Jackson commissioner skips key board meetings
Jackson County Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper has missed 13 of 16 board meetings in 2025.
Jackson County government photo
Minutes from the Dec. 3, 2024, meeting of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners show that newly elected Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper “stated her willingness to serve on the Tourism Development Authority, Transit Board and the Mountain Projects board.” Records from those three boards show she’s missed at least 13 of 16 meetings this year.
Hooper attended the first meeting of 2025 on Jan. 15, per meeting minutes, but has not been back since — her absence is noted in every copy of meeting minutes from February through August. Minutes from the Sept. 17 Jackson TDA meeting have not yet been posted.
The TDA is the agency charged with collecting and spending proceeds from the county’s 6% room occupancy tax. For the current budget year, Jackson’s TDA expects to collect more than $3.5 million.
The TDA’s bylaws, adopted in 2012, contain an attendance policy, just like many other nonprofit and government boards. The policy states that “conscientious performance of the duties required of members of the Authority shall be a prerequisite of continuing membership on the Authority” and that any member who misses more than two consecutive meetings without an excused absence or for any good cause “may be replaced at the recommendation of the Authority.”
Minutes from the meetings do not indicate any of Hooper’s seven absences were excused.
Hooper missed her second consecutive meeting in March, meaning she could have been removed as early as April, yet the TDA’s board has taken no action.
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The board’s longtime chair, Robert Jumper — who also serves as editor of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ tribal-owned newspaper — was quick to defend Hooper.
“Commissioner Hooper’s participation as an ex officio member is appreciated,” Jumper told The Smoky Mountain News. “We understand she has many commitments at the county level.”
Jumper elaborated by claiming that attendance requirements in the bylaws apply only to voting members.
“As an ex officio representative of the county commission, Commissioner Hooper’s role is defined differently, and any changes to that appointment would come from the county,” he said.
There is no separate clause or language in the Jackson County TDA bylaws that states that ex officio members are exempt from any aspect of the bylaws. Further, the bylaws do not include any alternate definition of ex officio board members, nor do the bylaws carve out ex officio members from the attendance policy; the policy refers broadly to “any member.”
Jumper didn’t respond when asked to cite any authority or documents that back up his claims of Hooper’s “special” status on the board.
Hooper was also appointed to Jackson County’s Transit Board last December. According to minutes from the board meetings provided by Jackson County, Hooper’s name was not listed as among those board members present at any of the three meetings held this year — March 19, June 18 and Sept 10.
The Transit Board governs the county’s robust transit system, which is an official enterprise of Jackson County government.
In May, Jackson commissioners passed a resolution outlining policies and procedures for appointments to county authorities, boards, commissions and committees.
The resolution doesn’t include a blanket attendance policy, but it does outline expectations and responsibilities for board members — prepare for board meetings, attend and actively participate in board meetings, meet with staff or board members to gain an understanding of the purpose of the board, lend expertise and leadership, disclose conflicts and “recognize accountability to the citizens of the county.”
Mountain Projects just held its fifth Board of Directors meeting of 2025 on Oct. 10. Hooper was not there, nor was she at the August or June meeting, after having attended in February and April.
As a Community Action Organization that serves both Haywood and Jackson Counties, Mountain Projects is a nonprofit with a federal mandate to “serve the poor and disadvantaged” and “to help low-income people become self-sufficient and independent of public programs,” according to its website.
Bylaws enacted by Mountain Projects late in 2024 — not long before Hooper was elected commissioner and subsequently appointed to the Mountain Projects Board — show an attendance policy that states, “A member missing more than 50% of the meetings, whether excused or unexcused, per year may be asked to resign from the Board.” Hooper has thus far missed 60% of the board’s five meetings.
About two weeks ago, Cris Weatherford assumed leadership of the Mountain Projects board after the previous chair resigned. Weatherford, who is also Jackson County’s director of social services, told SMN the board has no plans to remove Hooper at this time.
“We still have another meeting left this year [in December], and the way the policy reads, according to our executive director and myself, we look at attendance over the course of the year and make a determination then,” Weatherford said.
Basically, that means Weatherford believes Hooper is not yet in violation of the policy because attendance is measured after a full year of meetings, not as a running total throughout the year. Under this interpretation, a board member could miss every single meeting during the course of a year but couldn’t be removed until after the final meeting of the year — thus, if Hooper makes it to the December meeting, she’ll be in full compliance with the policy. If she doesn’t, she won’t.
Weatherford did say that energetic, enthusiastic board members are a critical part of any board-governed organization.
“Having an engaged and thoughtful board is paramount,” he said. “You can’t run a nonprofit in Jackson County, or Haywood County for that matter, without an engaged and active board that’s always looking out for the organization and how to improve the organization.”
Hooper’s attendance, or lack thereof, may prompt Mountain Projects to reexamine its attendance policy at a later date.
“It’s unlike some of the other policies on other boards I serve on,” Weatherford said, mentioning the difficulty of recruiting and retaining unpaid board members in rural communities. “It’s kind of an outlier in that regard, so this may be a discussion we bring in a board meeting to see if this policy allows us to be nimble enough and keep a board membership that is engaging and works for the benefit of the org.”
Jackson County Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
