T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Former Belmont County coroner Troy Balgo is running against current Coroner Amanda Fisher on Nov. 5 in the only contested race in Belmont County.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Former Belmont County coroner Troy Balgo is running for election in hopes that he can reclaim the seat he held for 16 years.

Balgo lost the position in the 2020 election to current Coroner Amanda Fisher. The two will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot in the only contested race in the county.

Raised in Moundsville, Balgo graduated from Bishop Donahue High School in 1984 and then attended West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, where he graduated in 1994. He moved to St. Clairsville in 1996. He is a general practitioner who has been doing family practice medicine since 1998, when he opened the office that he still operates today.

Balgo said that when he started practicing in St. Clairsville, his friend Gene Kennedy was the Belmont County coroner and he became Kennedy’s deputy coroner.

“I helped him out when he was out of town. I covered it,” Balgo said. “Gene got an offer to move down south to get all of his student loans repaid, so he left the area and went to Georgia.”

Balgo added that when Kennedy moved to Georgia in the middle of his term, Balgo became interested in the position of county coroner. According to Balgo, Kennedy approached the Belmont County Republican Party and informed officials that he believed Balgo should be named the interim coroner.

Balgo said the interim position came down to a decision between him, Dr. George Cholak and Dr. Louis Vazquez, with Vazquez being named the interim coroner.

“I told them I planned on running for it in the next term,” Balgo said. “So the next term came up, I ran in the primary against Dr. Vazquez and won the primary of that year by seven votes. I didn’t campaign or anything, just by word of mouth.”

Throughout the years Balgo has continued with that campaign strategy.

“I’ve been in this county for almost 30 years as a physician. I think that people understand who I am and really understand what I did for the community,” he said. “I was a team physician for St. Clairsville’s football team for 16 years. I was a doctor at the jail at Sargus (Juvenile Detention Center) for a decade. I had multiple businesses helping people of the community all the way around. I think that people are a little weary of the government’s actions towards people right now, so I think the voters of Belmont County know who I am for the most part and don’t just take the word of someone who they don’t know.”

What Balgo is referring to is his current legal situation. On Sept. 18, Balgo pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud as part of a plea agreement. The plea stems from his 2019 arrest as part of a federal drug investigation. Balgo was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with one count of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, six counts of unlawful distribution of controlled substances and one count of conspiracy to commit the unlawful distribution of controlled substances.

When asked how he would be able to serve as the county coroner after pleading guilty with his sentencing still pending, he replied: “We’ll have to wait and see, but other than that I can’t make any comments on it.”

An issue that has been a hot topic for both candidates is the current state of the county morgue. Until its closure in 2019, the morgue was located at East Ohio Regional Hospital in Martins Ferry. When the hospital closed its doors, the county had difficulty finding a replacement for the morgue. Both Balgo and Fisher agree that several funeral homes were contacted along with WVU Medicine Barnesville Hospital, but ultimately none of those locations was able to house a morgue.

Balgo said once he realized none of the facilities would be able to accommodate a morgue, he approached the Belmont County Board of Commissioners seeking a solution. Balgo said his talks with commissioners led to a small refrigerated unit being installed in the parking lot of the Belmont County Health Department.

“It was only supposed to be there for a short time,” Balgo said. “It was there when I left and to this day, if I die right now, they would take me and put me in the same place. So in three and a half years nothing has been done. I find it offensive that somebody would say that I was disrespecting loved ones of this county and putting them in a shed.”

Balgo is referring to an Oct. 4 article in The Times Leader in which Fisher said, “We can’t have the morgue in a shed, it’s extremely disrespectful. Sometimes you have to have loved ones come to identify a body. When you’re in the parking lot of the health department with no privacy and you lift up a garage door to a shed that looks like a lawn mower should be in and these folks realize that’s where their loved one is, you feel horrible and you should because that is not an OK place.”

Balgo added, “If there’s a plan in place that’s great, but three and a half years it hasn’t happened. And they’re talking about a new health department but there hasn’t been one brick laid yet, so when is that going to happen? If it’s that appalling to the current corner, why has it not been addressed immediately?

“If someone drops over dead today, they go to the same place that is disrespectful and a shed, so it hasn’t changed. So I’m very offended by that statement because I took my job very seriously and I cared for the families and the people who passed away.”

If elected, Balgo said he would push for electronic medical records to be extended to family doctors.

“If someone passes away and it’s a coroner’s case, we can do it on a computer for vital statistics. But if someone passes away and Dr. (Daniel) Jones signs the death certificate, which most of the certificates in the county are signed by regular physicians not the coroner or medical examiner, then they have to do it by paper. They have to bring a piece of paper out to you and get it to this day,” Balgo said. “So that’s one thing I would like to address, and I know that they’re working on that but I’d push for that further.”

He said he doesn’t believe Fisher is qualified for the coroner position.

“A chiropractor should not be a coroner. She might be the nicest person in the world, she might be the smartest person in the world, she might be the greatest coroner in the world, but in my estimation and most people’s estimation she doesn’t have the training or education to be coroner,” he said. “Chiropractors do not dispense medicine. They don’t do surgeries. They don’t have the same residencies and training as physicians do.

“This is not a slander against our current coroner, but she doesn’t have the credentials to be the coroner,” he continued. “If you wanted to tomorrow, you couldn’t run for judge. You must be an attorney. You couldn’t run for sheriff. You must be a police officer. I couldn’t be a prosecuting attorney on the ballot unless I was an attorney. The current coroner is not able to sign death certificates by law. She has to have a deputy coroner who must be a medical doctor to sign.”

According to Ohio Revised Code Section 4734.15: “An individual holding a valid, current license to practice chiropractic is entitled to use the title ‘doctor,’ ‘doctor of chiropractic,’ ‘chiropractic physician,’ or ‘chiropractor’ and is a ‘physician’ for the purposes of Chapter 4123 of the Revised Code.

Balgo is married to his wife Deedra of 29 years. They have five children together: Victoria, Sydney, Brock, Cade and Kira.