Tuesday, April 23, 2024
The meeting of the Hood County Elections Commission that might lead to the firing of Elections Administrator Crickett Miller or the elimination of her non-partisan office has been rescheduled for Friday.
It was canceled last week because scheduling procedures had not been followed in accordance with the law.
Friday’s meeting will be at 9 a.m. in the second floor courtroom of the courthouse on the square. It will be open to the public.
The gathering will apparently take place despite the absence of one of the commission’s five members. Tax Assessor-Collector Teresa McCoy told the HCN before press time Tuesday morning that she had already made plans to be out of town that day and had purchased airline tickets.
She said that, to her knowledge, the meeting had not been canceled.
The HCN attempted to reach County Judge Ron Massingill, who chairs the commission, but was unable to do so before press time. According to a staffer in his office, he was attending a Juvenile Board meeting before presiding over the regular meeting of the Commissioners Court.
“The judge did ask if my chief deputy could attend for me,” McCoy said. “I don’t know for sure that that’s legal. I would guess not, but I’m going to call TAC legal.”
TAC stands for the Texas Association of Counties.
In addition to Massingill and McCoy, the Elections Commission consists of County Clerk Katie Lang, Republican Party Chair Nathan Criswell and Democratic Party Chair Adrienne Martin.
The HCN reported in Saturday’s issue that Lang had called the original meeting that ultimately was canceled by Massingill and that the purpose may have been to fire Miller or eliminate her two-person, non-partisan office.
The newspaper had received a tip that this was the case.
Lang responded last week via email to questions posed by the newspaper through email and voicemail messages, but did not address questions about the meeting’s subject matter.
Four votes would be needed to remove Miller.
The Commissioners Court, which consists of the county judge and four commissioners, would be able to finalize the decision with three votes.
If Miller is fired and not replaced, elections will fall under the management of Lang, who is a Republican elected official.
Miller was hired to oversee the elections office in 2013 after the departure of the previous elections administrator. The office was opened in 2007 by a previous Commissioners Court.
Two performance evaluations of Miller were done before the county stopped the practice of written employee evaluations in 2015.
One evaluation was dated May 19, 2013 and was Miller’s 90-day review; the other was dated Oct. 1, 2014.
In both evaluations, Miller scored in the “excellent performance” category.
In the 2014 review, she received a perfect score. Her 90-day evaluation was one point shy of perfect. She received 4 points instead of 5 in the job experience category.
Miller has no written complaints in her file, according to Melissa Welborn, chief deputy in the county’s personnel office. Welborn said that she does not know who conducted the two evaluations since they occurred before her own employment with the county.
Friday’s meeting agenda contains these items:
■ Discuss and consider how often the Elections Commission should meet;
■ Discuss status of voting registration rolls;
■ Discuss status of mail-in ballot procedures; and
■ Discuss cyber security on present election systems.
The agenda also states that the commission “may convene into Executive Session to discuss personnel matters under Texas Government Code 551.074.”
Any action taken after the closed session meeting will be through a public vote.
