A familiar face, who lost a write-in campaign to retain his seat, has been appointed to the Skagway Assembly seat vacated by a resignation.
Dan Henry turned in his letter of resignation to the Assembly in October, leaving one of the six chairs vacant.
Henry was convicted of failing to timely file federal incomes taxes.
Spencer Morgan was finishing his first three-year term on the assembly when he lost in October and only has to sit out two meetings before being welcomed back to the assembly to fill an empty seat.
Now, he’ll get to serve another year.
Morgan, who in October ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign to retain his seat, was appointed as Henry’s replacement.
After that news broke, the mayor and assembly did not dismiss Henry, saying said there was nothing in code mandating his departure.
The question of whether Henry would resign lasted for months, after he signed a plea deal, was sentenced to a year in prison, and was investigated by the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
Some Skagway residents called on Henry to step down in time for his seat to go to a public vote on the Oct. 4 municipal election ballot.
But that didn’t happen.
In mid-October, just a couple weeks before he was mandated to report to prison, Henry turned in his letter of resignation.
There were two candidates for assembly who lost their election bids in October: David Brena and Spencer Morgan.
Brena was on the ballot, but Morgan squeaked in at the last minute as a write-in candidate. Brena garnered 181 votes. There were 124 write-in votes, which did not meet a significant enough threshold to be tallied by name.
Hanson, Cochran, Jay Burnham, and Steve Burnham Jr. unanimously voted to appoint Morgan, who will take his seat at the next meeting, which was rescheduled from Nov. 17 to Nov. 10.
Since Morgan was appointed rather than elected, he will serve one year, and his seat will be up for a vote in the next municipal election.
