Lane County’s top executive took the extraordinary step of publicly accusing a local news outlet of inaccurate reporting that could influence a key county commission election that’s only days away.

County administrator Steve Mokrohisky released a three-minute video Oct. 27 in which he accused Lookout Eugene-Springfield of publishing false and misleading allegations about CleanLane, the county’s $150 million waste-recovery and recycling project.

The article and a subsequent Lookout editorial all but accused Mokrohisky of trying to conceal financial information that could turn the CleanLane project into a potential $300 million disaster for Lane County.

“As the county administrator who has dedicated the past 13 years of my career here,” Mokrohisky said in the video, “I was shocked at the article and knowing what is publicly available, I was doubly surprised and appalled that the reporter didn’t check his facts before publishing this article.”

“There is no $300 million liability,” Mokrohisky tells Eugene Weekly. “It doesn’t exist.”

While Mokrohisky did not mention the Nov. 3 election, he made his message clear.

Mokrohisky raised concerns that Lookout’s story relied in part on a leaked county memo written by a former Lane County counsel, which included allegations of both retaliation and that Mokrohisky intentionally concealed important financial information regarding CleanLane. 

“The impact of this timing also cannot be lost on anyone in the community,” Mokrohisky says in the video. “A confidential memo was leaked that only the five commissioners and five legal staff members possessed. The leak came during a time when the impacts of incorrect reporting could have monumental consequences for our community’s future. Our community deserves better.”

The controversial CleanLane project is at the center of the current Lane County District 5 commissioner race between incumbent Heather Buch, who voted to approve CleanLane, and Jake Pelroy, who has represented garbage haulers determined to kill the greenhouse-gas reducing project.

Back in 2015, Lane County officials began looking into ways to meet a state-required materials recovery goal — the recycling, composting or recovering energy from waste that would otherwise wind up in landfills. They found that Short Mountain Landfill is the county’s highest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. In March 2022, the county issued a request for proposals for the design and implementation of a materials recovery facility. 

The county chose local Eugene company Bulk Handling Systems over a bid by sanitation giant Sanipac and recycler EcoSort, which are owned by Waste Connections, Inc., the third largest waste handling company in the U.S.  

On Oct. 21, two weeks before the election, a story by Lookout reporter Ben Botkin detailed three allegations about the county and CleanLane.

First, Lane County could be forced to pay as much as $326 million in liability to BHS if the county commissioners decide to cancel the project, which is behind schedule and hasn’t yet broken ground. 

Second, the article cited allegations that Mokrohisky, who signed the CleanLane deal, had failed to limit Lane County’s financial exposure.

Third, the story repeated allegations that Mokrohisky sought to hide from county commissioners that BHS stood to earn $20 million a year in profits from the CleanLane project, which the memo claims opens the county to the over $300 million in liability. 

In Mokrohisky’s video, as well as in an interview with Eugene Weekly, the county executive alleges Lookout’s reporting contained fundamental errors that the reporter could have avoided had he sought to confirm a few basic facts.

Mokrohisky says the memo’s claim of a potential $326 million liability over 25 years is false. He points to the county’s contract with BHS, which limits payments to two years if the county defaults. 

Based on the BHS estimated profits in Lookout’s story, the worst-case liability for the county would be around $40 million.

“This was an easy fact to check and well within the reporter’s ability to read the public contract with BHS,” Mokrohisky says in the video. “I negotiated a two-year cap on liability to protect the interests of the county. This fact has been verified by BHS in their own statement about this misleading article.”

BHS CEO Steve Miller writes in an Oct. 17 statement that the memo’s claim of $300 million in potential liability is a “fabrication.”

“Administrator Mokrohisky was firm in limiting the liability to no more than two years of profit,” Miller says in the statement. “That is very clear in our agreement.”

Mokrohisky says the agreement with BHS restricted sharing the company’s financial information. “Staff were not directed to withhold liability information from commissioners,” he says in the video. “Ever.”

Commissioner Laurie Trieger, who also takes issue with the accuracy of Lookout’s reporting, tells Eugene Weekly, “Commissioners don’t need the information about the company’s profits to make that policy decision. That’s why it wasn’t relevant to us.”

Botkin, the Lookout reporter, emailed Mokrohisky on Oct. 20, one day before the story was published and gave him four hours to respond. According to the email, which the county provided to Eugene Weekly, Botkin didn’t ask Mokrohisky about the claim the county could face a $326 million liability with CleanLane. He did ask about the claim that Mokrohisky sought to hide financial information from county commissioners.

“Based on the information you shared with me in your email,” Mokrohisky wrote Botkin, “his narrative is inaccurate, incomplete and unverified.”

Eugene Weekly reached out to Botkin, Dann Miller, Lookout executive editor, and Elon Glucklich, opinion writer, with questions regarding the amount of time given to sources to respond and Lookout’s fact checking process.

Miller responded in an email, “We stand behind our reporting.” Miller did not address Eugene Weekly’s questions. 

Botkin based his reporting on claims made by Rob Bovett, a former Lane County counsel who claims he was retaliated against by Trieger and Buch after raising concerns about CleanLane. 

Trieger says that is not true. “Bovett crafted a memo for a purpose. Then the memo got used for other purposes and reported on in a way that cherry-picked quotes and assertions,” she says. 

The allegations were contained in records Bovett submitted, as he sought a severance from Lane County, which were leaked to Botkin, in addition to the memo Bovett sent to Lane County commissioners expressing his concerns about the CleanLane deal.

Bovett, who had worked for Lane County for about 18 months, departed in August after he and the county reached an agreement for $275,318 in severance and health benefits. As part of the settlement, both parties agreed that Bovett would not sue the county and neither party would make disparaging comments about one another. He declined to comment to Eugene Weekly.