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Rules committee presses chief legal officer over who will draft ethics memo; Hodges retained but matter deferred
Summary
Council members pressed the city’s chief legal officer over whom his office selected to draft an exhibit or ethics memo tied to a resolution about an alleged incident; concerns about appearance of impropriety prompted requests to explore alternate counsel.
An extended Rules Committee discussion on Aug. 4 focused on who should draft an exhibit or memo tied to a resolution about an alleged incident involving city legal staff. Council Member Mike Gay asked for the item to be deferred so the committee could consider whether the city’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) or an independent attorney should prepare the document.
Gay said he worried about the appearance of partiality because the attorney the OGC proposed, Ms. Hodges, has worked with the city and in some cases is under contract to the OGC. “I feel like we need to have somebody that's totally separate,” Gay said, citing the importance of impartiality.
Chief Legal Officer Fackler (identified in the hearing as the city’s chief legal officer) responded that his office had engaged outside counsel Ms. Hodges to avoid an appearance of impropriety and that any opinion or draft would be a public record. He told the committee that his office would not forward anything to the Commission on Ethics on behalf of a client before the council had seen it: “My office will not send anything on behalf of any of its clients to the commission on ethics before you send it.”
Several council members pressed for alternatives. Some suggested the city could hire outside counsel such as attorney Jason Gabriel to draft or review the memo; others asked that billing records or extent of prior work by outside firms (including the Bedell firm) be made available to the committee so the panel can judge whether a misuse of position occurred. Council Member Ron Salem and others pointed to prior matters (including a May briefing) and urged faster resolution.
No final vote on the underlying resolution or memo occurred during the meeting. The committee agreed to defer the matter for follow-up discussions among OGC, the sponsor and interested council members; Fackler said he would supply the draft and that it would be public and available for council review and comment before any submission to the state ethics commission.
What happens next: Committee members asked for additional offline meetings between sponsor offices and the OGC, potential exploration of alternate outside counsel, and a draft memo from Ms. Hodges to be circulated as a public record for comment.
