LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Lakeport Fire Protection District Board is expected to consider a letter of no confidence against the Lake County Health Services director, the latest development in a series of escalating disagreements between that agency’s leadership and fire districts.

The fire district board will meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday, May 9, in the boardroom at headquarters Station 50, 445 N. Main St.

Under the board’s action items is a proposed no confidence letter aimed at Health Services Director Jonathan Portney.

Portney, who has been in the job since January of 2022, has clashed with the sheriff’s office, fire districts and his own employees over his management of the department.

A draft of the letter was not available by press time.

District staff said the item could be pulled from the agenda. If it remains on the agenda, the letter will be presented at the meeting.

At its last meeting on April 11, the board asked to have the item agendized for this meeting.

This wouldn’t be the first time a no confidence letter has been aimed at Portney.

Nine Health Services Department employees signed a Dec. 5 letter that faulted Portney for leadership failures that have led to plummeting morale and alienating community partners that they said included the fire departments, the sheriff’s office, Social Services and Behavioral Health.

In March, Lakeport Fire Chief Patrick Reitz and Northshore Fire Chief Mike Ciancio took issue with a news release that Portney issued that they said contained inaccurate information about their districts’ staffing and suggested that they were not responding to emergency calls, which Reitz said was untrue. Ciancio went so far as to tell his board that the news release was filled with “lies.”

Both Ciancio and Reitz said Portney made the inaccurate public statements without even consulting with them first, and Ciancio believed he used as the basis of the letter secondhand information that had come from a discussion during a fire chiefs meeting at which a Health Services Department representative was not present.

Portney has been the subject of numerous closed session performance evaluations with the Board of Supervisors since he became Health Services director 16 months ago.

Over the years, it’s been the case that a county department head who has more than two to three such evaluations a year typically leaves the county’s employment.

Portney has had eight such evaluations, the last one on May 2, based on county records.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.