Pictured above (from left): Luke Barber, vice chair, and George Saleeby, chair of Berrien Cass Van Buren Workforce Development board
THE LATEST, IN 60 SECONDS
• No interim director yet. Nobody has been named to run the agency. The board did not appoint an interim leader Tuesday. President and CEO Todd Gustafson’s last day is next Tuesday. A committee will search for a replacement, and its interviews will be closed to the public.
• Who is the WDB? The agency told its own board that it is not the Workforce Development Board. The three counties that created it say that is exactly the body they oversee. Asked who the workforce development board is, Kinexus’s lawyer said: “That is an open question.”
• Who picks the next leader? The agency’s own documents point back to the counties. A slide told the board that Kinexus “may hire an Executive and set the terms and conditions of employment.” The bylaws it was quoting say that power is “subject to the terms of the Interlocal Agreement” — the agreement that gives the counties approval over the hire. That condition was not on the slide.
• Why it matters. Job training, youth programs, and employer services across Berrien, Cass, and Van Buren counties run through this agency on federal and state money. Under the agreement that created it, the three counties share the bill for any spending the federal government later disallows.
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The special meeting of the Berrien, Cass, Van Buren Workforce Development Board happened Tuesday morning. If anything, the meeting was tense, somewhat confrontational, and seemed to open the next phase of Kinexus Group’s determination to define how it will operate.
The board did not name an interim leader to succeed President and Chief Executive Officer Todd Gustafson. His stated last day is September 8, though the board was told he was relieved of his duties on August 24. Vice chairman Luke Barber also characterized the departure as a resignation, attributing it to an eroded relationship over governance.
On a motion by Berrien County-appointed representative John Fiore, seconded by fellow community representative Brady Cohen, the board created a committee to conduct a search for Gustafson’s interim replacement. Its members were not named. The board was told from the chair that the search interviews will not be open to the public. When Berrien County Commissioner Mamie Yarbrough, one of the county’s representatives to the board, asked if the interviews would be opened to the public, Barber consulted counsel and the answer was, “We’ll take it under advisement.”
In an email to the entire Kinexus staff shortly after the meeting adjourned, Barber described the committee’s assignment more specifically than the meeting did. It “will lead the process of identifying a longer-term interim President and CEO, as well as ultimately conducting the search for our permanent President and CEO,” he wrote. The email, obtained by WSJM, went out with Barber’s signature as vice chair and was distributed by the agency’s chief marketing officer.
The next paragraph thanked Chief People Officer Erin Wright, the person initially announced as the interim leader. “I also want to take this opportunity to thank Erin for her leadership and support during this transition,” it said. “She has stepped in during an incredibly demanding time for the organization.” The email did not say what role Wright holds, and the board made no appointment of an interim leader in the open meeting. WSJM has asked Barber who is directing the agency’s operations, and under what authority.
The sharpest statement of the morning came not from a lawyer but from the man expected to lead the board, Barber, who told the room that the corporation running the agency is not the workforce development board whose name it carries.
“You’re saying that you’re not a workforce development board, but that’s in your name,” Berrien County Commissioner Julie Wuerfel, who chairs the Chief Elected Officials Board, told WSJM after the meeting. “So what is it? … You can’t have it both ways.”
What this comes down to
Three counties — Berrien, Cass and Van Buren — pay for and oversee an agency that runs job training programs. In 2000, they signed an agreement spelling out how it works. That agreement says the counties get to approve whoever is hired to run the agency.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the agency put up a presentation slide that said something else. It said the agency can hire its own leader and set the pay. The rule the slide was quoting says the agency can do that only if the counties’ agreement allows it. That part was left off the slide.
The lawyers also told the board that the corporation is not the workforce development board — even though that is the name on its own paperwork. The counties say it is exactly that. A commissioner asked the lawyer straight out who the workforce development board is. The lawyer said it is an open question.
Then there is the paperwork problem. Under state law, an agreement like this takes effect only if the governor approves it. Gov. John Engler approved the 2000 version, in two signed letters. The counties wrote a new version in 2005. A state lawyer said in 2006 it could be approved once seven things were fixed. Nothing showing it ever was has turned up in the records the agency handed over to the counties.
So there is no agreement on which rulebook applies, or on what this board even is.
The presentation
Rebecca Strauss, an attorney with Miller Johnson — the Grand Rapids firm that serves as Kinexus’s corporate counsel — was in the room to walk the board through the structure of the workforce development board and Kinexus. Board members were presented overview slides and some of the agency’s foundational documents.
The presentation’s central claims, delivered by slide: the corporation was formed in 1983 as a private nonprofit and does business as Kinexus. The interlocal agreement that governs it is the one signed in 2000, not the 2005 version the counties adopted by resolution. And the corporation’s operative bylaws are a set dated 2019.
Kinexus Group is not a separate company. It is an assumed name the workforce development board registered with the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, according to certificates the agency produced to the counties in July. The agency’s website says Kinexus Group was “formed” in 2018; a deed recorded in Berrien County in March 2015 already identifies the workforce board as doing business under the name.
Barber, who chaired the meeting and is expected to stand for election as chairman October 2, summarized the position from the dais. “The 2005 [interlocal agreement] that was put forward was not approved by the Attorney General,” Barber said. “The active and effective [agreement] that exists today is … the 2000.”
Of the name on the articles of incorporation — Berrien-Cass-Van Buren Workforce Development Board, Inc. — Barber said: “It is just a name. It is not the Workforce Development Board. … It’s a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which is the administrative arm.” He ended his summary by turning to counsel and asking, “Did I get that right?”
“I wholeheartedly agree that Kinexus in its own documents and at large is often referred to as the WDB, which I think is the cause of a lot of confusion,” Strauss answered, adding that it “probably needs a further conversation about how we move forward.”
At one point Strauss offered the board a candid summary: “There may be a difference in how you’ve all been operating and what the documents lay out.”
Where that leaves the public body called the Workforce Development Board, the presentation did not say. When Wuerfel asked directly — “Who is the WDB? Because that’s our oversight” — Strauss answered: “That is an open question.”
What the Attorney General told two governors
The correspondence Barber referred to is in the records Kinexus produced to the counties in July, and it says more than the summary from the dais.
Under Michigan’s Urban Cooperation Act, an interlocal agreement among counties takes effect only with the governor’s approval, and the attorney general reviews it first. The production contains that paper trail for the 2000 agreement. The attorney general’s office wrote to Gov. John Engler on May 15, 2000, with conditions; two days later Engler gave notice of his approval in a signed letter, contingent on those conditions being satisfied. On November 30, 2000, the office wrote again to say it had received certified approving resolutions from all three county boards addressing the issues raised, and could recommend approval. Engler gave notice of his approval of the revised agreement in a second signed letter, on December 7, 2000.
Six years later the counties submitted a revised agreement. In a December 6, 2006 letter to Gov. Jennifer Granholm — copied to Gustafson as “Executive Director, Michigan Works (Berrien, Cass and Van Buren counties)” — Assistant Attorney General George M. Elworth wrote that he had reviewed it under the Urban Cooperation Act and recommended approval “subject to” seven items. The first was certified approving resolutions from the three county boards.
The second went to the question the board spent Tuesday morning on. “Neither the 2000 agreement nor the proposed agreement serves as authority for the establishment of the WDB as a nonprofit corporation,” Elworth wrote. Before Engler approved the 2000 agreement, he noted, “a reference to the WDB as a nonprofit corporation was deleted from that agreement” at the attorney general’s insistence. And while cities may establish nonprofit corporations under Michigan law, “no such statutory authority is extended to counties.”
The same letter describes what the Workforce Development Board is, if it exists as a separate entity. Under Section 7(1) of the act, each county board must appoint at least one representative to it, “subject to removal at any time without cause by that county board of commissioners,” and such a body “shall be a public body for the purposes of the act.”
The production contains Engler’s signed letters approving the 2000 agreement. It contains no letter approving the agreement the counties submitted in 2005.
What the documents actually say
The positions presented by the Miller Johnson attorneys on screen did not always fit together. The presentation’s slide on the 2000 interlocal agreement — the version now said to govern — lists among the county commissioners’ responsibilities: “Approve the hiring of an Executive Director.” It lists the same responsibility for the Chief Elected Officials Board. A later slide, summarizing the 2019 bylaws, states: “Kinexus may hire an Executive and set the terms and conditions of employment.”
The 2019 bylaws are among the records Kinexus produced to the counties in July, and they carry a condition the slide does not. Section 6.01 reads: “Subject to the terms of the Interlocal Agreement, the WDB may hire an Executive.” Section 8.04 reads: “Subject to the terms of the Interlocal Agreement, the WDB shall set the terms and conditions of employment for the Executive.” The same condition appears in the 2005 bylaws Van Buren County adopted by resolution, and in every revision in WSJM’s possession.
Read together, the three documents point one way. If the 2000 agreement governs, as the board was told Tuesday, that agreement gives the county commissioners and the Chief Elected Officials Board the authority to approve the hiring of an executive director. The bylaws do not displace it, because the bylaws condition the board’s own hiring power on the terms of the interlocal agreement. The slide that appeared to give the corporation a free hand quoted the bylaws without the condition attached to them.
Nor do the documents describe two executives. The interlocal calls the job executive director; the bylaws call it the Executive; the agency’s federal tax return calls Gustafson chief executive officer and president; and the attorney general in 2006 addressed him as executive director of Michigan Works. One position, one person, under governing documents that assign the approval to the counties.
The produced copy of the bylaws dates itself. Its final page lists nine revisions, the most recent “Rev. 04/19,” and carries an approval line signed by the board’s then-chairperson, Christopher Randall, on May 15, 2019. Six county commissioners signed the page as members of the Chief Elected Officials Board — Berrien’s on April 25, 2019, Cass’s on April 23, 2019.
Section 11.01 of those same bylaws provides that amendments “must also be ratified by the three (3) County Boards of Commissioners.” The signatures on the page are those of individual commissioners acting as members of the Chief Elected Officials Board, a different body from the three county boards. Berrien County has certified under the Freedom of Information Act that it holds no records of ratification for the years it was asked about, and Wuerfel has said no bylaws change was ever brought back to her board.
The rest of the meeting
The board removed Gustafson from the agency’s bank accounts and added Gilbert Williams, the agency’s new chief financial officer, on a motion by George Saleeby. It was not announced when the prior CFO, Coleen Frens-Rossman, departed the organization. The records Kinexus produced to the counties, which run through June 2026, contain no announcement of a change in the position; they show Frens-Rossman as chief financial officer presenting the agency’s financial results as recently as the board’s March 6, 2026 meeting, the most recent board meeting in the production.
Saleeby, presiding at the start, announced his own exit. “My term is up in four weeks,” he said, adding that he would be “stepping down shortly,” and handed the meeting to Barber.
The board’s Corporate Executive Committee met on August 18, two days before Gustafson went to the state and six days before the board was told he had been relieved of his duties. The notice for that meeting, on Kinexus letterhead, gives a date, a time, and a conference room. It states no purpose of the meeting.
Barber told the board that Gustafson asked the State of Michigan to intervene on August 20, describing the counties-led inquiry as a distraction from the team’s work and saying it provides no basis for what he characterized as a barrage of records demands.
Roseann Marchetti, the Cass County commissioner who chaired the Chief Elected Officials Board until June 30, 2025, used public comment to read out executive salaries from the agency’s most recent federal tax return — including $285,738 for Gustafson and $263,228 for Youth Solutions Executive Director Roger Curtis — and said she was “appalled,” and that the body she chaired never approved executive salaries and did not vote on them. Under Section 8.04 of the bylaws, the Chief Elected Officials Board’s approval is required to establish salary ranges and compensation limits for employees, and Gustafson’s 2005 offer letter, with a starting salary of $87,400 per year, required that any change in his salary be approved by the workforce board and the Chief Elected Officials Board.
Chief People Officer Erin Wright told the board that she and four others on the agency’s leadership team have fielded the questions raised by the inquiry, that there is misinformation in the media, and that staff have been “blasted on a day to day basis.” She said, “I am just so disappointed with what this has turned into.”
In its communications with Kinexus officials and the agency’s counsel, WSJM has repeatedly offered to correct any factual error in its reporting. To date, they have identified none.
Ken Flowers, president of Lake Michigan College and a new board member, offered a different note afterward. “I don’t believe that the media is to blame,” he told WSJM. “Any time … [Kinexus is] saying things like, hey, we’re not answering questions, it creates an aura of like, what are we hiding? And so you’ve got to be mindful of that.”
What happens next
Wuerfel said the counties can only act on whoever the search produces.
“We do not have that authority,” she said. “We can only approve or deny.” She said she expects the dispute to end in a renegotiated interlocal agreement: “I’m sure it’s going to lead eventually to a new interlocal that will have to be agreed upon … by all three counties and then sent to the state as well.”
Kurt Doroh, chairman of the Van Buren County Board of Commissioners, said he left the meeting disappointed for the same reason Wuerfel did.
“I was disappointed that an interim didn’t get appointed, and now we have to wait longer to appoint someone,” Doroh told WSJM. “Once they go through this process, they’re going to put out for applications and choose someone at that point.”
Asked whether he was confident the relationship between the counties and the agency was improving, Doroh said: “Working on it. Not confident. Working on it.”
He said he did not know what was keeping the two sides apart. “To be honest, I don’t know,” he said.
“We’re trying to do what we think is right, and I guess they’re trying to do what they think is right. And somewhere we have to find some point in the middle to make it right, with both of us on board,” said Doroh.
What he would do, Doroh said, is hire someone. “I would move forward with hiring someone, a new person, to oversee the operations, and then let’s get back to working again,” he said. “All the programs that we do are there to help people. And that’s what it’s all about.”
Gustafson’s stated last day is next Tuesday. The board that will choose his successor is scheduled to meet again October 2, and which documents govern that choice is now the open question the agency itself put on the screen.
WSJM asked Barber for comment following the meeting; he declined to answer in the moment and asked that questions be sent to him by email. WSJM sent written questions to Barber on Tuesday and will report his answers when they arrive.
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A note on methods: This series draws on thousands of pages of records — board minutes, audits, tax returns, and governing documents. WSJM used artificial intelligence tools to assist in searching, organizing, and cross-referencing those records and in preparing working analyses of them. Consistent with Associated Press guidance, WSJM treats AI output as unvetted source material: every fact that appears in these reports was verified by WSJM journalists against the original documents, all interviews and editorial decisions are human, and responsibility for the reporting rests entirely with the WSJM newsroom. Errors, when identified, are corrected and disclosed.