Gov. Matt Blunt today named St. Charles County Counselor Joann Leykam, a former top official in the state Mental Health Department, to the commission overseeing the agency.

Leykam, 52, has been county government’s chief lawyer since 1995. Before that, she was acting state mental health director, director of the Division of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities and the department’s special general counsel.

At one point, she was the state’s chief attorney in a court fight over the Christine Busalacchi right-to-die case that drew national attention.

If confirmed by the state Senate, Leykam will be on the parttime commission until June 2011. Leykam said she will continue in her fulltime job as county counselor.

But she said she would resign as a member of the county’s Developmental Disabilities Resource Board because continued membership would be a conflict with the state post.

In 1987, Busalacchi suffered severe brain damage in an auto accident. in west St. Louis County. After years of what many doctors called a persistent vegetative state, her father petitioned to have her feeding tubes removed.

The state under then-Attorney General William Webster fought the petition in court. Webster’s successor, Jay Nixon, dropped the case in 1993. Busalacchi died about two months later.