Odd-Ball Local Politics

The Pal-Item has a strange local political story up today about the Franklin County Board of Commissioners. We all know the drill, primaries in May, general election in November, the victor takes office in January.

Not so in Franklin County says 1 defeated commissioner: Thanks to a 44 year old correction of a then(?) 75 year old error, commissioners have the option(?) of taking the 1st year after they are elected to sit in on the commission meetings as an observer, and now has the right to “holdover” in office until the end of 2007:

Franklin County’s election board created the holdover commissioner office in 1962 at the direction of the State Election Board, Franklin County Clerk Marlene Flaspohler said. The change was to correct a 75-year-old error in commissioner terms. At that time, commissioners served three-year terms and each year one commissioner was supposed to begin a new term. Franklin County had two commissioners beginning a term at the same time until the holdover office was created. The law changed at some point after 1962, extending commissioner terms to four years. Vonder Meulen thinks the law changed in 1980, but Union County Auditor Virginia Bostick said meeting minutes show Union County commissioners had four-year terms at least as early as 1969.

Link.The holdover, Lou Linkel, and the victor in November, Don Vonder Muelen are both reportedly considering legal action. It sounds like a pretty bizarre situation to me, but I’ll leave further commentary to someone more experienced in the oddities of local politics in Indiana like Doug Masson or Marcia Oddi.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 11:36 am and is filed under Local Items. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.