Utilities board, Portage mayor renew legal fees tiff
Post-Tribune
January 16, 2018
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-portage-mayor-board-st-0117-20180116-story.html
The Portage Utility Services Board again has become the site of another potential legal battle between Mayor James Snyder and the City Council, which took over the utilities board last March.
Early last month, Bingham Greenbaum Doll, a legal firm with offices in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, sent Snyder a memorandum indicating Portage's "Utility Services Board has no authority to supervise and control the city's sanitary sewer utility" and indicating the USB was "improperly created" from the beginning.
The memorandum also claims the City Council's Ordinance 17-7, which gave the council the right to take over the USB, "fails to comply with requirements"of Indiana law by removing the mayor's authority to appoint the majority of the board and "by designating the City Council as members of the Utility Services Board."
Snyder did not return calls seeking comment, but residents and businesses are still on the hook for a $19,651 legal bill from another Indianapolis-based law firm, Faegre Baker and Daniels, from the last legal tiff between the mayor and the newly formed USB in February and March 2017.
In that dispute, Snyder convinced the former USB, the majority of whose members were Snyder appointees, to hire Faegre to fight the city council's move to dismiss Snyder as the utility's director and take away his $30,000 salary from the utility.
The council relented and allowed Snyder to keep his salary, but the council removed Snyder as director and took over the USB.
Portage Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham on Monday told the utilities board that Faegre Baker and Daniels has been sending monthly invoices to the city, but no move has been made by the city or the board, a separate legal entity, to pay the bill.
Utilities board and City Council Attorney Ken Elwood said his office is examining the Bingham memorandum, including determining if ordinances creating the USB in 2009 were legitimate.
Former utilities board President Mark Oprisko, who is president of the City Council, said residents could have avoided an any additional legal fees from the Bingham work if the mayor would have contacted other city officials.
Snyder has a budget line item for roughly $140,000 a year for legal work, Elwood said.
"Who's paying for that (Bingham memorandum) because (Snyder) decides to contact an attorney," Oprisko asked during the meeting. "Doesn't it make more sense to make a couple of telephone calls within the city?"
Newly elected utilities board President Scott Williams said the board will discuss the Bingham memorandum in executive session Feb. 6.
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