Kelstrom’s “I Told You So” on Measure B Lawsuits Omits the Board’s Own Role in Creating Them
- Kari Chilson
- 18 hours ago
- 4 min read
Opinion
Disclosure: The author is a proponent of Measure B.
Editor’s Note:
On June 17, 2026, Supervisor Chris Kelstrom spoke with Action News Now after the Board’s 4-0 vote refusing to defend voter-approved Measure B.
Watch Supervisor Kelstrom’s full comments here:
(Action News Now – June 17, 2026)
Supervisor Chris Kelstrom’s statement was not just misleading — it was a deliberate and cynical attempt to shift blame onto the very citizens and voters he is supposed to represent.
Kelstrom whined that this is the “fifth lawsuit” and that proponents keep wanting taxpayers to fund their defense. What he deliberately omitted is that the Board and County Counsel Joseph Larmour started this legal war — and their original justification has now been completely exposed as false.
The County’s Hypocritical Excuse
The Board voted to sue Shasta County citizens simply for exercising their fundamental right to a citizen-led initiative — an aggressive and rare tactic. Their main public excuse? They claimed they had to stop the initiative to avoid a costly future lawsuit from the state if an “illegal” measure passed.
That excuse has now collapsed spectacularly.
Measure B passed with 55.6% of the vote because Shasta County voters clearly want election integrity. When the state sued, the Board voted 4-0 not to defend the very measure they said they were trying to protect taxpayers from. Why have they fought this at every turn if they were not going to defend the people’s will anyway?
Their early lawsuit against citizens was never about protecting county finances — it was about killing the initiative before voters could decide.
The Pattern of Resistance and Lawfare
County Counsel Joseph Larmour engaged in what can only be described as lawfare against Shasta County citizens.
After proponents submitted paperwork to begin the initiative process, the county repeatedly delayed. Larmour then refused to perform his mandatory ministerial duty to prepare an impartial title and summary. The Board, including Kelstrom, voted to sue the citizen proponents. In that lawsuit, the county requested an ex parte hearing with only one business day’s notice. The filing falsely claimed proponents had been contacted by phone and agreed to the hearing. In reality, they received an email on Thursday afternoon for a Monday hearing, and they never agreed to an emergency hearing. The judge ultimately rejected the ex parte request.
The county’s lawsuit was also embarrassingly sloppy — it was missing a significant page and included an irrelevant document from the 1990s that had nothing to do with the case. These tactics left proponents scrambling to find and prepare an attorney on extremely short notice.
Later, when activist Jennifer Katske sued to block the measure from the ballot, the Board voted not to defend it. Proponents were not even properly notified of the initial hearing, resulting in a temporary restraining order against the measure. Only after the proponents’ attorney challenged that ruling was a proper hearing granted
This is the pattern citizens warned the Board about on March 21, 2025. Joseph Fairfield, a retired supervisor at the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office with decades of experience in criminal, family, and federal appeals law, told the Board:
“The Board of Supervisors chose to waste county funds to sue citizens for exercising their constitutional rights… If this is the type of legal advice that county counsel gives, I would start looking elsewhere for legal counsel.”
Constitutional and Moral Failure
The Board has a moral and ethical duty to defend the expressed will of the voters — not to act as Sacramento’s obedient gatekeepers. The foundation of our government is self-government and the consent of the governed, not the personal preferences of unelected county counsel.
Even if some provisions of Measure B face challenges, the severability clause will likely allow core election-integrity reforms to stand. By refusing to defend the measure at all, the Board has repeatedly placed its own will — and Sacramento’s — above the will of the people.
Citizens Should Not Bear the Full Cost of Defending Democracy
While the Board refuses to spend county resources defending a voter-approved charter amendment, the citizens who qualified and passed Measure B have been forced to repeatedly raise private funds just to defend their democratic rights against their own county government.
Call to Action: The Board still has time to reverse course.
Contact the Supervisors today and demand they:
Honor their oath to the people of Shasta County, not to Sacramento or County Counsel.
Immediately authorize funding for independent counsel to defend Measure B against the state.
Attend the Board meeting (the next ones are today, Tuesday, June 23rd, and Tuesday, June 30th) and speak during public comment.
Share this article and Bruce Russell’s letter widely.
Shasta County voters deserve far better than a Board that sues its own citizens to block a legally entitled initiative, then abandons them after the majority has clearly spoken at the ballot box.
The people have spoken. The Board must now choose: stand with Shasta County voters, or continue to side with Sacramento.
Bruce Russell’s full letter to the Board is published here.
