County attorney asks finance committee to allocate funds to cover federal tax-foreclosure litigation

Washington County’s county attorney informed the governance committee on June 24 that the outside litigation budget—primarily covering the county’s share of a multijurisdictional federal tax-foreclosure lawsuit—has nearly reached the usual $15,000 allocation and requested the finance committee consider a transfer to cover expenses through the end of the year.

“This is one of those years with outside litigation. Sometimes you eat the bears and sometimes the bears do, and this is one of those years that the bears can eat us at least temporarily,” the county attorney said, explaining the account is close to its limit and a motion to dismiss is pending in federal court.

The attorney described a pending motion to dismiss in the federal action that, if granted, could materially reduce ongoing litigation exposure but said the decision is not yet known. The attorney proposed transferring money from a vacant assistant county attorney position (breakage) to cover further litigation costs and asked the finance committee to set an amount and return with a recommendation.

A committee member offered to route some bankruptcy-related costs through his legal counsel line as an alternative, and the county attorney welcomed either approach. The committee voted to send the request to the finance committee for a specific dollar amount to be presented; no dollar figure was finalized in the committee meeting.

Discussion noted that the litigation is shared across multiple counties and law firms, and the county attorney said in most years a $15,000 outside-litigations allocation has been sufficient. The request to finance was made to ensure the account remains funded until the federal court rules on the pending motions.