At Tuesday’s Clallam County Board of Health meeting, Chairman Mike French stood up for Health Officer Allison Berry, telling the public that county employees’ personal lives are “none of our business” and that his job is to defend them. He also said Berry was named Citizen of the Year by the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce and that local schools reopened faster than most districts in the country. Neither claim is true.
The Meeting and the Canceled Review
After several public comments criticizing local health policy—and after Health Officer Allison Berry’s own extreme political statements came under scrutiny—Board of Health Chairman Mike French rose to her defense.
A special meeting scheduled immediately before the regular Board of Health session was set to consider an executive session, closed to the public, to review a public employee's performance. That meeting was canceled and appears to have been pushed to November 6, after the election.
As Board of Health chair, French will not have to make any difficult decisions about Berry’s performance until after voters have already cast their ballots.
French’s Defense: Standing Up for Employees, Not Constituents
Near the end of the meeting, French explained that county employees are “hired to do a job — their job is what we care about. What happens in their personal life is none of our business.” He added that one of the roles of elected officials is “just to stand up for our employees and to make sure that they are treated fairly.”
Some residents expected that French’s primary duty, as an elected official earning roughly $118,000 a year, would be to represent the constituents who put him in office. Instead, he framed his role as protecting Berry. As Health Officer, Berry held delegated authority during the COVID period to restrict businesses, control access to public places, limit church services, and influence travel rules. Critics argue that unchecked power of that kind requires oversight, not automatic defense. French’s comments suggested his job is to shield Berry from accountability rather than help the public address legitimate concerns.
The Citizen of the Year Claim
French told someone in the gallery who had not lived in Clallam County during the COVID restrictions that “our health officer was selected by our chamber of commerce as the citizen of the year.” He said he was “personally convinced that my community, that a lot of what you heard today is not representative of my community,” and that the community “valued the direction and the support that our public health officer gave us through a global pandemic.”
That award claim is not accurate. Allison Berry (then often referred to as Dr. Allison Berry Unthank) was a finalist for Citizen of the Year in the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce’s Fourth Annual Community Awards, which covered 2020 and were presented in late January or early February 2021. She was not the winner. The award went to Steve Deutermann, board president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula. The other finalist was Patty Pastore. Contemporary reporting from the Peninsula Daily News and Radio Pacific confirms the finalists and the winner.
No available records show Berry winning the Port Angeles Chamber’s Citizen of the Year award in 2020, 2021, or other years. She did receive other local recognitions around that time, including a “Making a Difference” award from the League of Women Voters of Clallam County.
Allison Berry certainly did “make a difference” for several small business owners.
The School Reopening Claim
French also said the Board of Health focused for years on “making sure that we had a response, that people didn’t die, that our kids could go back to school. Our school districts were able to put kids back in school faster than most school districts across the country. We’re proud of that response.” He told the room that “the true story is very different.”
The national comparison is not merely inaccurate — it is the opposite of French’s “true story.”
Clallam County schools, including Port Angeles and Sequim, began the 2020–21 year mostly remote after a case-rate spike and a recommendation from the county health department. Limited hybrid learning (typically two days a week for younger grades) did not start until October 2020. Port Angeles Superintendent Martin Brewer later noted that local districts were ahead of much of Washington state, where roughly 75 percent of students remained remote until after Gov. Inslee’s April 19, 2021 order forcing hybrid options.
Washington as a whole, however, was among the slowest states in the country. In fall 2020, more than 94 percent of Washington students started the year fully remote — roughly double the national rate. By February 2021, Burbio’s In-Person Index ranked Washington 47th out of 50 states, with only 19 percent of students receiving any in-person instruction. Many districts across the South, Midwest, and Mountain West had already offered broader in-person options for months.
Local hybrid reopening in October 2020 was earlier than many districts inside Washington. It was not faster than most districts across the country. French’s claim is false. Berry did not correct it. Both the award statement and the school-reopening claim remain unchallenged in the official meeting record.
Public Comments on Recent Deaths
Carlsborg resident Joyce Stuart, also a member of the Homelessness Task Force which advises the commissioners, spoke about her friend Jamie Trudeau, who died after an incident in the Baker Dip captured on police body camera.
She said CC Watchdog had turned Trudeau’s death into a “political statement.” Stuart explained that Trudeau did not die from an opioid overdose but from blunt force trauma in an accident “probably due to lack of lighting.” She argued that because he was homeless, and because of the political climate, his death was politicized as an indictment of the Harm Reduction Health Center. She said he probably collided on his bicycle with the other man found passed out, and that was the cause of death. “He did not die from an overdose,” she said, and that watching the video would show “exactly what happened.”
Stuart did not address why straws for smoking fentanyl and foil with charred marks were found around the victims, or how both men were found without pulses but revived with Narcan.
A young man, Cody Mollway, also spoke. “I’m here tonight because my dad recently died right down in the Baker Dip. His name was John Adkins,” he said. “I just want to say that I think the harm reduction is not working. He was on Suboxone for a lot of years, and then he switched to methadone, and in less than a year he spiraled out of control… and it’s obvious now if you look down at Peabody [street] and stuff, it’s just horrifying. I think something needs to happen, to stop what’s going on.”
Before Cody Mollway spoke, it had not been publicly known that both men found in the Baker Dip in July had died.
Accountability and Next Steps
The contrast is difficult to ignore. Clallam County Public Health has repeatedly warned residents about the dangers of misinformation and urged them to trust official sources. Yet when Board of Health Chairman Mike French claimed that Health Officer Allison Berry had been named Citizen of the Year by the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce and that local schools reopened faster than most districts in the country, Berry said nothing. Both statements were false, and neither was corrected. Those claims are now part of the official meeting record.
The department’s anti-misinformation efforts appear to apply only to the public, not to the elected official defending the Health Officer.
French’s defense of Berry rests on two claims that do not match the record. Both went unchallenged by Berry. At the same time, public speakers raised questions about whether current harm-reduction policies are contributing to deaths rather than preventing them.
The postponed performance review means French will not have to confront these issues until after the election. The question left for residents is direct: if French’s stated role is to stand up for Berry, who is responsible for standing up for the public?
“Clallam County Health and Human Services - Public Health limited who can comment on this post.”
Does that mean government is controlling who can exercise their free speech to redress government which is protected under the First Amendment?
They are all collecting the public dime!