Commission appointment process much like Senate-Nominations will be accepted from floor
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The seats formerly held by 1st District Commissioner Bill Zechman and 3rd District Commissioner George Smartt were left open when the two men were required to step down due to state law after accepting the nomination for the Senate position.
The decision to follow the Senate appointment procedure came after a Nominating Committee meeting Monday night where a number of individuals questioned the process used in a previous administration, which assigned the responsibility for nominating the replacement to the remaining commissioner in that district.
County Executive John Pelham explained that current 12th District Commissioner Bill Yancy first became a commissioner as a result of this procedure, having been nominated by Michael Martin to fill the seat vacated by Dennis Waggoner in 2004.
‘The protocol for this has already been established in the past,’ Pelham said. ‘I have spoken with our county attorney about this to verify it. It is our intention, assuming everything works as planned, to have on our docket for the January court meeting the recommendations to fill the vacant District 1 and District 3 commission seats.’
‘This is a protocol that has previously been established with our commission, and we will follow that same protocol,’ continued Pelham.
However, this did not sit well with several of those present, whose interest in the process became quickly apparent when they began to question why nominations for the seats could not be made from the floor along with the commissioner’s recommendations.
One of those questioning the procedure was Thomas B. Vaughn, who was also one of the nominees for the Senate appointment.
‘Is it a prohibition that you can’t have a nomination from the floor’? asked Vaughn. ‘Or is it just a precedent’?
Vaughn was not the only one questioning the procedure, however, as local Republican party chairman Clark David went so far as to ask Pelham to check on the legality of the procedure, which Pelham and Nominating Committee members Les Trotman and David Grissom said they had no problem doing. The third member of the Nominating Committee, Sally Brock, was out of town due to a business commitment.
Due to the controversy, the decision was made to recess the Nominating Committee meeting until Pelham could confer with county attorney Larry Stanley and the County Technical Assistance Service (CTAS) for a resolution to the issue, which he did yesterday.
‘We found out what has been done in the past we need to do a little differently,’ Pelham said. ‘I have been in contact with our county attorney today, and have also been in contact with Ben Rodgers of CTAS. I spoke with Larry early this morning, and based on the code that Larry researched and found, we’re going to need to do a similar process to what we did with the senatorial appointment. We are going to need to take nominations from the floor.’
The pertinent code is TCA 5-5-115 Election of county officers ‘ Conduct of election, which states:
‘When an officer is to be elected or appointed by the county legislative body, or a vacancy filled, it is the duty of the body to hold an open election on the first day of the term, admitting all citizens to the privilege of offering as candidates, except such as are prohibited by the constitution or laws of the state.’
Pelham said the prohibitions probably referred to the fact nominated individuals would have to meet the requirements of the office.
‘Certainly to qualify or be nominated you’re going to need to be a resident of that district,’ Pelham said.
According to Pelham there are still some additional questions to be answered, such as whether one has to be a resident of the district to make a nomination. However, he did say the plan was still to implement the nomination process at the next regular commission meeting Jan. 21.
‘It is our intention, if we can meet all the legal requirements, to hold this election at our next meeting,’ Pelham said. ‘This means we are going to have to run a notice in the paper five days in advance, like we did with the senatorial appointment, and we’re going to have to send out notice to our commissioners 10 days in advance, which we can do with our packets which are ready to go out.’
Pelham said the decision to change the procedure wasn’t made lightly.
‘I know the desire of the county commission, and my desire, is to do this by the book,’ Pelham said. ‘We did our homework today, we researched it and found this in the code book, and we can assure the citizens of Warren County that, as with anything like this, we’re going do it the way it’s supposed to be done.’