This is the fourth installment in a series. Read the introductory story here. For a behind-the-scenes look at what happened in the Ohio legislature as a state rep weighed cutting funding for the outdoor rec council, click here. For our deep dive on the Athens mayor’s proposal for the rec council’s use of state funding, click here.
CHAUNCEY, Ohio — Tension within the Outdoor Recreation Council of Appalachia preceded the organization’s near-loss of state funding this summer — and ORCA board chair Tim Warren told the Independent that the “real tension” started with disputes about lobbying and the consulting firm Sunday Creek Horizons.
The lobbying firm, co-founded in 2019 by former Democratic state congressman Zack Space, pulled weight for ORCA in the statehouse. Most recently, Sunday Creek Horizons helped secure $1.5 million in state funding for ORCA through the 2025 biennium budget bill. Former Ohio House and Senate representative Jay Hottinger, a Republican, is the firm’s executive vice president.
Space told the Independent in a June 23 interview that Sunday Creek Horizon provided more than financial support to ORCA.
“We were intent upon doing everything we could do to help make ORCA sustainable” and helping the organization turn Southeast Ohio into a “premier, flagship tourist destination,” Space said.
In addition to lobbying, the firm’s most recent contract with ORCA, signed in October 2024, focused on capacity-building through projects such as attracting new members to the council of governments and helping to implement a state grant.
But the firm had a troubled relationship with ORCA. Less than a month after the state awarded ORCA its $1.5 million in funding, Sunday Creek representatives “expressed concern and frustrations relating to communications and engagement with ORCA staff” to then-ORCA Board Chair Steve Patterson, the current mayor of Athens.
“Patterson then directed SCH to begin engaging with him on all ORCA business,” the firm wrote in a report delivered to the board on Jan. 15.
However, the rest of the board and ORCA staff were apparently not aware of that decision, according to statements at subsequent ORCA board meetings.
Patterson’s directives to Sunday Creek often advanced his individual priorities for the organization that had not received sign-off by the board as a whole — including a proposal to develop cabins in the Baileys Trail System.
ORCA Executive Director Jessie Powers declined to comment on the record for this series, citing guidance from the ORCA board.
Patterson’s direction of Sunday Creek left others in the dark
Staff and other board members repeatedly said they felt left out of the loop regarding the firm’s work for ORCA.
Minutes from the regular ORCA board meeting in November 2025 show that the board specifically requested monthly reports from Sunday Creek, which they had not received since that July.
In a Dec. 9, 2025, email, Warren repeated his desire for “work product information” from Sunday Creek. He said it was important for everyone on the ORCA board to receive communications and updates from Sunday Creek. Neither Patterson nor any Sunday Creek representatives replied to him in that thread.
At a board meeting nine days later, Warren said he’d made multiple requests for monthly reports since ORCA entered its contract with Sunday Creek, and Sunday Creek still hadn’t delivered.
Space said, “I was not aware of that commitment. We will make sure that we provide that.”
The next day, Powers requested a breakdown of the firm’s work for ORCA, which the board would review at its next meeting. Sunday Creek Horizons Senior Vice President and Co-Founder Will Drabold replied that the firm was “preparing documents to that effect.” Powers followed up Jan. 12. Drabold replied that Patterson had asked the firm to send the report directly to him and the board, rather than to Powers.
The report, sent by Sunday Creek the day of the board’s Jan. 15 meeting, revealed the firm’s complaints to Patterson in July 2025 and Patterson’s direction for the firm to work directly with him.
“I didn’t know that the communication was only going through the board chair,” Powers said at the meeting. “There was no notification to myself or this board that that was how communication would move forward, in any kind of formal way that I’m aware of.”
Sunday Creek representative Piper Halliday told the board that no one responded to a November 2025 email from Powers about her concerns with cashflow problems because “at this point our communications were going through the board.”
“What board?” Warren asked.
“The board chair,” Halliday responded.
Drabold told the Independent in a June 23 interview that although Patterson was the firm’s main point of contact, Sunday Creek kept others informed through regular attendance and reports at board meetings.
In a June 10 interview with the Independent, Jay Kline, Buchtel’s representative on the ORCA board, agreed the firm kept the board in the loop.
“I thought that Mayor Paterson did a good job of reporting to us what conversations were with Sunday Creek Horizons … because he was more of the point person on that, and we would get reports on it, and we would take those into consideration,” Kline said. “When we needed somebody from Sunday Creek Horizons to be there for whatever reason, they generally were. We had a lot of conversation with them too.”
However, Warren told the Independent in a June 11 interview that board members “felt we was being left out” by Patterson’s work with Sunday Creek Horizons.
“He would come in and tell us things that he talked about with Sunday Creek Horizons, but we didn’t know anything about it,” Warren said. “It just caused tension because we’re there to discuss what’s going to happen with ORCA, but somewhere else it’s being talked about that we’re not a part of.”
Warren told the Independent that Patterson’s involvement with Sunday Creek felt like overstepping.
“You hire people, and you’re supposed to be the manager over it,” Warren said. “You don’t decide we’re going to buy ink for the copier and stuff like that.”
Concern over state reimbursements prompted contract dispute
Sunday Creek’s direct communication with Patterson rather than ORCA staff or other board members began to create problems for the organization amid a cashflow crunch at the council of governments that came to a head while Patterson was out of town.
The funding ORCA was awarded by the Ohio Legislature last summer allowed the council to begin seeking reimbursement from the state for its general operating expenses, per a state grant agreement
There were exceptions, however. A representative from the Governor’s Office of Appalachia informed Powers in an August 2025 email that lobbying expenses were not eligible for reimbursement.
At the time, ORCA was paying Sunday Creek $8,000 per month for lobbying and consulting services. On Nov. 19, 2025, Powers emailed the ORCA board to request an emergency meeting because the organization did not have enough “allowable funds” to pay outstanding Sunday Creek invoices.
That same day, Powers also emailed Sunday Creek representatives Halliday and Reid Courtney to notify them of the issue. She asked if the firm would be “willing to be paid later for services, take a pause in contract services, or propose another alternative solution to the situation.”
Neither Halliday nor Courtney responded.
The emergency meeting was held Nov. 21, 2025. At the meeting, the board voted to request a three-month pause on ORCA’s contract with Sunday Creek, during which Sunday Creek would stop work. According to a recording of the meeting obtained by the Independent, legal counsel Sky Pettey said then that if Sunday Creek did not accept the pause, ORCA would be forced to terminate its contract.
Patterson, who was out of town for a conference, did not attend the meeting. In a June 25 interview, he said that calling a meeting while he was away “was truly upsetting for me.”
Patterson added that no one had shared concerns about ORCA’s contract with Sunday Creek during the regular board meeting, held just over a week before Powers’ request for a special meeting.
Warren told the Independent he felt the emergency meeting was necessary. He said Sunday Creek wouldn’t “have enough money in funds” for lobbying fees or next month’s costs.
On Dec. 5, 2025, Pettey sent Sunday Creek a letter requesting the pause and explaining the issue. In a June interview with the Independent, Drabold and Space both said they did not recall an official board action that asked them to stop working — even though both received, and Drabold responded to, Pettey’s Dec. 5 letter.
Drabold responded that “there should be no issue with using funds from the state appropriation to pay us” if the board chose. He asked if Pettey and Patterson could meet him the following Monday.
When Powers responded that the state had said lobbying activities were not reimbursable, Drabold replied that the firm had not done lobbying work for ORCA since securing the $1.5 million in state funding. Drabold said he had communicated that information to Patterson, but Powers said it was news to her.
“I did not know SCH was not performing lobbying efforts on ORCA’s behalf during this timeframe,” Powers said in an email reply. “If we had known this sooner, we may have been able to figure this out without an emergency meeting where the Board made decisions based on information available.”
Drabold responded that any further communication regarding the contract would go to the ORCA board “through its chairman, unless directed otherwise by the chair or the board.”
Despite the pause requested by the ORCA board, Sunday Creek continued to invoice ORCA monthly for services. At the board’s Jan. 24 meeting, Patterson introduced a motion to pay Sunday Creek Horizons for past-due invoices from November and December 2025 and January 2026.
Warren pushed back on the idea that ORCA should pay Sunday Creek for anything following the Dec. 5, 2025, letter.
“Now we’re getting the bill for the contract that we assume wasn’t [in effect],” Warren said at the January meeting. He said later in the meeting that he would not vote to pay the past-due invoices.
“I need more negotiations on this,” he said.
The board tabled the resolution on the invoices. Despite the ongoing disagreement, however, Sunday Creek sent ORCA another invoice in February, according to internal correspondence.
Pettey advised the board at its Feb. 24 meeting that because the board had requested a pause and did not provide formal notice of the termination of ORCA’s contract with Sunday Creek, ORCA was on the hook for Sunday Creek’s invoices.
The board then voted to pay the past-due invoices.
With negotiations of a future contract underway, Space offered to waive its February and March invoices, board members said at the March 27 meeting. Powers confirmed in an Aug. 26 email to the Independent, “We only paid invoices through the month of January.”
Pettey also advised at the February meeting that ORCA could use state funding to pay the invoices, given Sunday Creek’s statements that it hadn’t engaged in lobbying since July. The state required ORCA to submit additional documentation in order to reimburse ORCA for its payments to Sunday Creek, but Powers told the Independent in an Aug. 26 email that ORCA eventually received sufficient information to access state reimbursement for ORCA’s contract payments.
Patterson directed Sunday Creek to work despite board’s pause request
At the January board meeting, Sunday Creek representative Halliday said that Sunday Creek could include the whole board on correspondence moving forward. However, internal correspondence shows that Patterson continued to direct Sunday Creek to work on projects that the staff was unaware of.
On Feb. 6, Space sent an email to the ORCA board and wrote that said his team had a call with a representative of the U.S. Forest Service about “developing rental units within the Wayne [National Forest].”
In a separate email thread that day, Space told the board that Sunday Creek’s continued work for ORCA had been “facilitated and directed largely by the good work of Board Chair Patterson.” He said Sunday Creek had not only been exploring rental units in the Wayne, but had also been working on strategic and conference planning.
At the time, Powers and the ORCA board were under the impression that the organization’s contract with Sunday Creek was on pause. Powers privately replied to the ORCA board regarding Space’s email about rental units.
“I believe the official status of ORCA’s contract with SCH is a requested pause,” Powers wrote. “The status of this contract needs to be resolved.”
Powers reached out to Pettey Feb. 6 to seek guidance after Space’s email, copying Patterson.
“SCH has been working on ORCA’s strategic plan by meeting with staff at Wayne National Forest at the Board Chair’s instruction instead of the last decision the Board made. … What are staff supposed to do in this instance?” she asked.
The next reply in the thread came not from Pettey, but from Patterson.
“As the Chair of the ORCA Board of Directors that manages the Baileys Trail System and manages the Executive Director, I shouldn’t have to repeat myself but due to your incessant arguments as a subordinate to the Board I am,” Patterson wrote.
He said the board would discuss ORCA’s relationship with Sunday Creek at the February meeting, adding, “No response needed.”
Powers replied at around 9 p.m. that she was only “seeking clarification,” to which Patterson replied again after 11 p.m., “No response needed.”
Pettey did not respond.
The board discussed ORCA’s past-due invoices to Sunday Creek at the Feb. 24 meeting and continued to debate a future contract, but did not directly discuss Patterson’s direction of the firm.
The day after that meeting, Space wrote in an email to the ORCA board that Sunday Creek intended to apply for federal funding for ORCA to develop short-term rental units in the Wayne National Forest.
Powers replied on March 3, stating that ORCA was not under contract with Sunday Creek for such services; that the ORCA board had not approved development of short-term rentals; and that the proposed project did not align with ORCA’s partners at the Wayne National Forest.
Space replied that Patterson and Dawn McCarthy, a Wayne National Forest operations staff officer, had made the project sound “doable.”
Powers again sought legal advice in response to the discussion. She told Pettey she was concerned that Sunday Creek would advance the funding proposal without direction from ORCA, noting that the board as a whole had not approved the project.
“I’m concerned about potential harm to ORCA’s reputation for advancing a request without the support and planning we’re known for from the Baileys project,” Powers said.
Pettey replied that Sunday Creek was not authorized to submit requests for funding on behalf of ORCA without the approval of the ORCA board.
Sunday Creek says communication problems started with ORCA staff
Sunday Creek laid the blame for communication problems at the feet of ORCA staff, particularly Powers.
At the board’s regular December 2025 meeting, Space told the board that there was “a less than advantageous communication process between the staff [at ORCA] and my firm.”
“We’ve had a number of calls that got canceled or didn’t get canceled, but nobody showed up,” Space said.
“My impression is that the staff here doesn’t necessarily agree with our value, see our value, and has not demonstrated a willingness to take full advantage of what we can do for this organization,” he said.
“I disagree fully,” Powers responded. She said she appreciated the firm’s previous efforts to secure ORCA funding. However, she said Sunday Creek was unresponsive to her emails and had not kept staff informed about their activities.
She said the staff had made “multiple efforts to try to communicate effectively with the staff at Sunday Creek Horizons.”
“I’m trying to do nothing but my job, and make sure that we do have a line of clear communications,” Powers said at the meeting. “I don’t have another contractor that doesn’t answer, respond to emails, especially when they’re kind of time-sensitive issues.”
A January report Sunday Creek delivered on its activities between August and December 2025 included a section that described what it called “challenges related to leadership engagement and meeting participation,” which “affected coordination and execution at key moments.”
The report noted that in the first half of 2025, Powers missed two scheduled meetings; that ORCA staff cancelled one meeting with 20 minutes’ notice and did not reschedule; and that Powers showed up 13 minutes late to another meeting.
Powers said at the January board meeting that she had had biweekly meetings with Sunday Creek throughout the first half of 2025.
“I may have missed some meetings,” she told the board at its January meeting. However, she said biweekly meetings with Sunday Creek did not always feel like “an effective use of my limited time as we are advancing multiple efforts.”
“I don’t see a genuine effort from Sunday Creek Horizons to work with the ORCA team or even comply with what the ORCA team is trying to do as they’ve been instructed by the board at the meeting,” she added.
On Feb. 6, Sunday Creek again took aim at Powers’ performance via an email Space wrote to the board, which addressed Powers’ concerns about using state funding to pay the firm. He suggested that Powers was either ignorant of lobbying regulations or purposefully misrepresenting those regulations or ORCA’s contract with Sunday Creek to the board.
In her reply to Space’s email, Powers said she had attempted to communicate challenges “as transparently as possible.”
“SCH has again falsely represented me and my actions to make me seem crazy, as though I’m not following the Board’s Direction,” she wrote. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Although I’m not an expert, I believe this tactic is called gaslighting and is a known form of psychological abuse.”
“The amount of time spent communicating about one contractor is unprecedented in my professional career and detrimental to getting work done,” Powers said in the email.
In a June 23 interview, Space told the Independent he attempted to address communication issues within ORCA through one-on-one meetings with all board members after it “became apparent to me that we had communication problems with Jessie.” Those meetings took place in February, according to the report Sunday Creek shared with the board in March.
“I was not saying anything bad about Jessie, just like: Let’s reset, let’s figure out the communication channels,” Space added.
He said he also tried to schedule a time to take Powers out to lunch to talk with her about the problems within the organization, but “couldn’t even do that with her” due to what he described as scheduling and communication challenges.
Sunday Creek and ORCA failed to reach new contract
At a Dec. 18, 2025 board meeting, Powers said that to avoid the appearance that ORCA was seeking reimbursement for lobbying services, the organization should have an entirely new contract with Sunday Creek that did not include lobbying.
According to internal correspondence, Sunday Creek was still a state-registered lobbyist for ORCA.
Space said he was “more than happy” to draw up a new contract accordingly.
At the board’s February meeting, Frank Campbell, the mayor of Chauncey and the village’s then-new ORCA representative, suggested scrapping the contract with Sunday Creek entirely, questioning the value of the firm’s services now that the firm was no longer engaged in lobbying.
Warren, meanwhile, suggested ORCA should pay less than the previous contract’s monthly $8,000 fee — perhaps paying the firm half as much for its services. ORCA board member Jay Kline agreed, although he said continuing a relationship with Sunday Creek could be valuable.
Patterson had defended the price tag at the January meeting, arguing the firm’s successful efforts to secure state funding justified its cost..
At the February meeting, Space offered to reduce the price to $6,000 per month, saying Sunday Creek’s work “ebbs and flows.”
Conversation on the contract continued at the March 27 meeting, where the board considered a contract providing $1,000 per month for lobbying and $5,000 per month for other services.
Powers objected to a new contract, primarily “based on their performance.” She also cited a lack of current projects that needed consulting.
“It’s not a bad idea to hire a lobbyist or to hire someone with expertise when we need it, but we don’t have a planned project that we’re ready to advance for funding at this stage,” she
Patterson said Powers’ objections didn’t make sense when Sunday Creek could support staff capacity.
“You ad nauseum, whenever things were being discussed, would sit there and say, ‘I don’t have the capacity to do this. I don’t have the personnel, I don’t have whatever to do things,’” he said to Powers.
Patterson said the board shouldn’t vote on contract proposals without Sunday Creek representatives present. He also said approving the smaller contract while tabling the larger one was inconsistent with previous good-faith negotiations with the firm.
Ultimately, the board voted to table the proposal for general consulting services. Patterson cast the lone vote against the motion.
The board voted to approve the contract for lobbying support at $1,000 per month. The approved resolution said ORCA’s existing contract with Sunday Creek would be cancelled if the lobbying contract was not approved by the end of March. Patterson again cast the lone vote against the motion.
On March 31, Pettey notified Sunday Creek that ORCA planned to issue the required 30-day notice of contract termination at the end of the day. “I just wanted to provide notice of that in the event that SCH is intending to sign the lobbying contract today,” he wrote.
Three minutes later, Drabold responded that Sunday Creek had “decided to withdraw from all work with ORCA.”
Patterson announced his resignation from the board later that day.
Space told the Independent that Sunday Creek ended its relationship with ORCA in part because of a “fundamental disagreement in terms of the importance of developing a strong strategic plan that included pathways toward long-term sustainability.”
Patterson told the Independent that he resigned from the ORCA board this spring primarily due to concerns over mismanagement by Powers and differences over strategic direction related to sustainability planning.
“I keep hearing people attaching [my leaving ORCA] to Sunday Creek Horizons, or not continuing to honor a contract with Sunday Creek Horizons,” Patterson told the Independent in a June 25 interview. “That is not why I left.”
Two days after ORCA and Sunday Creek parted ways, both Patterson and Drabold separately communicated concerns with alleged mismanagement at ORCA with Ohio House representative Kevin Ritter (R-94).
Ritter moved forward with a proposed cut to ORCA’s state funding without consulting ORCA’s attorney, staff, or new board chair. The cut was ultimately rejected by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. But if it had gone forward, it could have put ORCA – the entity that created and maintains the Baileys Trail System in Athens County – out of business.
Patterson continues to work with Sunday Creek in his role as Athens mayor. Between 2022 and May 13 of this year, the city of Athens spent $336,000 with the firm, former Athens city auditor Kathy Hecht told the Independent in a May email.
On May 4, the city council approved a new $120,000 contract with Sunday Creek. Under that contract, the firm works at the direction of city leadership and administration on various initiatives, including the Athens Armory, the completion of a transition plan under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and lobbying.
