Eugene Ray, at an election night party, celebrates his election as county mayor with State Rep. Curt Cobb. Ray had been an agent with Cobb's real estate firm. Ray's election drew the attention of out-of-town and even out-of-state news media. (T-G file photo by Kay Rose) [Click to enlarge]

This week, the Times-Gazette is looking back at 2006 by counting down the top ten news stories of the year as voted by a panel of T-G staffers. Here are the stories revealed so far:

10) Eastern European students spend months in Shelbyville as temporary workers; some run into financial trouble

9) BCMC gets permission to build new hospital

8) Veterans Memorial Plaza completed and dedicated; statue is defaced later in year

7) Beloved T-G columnist Dick Poplin dies

6) After Holton's execution date set, he decides to live

5) National Guard troops return from Iraq

When compliling a top-story ballot for a project such as this one, judgement calls must sometimes be made on whether two related events comprise a single entry or two separate entries. In some cases, an election as a whole is a news story, particularly if there is a trend which seems to affect the outcome of multiple races. In other cases, such as our next two entries, separate races are clearly separate stories, and separate entries on the countdown. In this case, the two separate stories wound up next to each other on our list.

4) Eugene Ray elected county mayor (53 points)

County Mayor Jimmy Woodson chose not to seek re-election in 2006, although he did seek, and win, his old county commission seat. Meanwhile, the long-time chair of the commission, Eugene Ray, defeated Wayne Tucker in the Democratic primary and independent Mike "Fish" Fisher in the general election.

Local commentators say that Ray was elected on his own merits -- not only his work as a commissioner but as a past president of the Chamber of Commerce and an active promoter of the community. But the fact that he was the first black county mayor elected from a predominantly-white county in the state drew out-of-state media attention, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Ray elected to remain in his role as chair of the county commission as permitted by state law. His first major initiative was the push to have the county place itself under a consolidated budget plan as called for by state auditors. The county adopted such a plan and is now working towards enacting it.

3) Randall Boyce defeats incumbent Sheriff Clay Parker; Parker misses filing deadline and conducts court challenge to remain on ballot (54 points)

Sheriff Clay Parker's re-election campaign hit a snag when he missed the deadline for filing papers with the Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) commission. A local court ruled that Parker could not be included on the Democratic primary ballot, but that ruling was overturned on appeal. Independent candidate Rod Stacy, who had also missed the POST deadline, was a party to the original case but did not appeal the verdict, since his situation was slightly different from Parker's.

Some voters, holding to the old principle about ignorance of the law not being an excuse, may have held the incident against Parker, whose defense was that the county election office didn't do its job in informing candidates about the deadline. (The POST filing deadline was earlier than the deadline for filing candidate petitions.) Randall Boyce defeated Parker in the primary and went on to defeat Republican Chris Brown in the general election.

After leaving office, Parker became a judicial commissioner. Boyce, since taking office, has been more visible in the community and active in the field than Parker had been in recent years.

Top story suggestions were solicited from the T-G news staff. A ballot containing 29 story possibilities was circulated to 12 different T-G staffers, each of whom selected his or her top 10 choices. Ten points were awarded for a first place vote, nine for a second place vote and so on.

SUNDAY: The year's top two stories