CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A petition to remove Charleston Mayor Danny Jones from office was dismissed Monday at the Kanawha County Courthouse.
The three-judge panel, headed by Cabell County Judge Paul Farrell, chose to look no further into a petition filed by Janet “JT” Thompson, a former mayoral candidate, citing there was a lack of valid signatures on her list.
The petition accuses Jones of “official misconduct in office, malfeasance in office, and gross immorality” and claims that he “neglected his duties as mayor and he himself, and is an incompetent person.”
Thompson had 48 names on her list. Only 25 are needed to file the petition.
According to the judges, Thompson needed to have 25 people who voted in the last general election, but Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick said not enough names matched what was on their voting records.
“Out of 48 names, there was only 19 signatures that did match,” McCormick said.
Thompson said her signatures came from Charleston residents and that she never read a law that stated he or she would have had to participate in the election.
“The legislature was clear. They have definitions as to what a ‘resident’ is and a ‘qualified voter.’ No where in this code does is say ‘qualified voters.’ It says either ‘residents or one percent that voted in the past election,'” Thompson told the judges.
Jones said the dismissal of the petition was a way to ‘lock in participation’ of voters, but that didn’t necessarily mean his job as mayor was saved.
“She could easily go through the logs and get 25 more and put me right back in the dock,” Jones told reporters following the hearing. “I think we’ll be right back here before Thanksgiving if she does it again.”
Jones’ attorney Lonnie Simmons of DiTrapano Barrett DiPiero McGinley & Simmons agreed with the ruling stating that if someone were to have a petition signed by citizens, the citizens would have needed to cast their vote in the past election.
“Otherwise, you have people who are just sitting around. They don’t even bother to vote and then they say ‘oh, I’m going to sign a piece of paper to get rid of this person that the majority of the voters put in.’ That just doesn’t make sense,” Simmons said after the hearing.
“What we were able to raise today (Monday) was the reasons why the petition itself was invalid and the judges agreed with us,” he said.
Jones said filing such a removal petition should be looked at more closely. He said he believes the threshold to remove a person from office is too low.
“If you really want to remove somebody, it should probably be around 10 percent to put somebody in the dock, not 25 voters or one percent,” said Jones.
Simmons agreed saying residents should not be able to “easily knock someone out of office that the majority of the people voted for.”
He added that Thompson has cost the City of Charleston over $100,000 through protests and lawsuits since 2011.
Judge Darrell Pratt of Wayne County and Judge Phillip Stowers of Putnam County were the two other judges that took part in Monday’s hearing.