At the May 8th RIH BOE meeting, the utilization of new general legal counsel (The Busch Law Group), for research on Harassment, Intimidation, and Bullying (HIB) laws became a central topic of discussion. It was noted that 18 hours of 'research' by the law firm resulted in a legal memorandum which was only given to the five majority Board members. Alongside this, Board President Judy Sullivan's significantly increased usage of general legal counsel compared to her predecessor drew attention. Below, I share the notes used for my public comments on these areas which directly impact student well-being and fiscal responsibility.
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Legal Bills Legal bills are required to be discussed in public. They are not an executive session conversation. That is why the board is discussing them here in public and not behind closed doors, because it's required.
HIB Legal Research In regard to what was said about the HIB ‘research’. I find it strange that an attorney would charge for 18 hours of research on a law that was put in place in July of 2022. I would assume that the attorney would know the law and just be able to give an opinion without charging for so much research. But I find it concerning that the research only went to the five people on the board who were continuously voting No on HIBs, and it was not distributed to the full Board. The five people who were voting No for a while and have suddenly turned around and voted Yes. I don't know if it was a result of that research, but I do find it curious and I think that that information in the form of legal opinion from a legal counsel should go to the full board, so everybody has the same information.
Use of General Legal Counsel With regards to the board president's use of legal counsel, I just want to point back to when John Carolyn was the Board President in 2022, and if you look at the invoices for 2022, you will see that he spent a total of about 16 hours communicating with General Counsel (for the whole year). For Judy Sullivan, in the past six weeks, actually only for half of February and March, is up to 33 hours, where Miss Sullivan was using the legal counsel and for many phone calls, the Superintendent was not present on most of those calls. So, I think there is an extreme use of General Legal Counsel by this Board President versus prior Board Presidents, and I think that is something that the Board is entitled to ask questions about.