By Jessica Dillon
Mayor LC Jones is concerned that Martinsville has already exceeded its annual budget for legal fees — just four months into the fiscal year.
Jones said the city allocated $250,000 for attorney costs, but spending has already reached about $260,000.
“This is me blowing the whistle, saying we have a problem, and now, what are we going to do about it,” Jones said.
He asked Interim City Manager Rob Fincher to prepare a breakdown of where the money is going.
“We had $250,000 allocated towards the legal fees. And that’s not just one” case, said Jones. The “$250,000 is for everything. But from July to September or October, we have spent $260,000.”
Jones said that he gets a copy of the bills every month to keep up with expenses.
“They’re important to me. I try to look at everything, especially since we had the credit card situation,” he said.
Jones said that he didn’t want to put the reports online, as was done with the credit card reports, to avoid causing unnecessary panic.
“I could have left it up to the people to go crazy and be like, ‘what’s going on?’ But what I asked the city manager to do is just to put together an allocation of what we’re spending on, what attorneys we’re spending it with, and break it down even to what type of job they’re doing, what department is utilizing it,” he said.
Jones said that the internal investigation is not the major cause of the cost, but he still thinks it should have been sent to an outside agency.
“We may have one department utilizing it more than others. I saw the interview where Council member (Aaron) Rawls said that a lot of this was due to the investigation. You’ll see that some of it is due to the investigation, but a large majority of it is just a lot of the day-to-day stuff,” he said.
He also noted that although a lawsuit filed by Rawls names individuals such as former city manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides and a Martinsville Sheriff’s deputy, the city’s legal team also prepares for any possible issues.
“In all cases, anytime anything legal comes up or has the potential to come up, the attorneys start working on it,” said Jones. “You’ll see they already start prepping. Same thing with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaint (filed by Ferrell-Benavides).
“We have a risk management company; they assign attorneys for that, but you will see our attorneys also working on those situations, jumping in to assist. They often do this without the city council’s blessing. They just jump in to do whatever they can to protect the city. So yes, not saying we’re spending the money on that case particularly, but generally they are preparing for situations if they come up,” said Jones.
Fincher said funds from the general fund will be used to cover further costs.
“I mean, it’s gone up just in general, even if you didn’t have some of those extras, some of the different … complaints or lawsuits or threats of lawsuits that have been filed, that of course increases the cost. But even outside of that, just in general, attorney fees have gone up,” Fincher said, adding that a state law change regarding budgeting and modifications also has caused issues.
“There’s not a whole lot of clear direction as to what the exact interpretation of that law is, so some localities, their attorneys interpret it one way and others interpret it another. The way that ours interpreted (it) has to involve that any changes in the budget require a full ordinance in order to make that change, rather than a resolution, which increases your cost,” Fincher said.
“We are, of course, frustrated, but then again, you know, anywhere you go, attorney fees are high. This has been a challenging year,” Fincher said.
“This is probably the most going over, to my knowledge,” the city has been in terms of legal fees, Jones said. “I do have the emails where when (former interim city manager) Glen Adams was there — no, it’s going back as far as” former City Manager Leon Towarniski, who “expressed concern about it,” Jones said.
He explained that due to Adams’ concerns, “there was a conversation between several council members.”
Jones doesn’t believe the city should cut its current legal firm entirely, but that it should hire a city attorney and cut back use of the outside firm.
With an in-house attorney, “We’re paying somebody a yearly salary versus per call or per hour. Right now, we’re paying Sands Anderson to drive here from Richmond, to drive back from Richmond, to pick up the phone and talk to us, so that it’s really charging us a lot,” Jones said.
“I’m not saying that ‘hey, we should just drop them and let them go. We have a lot of ties with them. I think the smart thing to do would be to try to draw down as much as we can and limit the scope of how we utilize them, and start searching for an attorney and find one,” he said.
Jones added that he is not “pointing a finger at anybody or an investigation, not pointing at Sands Anderson. I’m just saying we have a problem.”
More information will be provided during the Nov. 18 meeting.
