By Joyce Miles/milesj@gnnewspaper.com
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal
October 20, 2007 02:17 am
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Supervisor Richard J. Meyers is asking the state comptroller’s office to investigate payments to Town Attorney Edwin J. Shoemaker.
Meyers sent a letter to Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli on Wednesday asking for an investigation and audit of the town’s legal expenses since January 2005.
In the past 21?2 years, Meyers said, the town board has authorized roughly $1.36 million in legal spending — and more than $800,000 has gone to Shoemaker. Overall the legal bills average $40,000 a month.
“These payments are a fleecing of our townspeople,” Meyers said Friday.
Meyers rode into the town’s top elected office in November 2006 on a wave of public support for his pro-development and anti-old guard stances. A year later, he’s the embattled incumbent fighting back after losing the Republican line to the longtime board member/former supervisor he ousted, John Sweeney Jr.
Throughout this year, Meyers said, the town board consistently has refused to allow scrutiny of town payments to Shoemaker’s firm, Andrews Pusateri Brandt Shoemaker & Roberson P.C. A relatively small portion of the annual tab is owed to routine municipal legal service. Most of the firm’s fees are drummed up from litigation, overwhelmingly suits involving AES Somerset.
“The legal bills ... are never questioned by any board member other than me,” Meyers said. “The payments being made to the town attorney represent a significant portion of the entire Town of Somerset budget. (They) must be brought to the full light of day.”
Repeatedly, Meyers said, Town Clerk Rebecca Connolly and town board members have acted to prevent him from scrutinizing the town’s legal expenses. In his letter to DiNapoli, he references these incidents:
n In January, Meyers proposed having the town put legal services out to bid, in part to compare the fee structures of interested attorneys. He couldn’t get backing from any board member.
n Also in January, Meyers asked Connolly to turn over the preceding two years’ legal bills so he, the town’s chief financial officer, could look them over. Connolly refused.
Connolly’s written response to Meyers’ request said that “due to the nature of these files and litigation, the files are to be considered attorney/client privilege and access is to be denied.”
According to Connolly’s letter, Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, said the town’s lawyers work for the whole town board, not individual members, so a majority of the board would have to agree to waive privilege before any individual could look.
Shoemaker himself also refused to turn over copies of his firm’s bills, Meyers informed DiNapoli.
n In July, based on a recommendation from Connolly, the board revoked Meyers’ authority to hear appeals by taxpayers whose Freedom of Information Law requests are turned down by Connolly, the town records access officer. Traditionally the supervisor was the person to whom an information-seeker turned when the FOIL officer rejects a request. Now the board as a whole is to hear appeals.
Neither Connolly nor Freeman could be reached for comment late Friday.
The town board also rebuffed Meyers’ suggestion, this past March, that it set a new procedure for legal billing or put Shoemaker on a straight salary. When he found out the town was being billed by the half-hour for Shoemaker’s firm’s phone work, even if the calls lasted only 10 minutes, Meyers proposed six-minute billing to pare the charges.
Shoemaker said at the time that would keep him too tied up in paperwork and complained Meyers was trying to “micromanage” his firm.
Ultimately, all but Meyers voted against changing the way the town pays the firm.
“There has to be some accountability here, and there just isn’t,” Meyers said. “From the way (board members) act, you might think they have something to hide.”
Meyers said he sounded the audit alarm in the event he and two non-incumbent candidates for town board, Robert J. Degnan and Daniel M. Engert, are defeated in the upcoming election and no one else is left to argue the point.
“If nothing else, I want it to be known (to a higher authority) that this is going on,” he said. “Something is not right. It’s quite obvious to me and, I hope, to others that something is wrong.”
Attempts to reach Sweeney were unsuccessful on Friday.
Meyers sent a letter to town residents this week informing them he’s requested the audit. He did not speak directly to Shoemaker about it, he said. Shoemaker also was not available for comment late Friday.
Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245
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