Nov 22, 2019 3 min read

Five new Washington County officials will be taking office in early January, and the commissioners on Thursday approved attendance at a statewide training workshop for one of them, while a meeting at the local level is planned for the others.

Nick Sherman, 40, will be going to the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania’s workshop for newly elected officials and fall conference at the Hotel Hershey in Dauphin County. Conference fees and travel expenses are expected to cost about $1,500.

Commissioners Larry Maggi and Diana Irey Vaughan voted in favor of the expenditure, as it conforms with the county’s travel policy.

Commissioner Harlan Shober, who Sherman will be replacing on the board in January, was absent. Maggi announced that Shober was unable to attend Thursday’s meeting because of a meeting that was going on at the same time at his church.

Except for a four-year period in the 1990s, the Washington County Board of Commissioners will, come January, have a majority Republican board for the first time in more than 80 years.

The GOP swept county row offices earlier this month, winning open seats in the treasurer’s and register of wills offices where Francis King and Mary Jo Poknis are retiring, respectively, and ousting two Democratic incumbents, Prothonotary Joy Schury Ranko and Clerk of Courts Frank Scandale.

Meanwhile, Irey Vaughan, who, as majority party member and top vote-getter is in line to assume the chairmanship of the board of commissioners, has tentatively set up a meeting with newly elected row officers and other county officials on Dec. 6.

The row officers are Tom Flickinger, treasurer-elect; James Roman, register of wills-elect; Laura Hough, prothonotary-elect; and Brenda Davis, clerk of courts-elect.

Davis is former mayor of Washington and Hough has been a West Pike Run Township supervisor, while Roman and Flickinger will be first-time row officers.

“We’ve not done this before,” Irey Vaughan said Wednesday.

“You want to make sure that you set them up to succeed, and have them know what resources are available to them.”

Meeting with them will be President Judge Katherine B. Emery, and county directors of purchasing, finance and human resources. County solicitor J. Lynn DeHaven and Controller Michael Namie will also be presenters at the informational session.

In previous years, when Democrats dominated Washington County politics, row officers often came from within the ranks of those serving as deputies to elected officials. Or, no Republican candidate filed for row office, so Democrats running in their party’s primary secured Republican write-in nominations and two Democrats sometimes battled anew in the general election. Others, like Scandale in 2015, were unopposed in the general election. A Republican candidate bowed out of the clerk of courts race when his nominating petitions were challenged for lacking enough valid signatures prior to the primary that year.

This year, Judge Traci McDonald Kemp and Coroner Timothy Warco won both both major-party nominations in the May primary.

In the most recent Washington County voter registration figures, Republicans, independents and third-party candidates showed gains in adherents while Democrats who were born during the New Deal and labor union eras have either switched allegiance or have died off.

Melanie Ostrander, Washington County elections director, said Wednesday that turnout figures from the Nov. 5 election among Republicans, Democrats and others are not yet available because the state is in the process of recording participation information for individual voters in its database.

While secrecy shrouds individual ballots, whether a voter shows up at the polls or casts an absentee ballot is a matter of record.