him or me,” and four Board members chose to accede to the wishes of a long-time GM rather than listening to the issues that Mr. Jones and Ms. Jennings were trying to raise and address. A white-washing indeed.

Denis Stearns

Port Townsend