Board unanimously elects Horton for chairman post
This year brought a changing of the guard on the Isabella County Board of Commissioners, but during its first meeting it felt an awful lot like reliving history.
In a move that has been coming since George Green announced he wouldn’t seek another term on the board early last year, the board unanimously elected Jim Horton, the District 4 Republican from Union Township, as its chairman.
Since being elevated to the vice chairmanship following the retirement of Democrat David Ling, Horton has played a pivotal role in every important piece of county business.
He served as vice chairman to the county’s ad hoc jail committee, a board that Ling chaired. He chaired the finance and administration committee, which played a critical role in implementing the recommendations of a wage study that made Isabella County more competitive in competing for employees. He also served as the commission’s representative to the planning commission.
Right there, as a fellow understudy, was Tobin Hope. Hope, a District 7 Democrat from Mt. Pleasant, served with Horton on the finance and administration committee. He didn’t serve on the jail committee, but he made it to almost every meeting.
Tuesday night, the Republican majority commission unanimously elected Hope its vice chairman, with Jerry Jaloszynski, a District 3 Republican from Chippewa Township, seconding the motion and then moving to close nominations and cast a unanimous ballot.
It’s a sign that the commission, which has long had a tradition of bipartisanship and power sharing between the two parties, didn’t miss a step in transitioning from one generation to the next.
The power sharing arrangement extended down into committee assignments. Horton appointed Democrats to chair three of them: Hope for Finance and Administration, and Intergovernmental Affairs; and Jim Moreno, a Mt. Pleasant Democrat from District 5, for Human Resources and Public Works. The sole Republican chairman is Frank Engler, a Deerfield Township Republican from District 2, on Criminal Justice and County Affairs.