Legal wrangling: Opinions differ on city attorney fees in Jeffersonville

Clark County

Discussion

May 9, 2009

Lack of budget item; contracts cloud issue

By DAVID A. MANN The News and Tribune Sat May 09, 2009, 07:50 PM EDT

Jeffersonville City Council’s attorney, Larry Wilder, is being paid thousands more than the city attorney. That appears to go against state statute, though there are compounding factors to consider, officials and parties in the debate say.

Indiana Code 36-4-6-24 says in part, that “appropriations for salaries of attorneys and legal research assistants employed … may not exceed the appropriations for similar salaries in the budget of the city department of law.”

In 2008, Larry Wilder was paid $107,146.16. His brother, city attorney Darren Wilder, was paid $24,663.97.

There are many factors clouding the issue, however:

• Both attorneys work on contract, so neither of them actually have salaries — which the statute specifically mentions.

• Larry Wilder has represented both the city and the council.

• The city has no department of law in its salary ordinance.

• And, when the city council made it’s budget last year, members forgot to appropriate any money for a city attorney.

It’s a situation so full of ifs, ands or buts that even a high-ranking Indiana State Board of Accounts official doesn’t know exactly what to make of it.

Charles Pride, state board of accounts office supervisor, said the fact that both attorneys are contracted, rather than salaried, “kind of dilutes [the issue].”

Greg Fifer, a former city council attorney, brought the matter up on The Evening News’ online forums. A city council cannot appropriate and pay attorneys working for the legislative branch more than it does the executive branch, Fifer said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

The question posed to him: Did the situation violate the state statute?

“At first blush, it would appear that way,” he answered.

He noted that a municipality’s department of law, which the city basically privatized when Mayor Tom Galligan took office, is created by statute. And the city attorney is the head of the department of law.

Larry Wilder notes that he represents the city of Jeffersonville — not the Jeffersonville City Council — on a number of cases. He handled litigation raised by 2007’s annexation and argued on the city’s behalf in a case in which a sex offender sued because of an ordinance that bans sex offenders from using city parks.

He also points out that when Fifer was attorney for the council, he made more than the city attorney at the time, Les Merkley.

Fifer’s firm, Applegate and Fifer, was paid more than $142,000 when he was there in 2007. Merkley’s salary was $67,541; he was actually a city employee, not a contractor.

Ron Grooms, head of the council’s budget and finance committee, said he was not familiar with the situation, but it’s something the committee should look into.

“If we’re violating state statute, we certainly need to do something about it,” he said.

However, he notes that there is no line item for attorneys in the city council’s budget. Larry Wilder is paid out of a fund for professional services. So, theoretically, if the council needed an engineer or architect, that person could be paid out of the same fund.

Additionally, the council erroneously did not make a line item for a city attorney when it made its budget last fall.

Grooms said the council is not allowed to fund a new appropriation until the state approves a budget order, which isn’t expected for a month or so. It’ll be transferring money from an annexation nonreverting fund to another professional services line item in order to pay Darren Wilder’s bill for now.

Once that gets corrected, the council will put a department of law appropriation into its salary ordinance.

Galligan was called about this topic, but declined to comment, saying he was not familiar with the situation.

Pride said this issue had come up only a couple of times to his memory, noting that it has been many years since he’s seen a similar situation. “I’ve never seen it written up in an audit report,” he said.

“The intent probably was so a council couldn’t get more [legal] fire power than a mayor,” he explained.

SO YOU KNOW

Jeffersonville’s 2008 legal fees

• Larry Wilder: $107,146.16

• Darren Wilder: $24,663.97

• Scott Lewis: $24,977.50

• Gregory Clark: $15,805.03

• Joe Weber: $12,540.50

• Mickey Weber: $9,617.50