Jan 30, 2024 By Mike Jones 3 min read

Both the board of commissioners and Local Share Account committee have canceled their meetings this week as the lingering effects from the cyberattack that struck Washington County’s government earlier this month continue to reverberate.

Despite the postponement of multiple meetings, county officials said they expect to be able to place action items on next month’s agenda without an issue as operations eventually return to normal.

The cyber incident in which malware was detected in the computer system prompted county officials to shut down their server Wednesday, leaving many government and courthouse workers without the technology to do all functions of their daily jobs.

Without the ability to stream county meetings or even coordinate the agenda for the commissioners, the decision was made to cancel the board meetings this week. The commissioners were scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. today for their agenda-setting meeting ahead of their bimonthly voting meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday.

County spokesman Patrick Geho said the meeting cancellations should not disrupt government business because any voting items will be placed on the agenda for the next regular meeting on Feb. 15. He added that the commissioners held only monthly meetings in 2023, so the situation isn’t much different than last year’s schedule.

“The commissioners held monthly meetings last year so they were accustomed to conducting business in that manner,” Geho said. “They recently switched to biweekly meetings this year so we see no impact on county business by having one meeting this month.”

The cyberattack is also affecting the schedule for approving the LSA grants that come from casino gambling revenue. The LSA committee was scheduled to meet today to vote on its recommendations for which of the 94 applicants should receive a share of the $9.2 million in available funds for the proposed projects. That list would then have been sent to the commissioners, who likely would have given final approval during their voting meeting Thursday.

“The committee was concerned that with the information technology issues not resolved late last week, we would not be able to properly notify the public of the meeting or stream the meeting for the public’s viewing,” said Washington County Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Promotion Agency President Jeff Kotula, who serves as the LSA committee chair. “We will be working with the committee and the county’s Information Technology Department on some new dates with the hopes of a public recommendation meeting possibility next week. Although this situation was unforeseen, I am comfortable with the extended timeframe as we were somewhat early in this year’s process.”

Both Geho and Kotula said that while the LSA hearing has not yet been rescheduled, the committee still has enough time to recommend the projects before the commissioners meeting in mid-February to approve the list. The projects must be sent to the state Department of Community and Economic Development by March 31 for final approval.

Agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a third-party tech consultant have been working alongside county employees since Wednesday trying to resolve the malware issue that prompted the shutdown of the computer system.