Breaking news -
I have been hammering on the skyrocketing legal fees in the district for the past two years. I have been OPRA requesting the district’s legal invoices for years. The district recently decided to publish the legal invoices of the past two years.
At tonight’s RIH BOE meeting, Board President Audrey Sounders announced that the district has a ‘huge conflict' with its general counsel, the Porzio, Bromberg & Newman P.C.
Per Ms. Souders: "Over the past several weeks since the district decided to publish the legal invoices, we have gotten some feedback from individuals of the public and the particular person and our board counsel and representing us has proven to be a huge conflict for our counsel, the Porzio firm, because she's also representing this person from a complaint filed against the board.” She also stated, "this situation forced us to have to put an item on the agenda tonight because we need to hire board counsel immediately to address the potential legal suit that's going to be filed against the district, we have no one to discuss this with, so that's why we have on the agenda the the Giacobbe firm."
The Board voted on motion F9, to appoint Cleary Giacobbe Alfieri Jacobs LLC as “Special Counsel”. This motion was passed unanimously.
In addition, Tom Bogdansky made a walk-in motion to go out to RFP (request for proposals) for NEW legal counsel. The motion was approved with a split 5 - 3 vote with Audrey Souders, Tom Bogdansky, Brian DeLaite, John Kinney and Helen Koulikourdis voting yes, and Kim Ansh, Doreen Mariani and Joe Valenti voting No (Melissa Kiel was absent).
The Board did not vote to terminate Porzio as its general counsel.
However, Ms. Koulikourdis said: “It is time not only to reign in legal expenses but to ensure that the next firm representing this board has a strong record of responsibility and public use of funds while providing objective guidance to the board and administration.”
This is a summary of discussions and votes re: legal counsel, this is a developing story and there is definitely more to come!