Reminder: Candidate Conversation Tonight
Mike French is running on Recompete, the $35.6 million federal grant he chairs. Year one produced about 31 placements against a five-year goal of 900. A large share of the money runs through Mark Ozias’s NGO, the North Olympic Development Council, which keeps more than $1 million before passing the rest along. One subaward is explicit: Jamestown will buy a hydroseeder and a mini excavator and enter hydro-seeding as a new business. Jamestown also funded more than half of Ozias’s last campaign. Taxpaying small businesss already in the hydroseeding business paid for their own equipment.
In the podcast: Who lied — Jeff Tozzer or Mike French?
French owns the grant he is selling
French chairs the North Olympic Peninsula Recompete Coalition. Clallam County is the lead applicant. This is a federal EDA grant, not a loan, from October 2024 through September 2029.
He has made it the center of his campaign: close the jobs gap and put people in family-wage work.
He has talked about 900 job placements in five years.
Year one, as reported here, produced about 31 jobs. That is the result he wants treated as leadership. But taking credit for landing the money includes responsibility for the pipeline that spends it.
His campaign tells voters he “led a team that brought $35 million” to the region.
He chairs the coalition.
His county holds the award.
If the money pads an NGO's pockets and buys equipment so a tax-advantaged enterprise can bid against family businesses that fund the county — he deserves credit for that, too.
Ozias’s NGO takes $8.27 million—and keeps more than $1 million
The North Olympic Development Council—an NGO Ozias helps run—is the project lead for “distressed remote & rural regions.”
The NODC’s award is $8,271,120. Its listed job is to build capacity and make subawards to five tribes and the City of Forks. The subawards total $7.25 million. That leaves more than $1 million—about $1.02 million—at the NGO for overhead and administration before a subawardee spends a dollar.
Each subawardee can take another cut to run its own project. Public descriptions still do not itemize staff, rent, or equipment line by line. One job being created? — Natalie Williammee is the NODC’s Recompete Program Director.
Ozias is vice president of its executive board.
French and Ozias sit on the same Board of Commissioners. The “jumpstart” money French campaigns on is also a financial lift for Ozias’s NGO.
The scope of work buys the machines
Jamestown’s slice of Recompete is a business award, not a social-service grant.
An authorized scope of work for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, issued under the NODC subaward, says the tribe will purchase equipment for a “targeted expansion of JKT Development, a tribally-owned enterprise, into hydro-seeding, a new area of business.”
The equipment list is specific: a mini excavator and a hydroseeder. Purchase window: June 1, 2026, to September 30, 2026. The next activity is to “establish and implement” the hydro-seeding enterprise—marketing, operations, and hiring and training 3–4 new workers—through September 30, 2029. Hawk Grinnell is named as the responsible official.
The same scope also funds childcare assistance and one-on-one business advising. Those lines do not change the commercial core: grant money to stand up a new construction-field business.
Jamestown writes Ozias’s biggest checks
Jamestown was Ozias’s largest campaign donor. In his last race, the corporation funded more than half of what he raised. Those donations are legal. The same organization is now a Recompete subawardee, using federal money to grow its commercial businesses—including a new hydro-seeding line. Ozias has also called the tribe a central partner in county government.
"So, to the Jamestown Tribal Council and members of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe… I believe that the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe is our most important partner in local governance whether we're talking about healthcare, or habitat restoration, or transportation, or emergency management, or economic development, or any of the myriad of areas that we work together for this community…” — Commissioner Mark Ozias, April 2024
So the same entity is Ozias’ top donor, his stated partner, and a grant recipient under an NGO he helps oversee.
This is not a kitchen-table startup. Public reporting has put the Jamestown Corporation’s budget at over $100 million “without federal assistance.”
A business that size does not need a federal grant to buy its machinery. A family-owned small business does—and that small business is not on this award list.
Small businesses already do this work
Hydro-seeding and related groundwork are not empty markets on the peninsula. Private operators already seed sites, stabilize slopes, and take commercial jobs.
They bought tanks, pumps, trucks, and excavators with savings, loans, and revenue. A serious one-rig setup runs tens of thousands of dollars before seed, mulch, fuel, and insurance.
Those businesses pay sales tax, property tax, payroll tax, and vehicle costs. That is the money that pays for the county that French and Ozias govern.
Jamestown’s commercial arm can dodge the same taxes that are mandatory for its competitors. That is federal Indian law. It is also a standing discount.
Recompete now pays for the hydroseeder and the mini excavator.
The private small businessman paid for his.
He pays the taxes, too.
The other side does not pay them the same way.
Then both show up to bid on the same job.
French’s program can count 3–4 new placements on the grant side. It does not have to count the hours a taxpaying crew loses when it cannot match the bid. In a small market, work does not appear from nowhere. And when it doesn’t, businesses close up shop and leave.
Small businesses are the backbone of Clallam County’s tax base. They hire neighbors, spend money in town, and generate the revenue that pays for county projects.
Those same public dollars should not be used against them. A grant program French chairs, and an NGO Ozias oversees, is buying startup equipment for a competitor. Taxpayers who built the local economy should not be forced to subsidize someone trying to take their business.
This is not a lift. It is a shove, and it’s a slap across the face for small business owners.
The public still does not get a full budget
Voters can see $35.6 million. They can see Ozias’s NGO listed at $8.27 million and only $7.25 million moving to subawardees. They can now see, in Jamestown’s authorized scope, a hydroseeder and a mini excavator. They still cannot see a published breakdown of the NGO’s overhead or what every other subawardee is buying.
French asked for the credit. He chairs the coalition. The county holds the grant. Ozias’s NGO banks the administrative surplus. Jamestown sits in the donor file and on a scope of work that purchases the machines.
That is the structure of Recompete.
The fairness question is whether taxpaying businesses are the economy Recompete is supposed to build—or the competition it is paying to undercut.
