Citizens in Clay County voted in two new Commissioners on Tuesday, November 3 to fill the seats left by Luann Ridgeway and Gene Owen. The positions were open to newcomers, as neither Commissioner decided to run for re-election this year.

*Megan Thompson won her race for Eastern Commissioner with 65% of the vote*

Megan Thompson and Jon Carpenter were elected to these seats. In the August primary voters nominated four potential candidates, two Republicans and two Democrats to run for the positions of Western and Eastern Commissioner. Megan Thompson and Dustin Bell faced off for the Eastern Commissioner office, and Lydia McEvoy and Jon Carpenter battled for the Western Commissioner office.

Thompson and Bell agree on several issues in their October Courier-Tribune interviews. One example was the amount of oversight staff need by county leaders. The example Thompson used to illustrate a lack of budgetary oversight by current commissioners is the millions of dollars Western Commissioner Gene Owen has approved for the controversial “pet project Annex.”

Bell agreed that staff need oversite by saying, “Commissioners serve out a great deal of oversight for the budget, but the clerk’s office should always remain independent to be a check toward those commissioners.”

Transparency was a topic that Western Commissioner Candidates agreed on in their October Courier-Tribune interviews. McEvoy stated the county has a “big problem” with transparency on a multitude of fronts.

“Just in trying to get information myself for things that are going on, honestly, you just can’t get the information that you need for even something that affects your office sometimes,” she said.

Carpenter agreed by saying, “I support vigorously following the Missouri Sunshine Law instead of doing whatever we can to dance around it, which I feel like has been the approach in recent years.”

The uncertified count shows Thompson won with 64.93% of the vote to Bell’s 34.07%, and Carpenter won with 52.9% over McEvoy who totaled 47.1%.

KPGZ News – Brian Watts contributed to this story