The Lewis County Board of Commissioners held an emergency meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss the necessary steps to fill the vacancy created by the death of Commissioner Gary Stamper, who died from COVID-19 Wednesday night.
“Obviously, I’d rather be anywhere but here at the moment discussing this,” said Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer, who advised the two remaining commissioners on the process for filling the now-vacant District 3 seat.
As Stamper ran as a Republican, the Lewis County affiliate of the Republican Party will nominate three candidates from within Stamper’s district and the commission will appoint one of those candidates to fill the District 3 seat. The appointee will serve until the November 2022 election is certified, at which point an elected candidate will assume the position.
The commission has 60 days total to appoint someone to the District 6 seat, but the law doesn’t dictate a deadline for the Republican Party to submit the list of candidates. If the commission doesn’t satisfy the 60 day requirement to fill the seat, the decision lapses to the governor, who has 30 days from then to appoint one of the three nominees.
The county has drafted a letter to the party chair informing them of the situation and requesting that the party submit their list of nominees within 30 days so the commissioners can review the nominees before appointing one to the District 3 seat.
In the meantime, with two commissioners still on the bench, the county commission can legally continue doing business.
“Hopefully we never have to address what would happen if we didn’t have two,” said Meyer, adding that the prosecutor’s office does have guidelines to follow in that situation.
