This election year might prove to be an unusual one, at least for Jefferson County offices. We might have elections for four of our five county commissioners.

County commissioners in West Virginia serve six-year terms. Most counties in our state have three commissioners, but Jefferson and Berkeley each has five. The elections are “staggered,” so that every two years at least one commission seat is up for election. It’s always one seat in the counties with three commissioners, but in Jefferson and Berkeley two seats are contested in two out of every three elections.

This was supposed to be a year that Jefferson chose only one commissioner. But Claire Ann Ath, who was elected to a six-year term in 2022 (after having been appointed to fill out the term of a commissioner who resigned), resigned herself after serving about six months. So the remaining four years of the seat she occupied (which has temporarily been filled by appointment) will be filled by the voters in November. That makes two seats that will be on the primary and general election ballots. The primary is in May, the general election is in November.

Perhaps you are aware that two commissioners, Tricia Jackson and Jennifer Krouse, have been accused by Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Matt Harvey of dereliction of duty. They both refused to attend county commission meetings for several months. A three-judge panel has been appointed by the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia to hear the case.

Should this three-judge panel find that Commissioners Jackson and Krouse did indeed violate the oath of office, the only punishment provided by law is removal from office. Were that to occur, temporary replacements for the two would be appointed by the remaining three commission members.

At this point, the wicket gets quite sticky. The filing deadline for candidates in the 2024 election was Jan. 27. Should the panel remove one or both commissioners, I see three possibilities for the election (I cannot fathom that one would be removed and not the other, as the charges against each are identical).

One possibility is that the judges might reopen the filing for these offices for a few days. Another is that the executive committees of the political parties would choose their nominees. A third possibility is that the judges might permit the appointed temporary replacements to serve until the 2026 election. I hope they don’t do that, as that would mean the appointed replacements would serve for more than two years. After all, these offices are supposed to be elected offices.

On a related matter, I’ve thought for many years that our county commissioners should serve for four-year terms, rather than six. About 20 years ago, when I was in the House of Delegates, Delegate Dale Manuel and I cosponsored a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have reduced the terms of county commissioners to four years. It went nowhere.

The state constitution permits a county to change its form of government via referendum. We shall explore this in a future column.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.