At a special meeting, the Mingo County Commission agreed to pay more than $18,000 in attorney fees in regard to an attempt last year to remove Lonnie Hannah from office as county sheriff.

The fees were paid to two different firms, $11,320 to the H. Truman Chafin Law Firm and $7,315 to Flaherty, Sensabaugh and Bonasso, that represented the sheriff in the case, which took place in March of 2008.

However, the commission refused to pay an additional $5,000 to Jack Spence for serving papers in the case.

The invoice submitted to the MCC reports Spence charged Hannah $50 each for serving, or attempting to serve, 100 subpoenas regarding the case.

Sheriff Hannah said the number of subpoenas was high due to fraudulent signatures on a petition circulated to remove him from office.

“When the subpoena was brought in, a lot of the people who had supposedly signed the petition said they hadn’t actually signed it,” Hannah said. “There were over 100 signatures on the subpoena, and at least 40 of those people said they didn’t sign it.”

Since there were questions as to the authenticity of the signature, it was necessary to subpoena all those whose name appeared on the petition, Hannah said.

The expenses had not been approved before Hannah hired Spence, Commissioner David Baisden said.

“We did not hire Jack Spence,” Baisden said. “We would have had to held a meeting to approve that. The sheriff hired him, not the Commission, and they should have paid him.”