Council kicks off attorney interviews
, Richmond News Staff
09-17-2009
The Richmond City Council began sizing up its city attorney options Tuesday evening.
Council members, alongside Mayor Lance Green and City Administrator Rick Childers, interviewed general practice candidates Chris Williams and Paul Campo, co-founding partners in Lee’s Summit firm Williams & Campo; and Kutak Rock attorney Eric K. Banks, from Kansas City, Mo. The council also interviewed veteran Kansas City and Illinois employment law specialist Ivan Schrader.
Green began the interviews asking that the council keep questions consistent candidate-to-candidate. Councilman Dave Powell followed suit, beginning each candidate’s questioning asking about each attorney’s knack for having bookmarked answers to certain common “boilerplate” questions.
Powell and fellow councilman Bob Bond denied fallout from Richmond Police Chief Terri McWilliams’ controversial firing in late July has been the sole motivator for examining options outside current attorney Brian Hall. Powell said he cared more about expertise and quick feedback in relation to cost over all else.
“It goes way beyond (McWilliams) perhaps. I think for a number of years, we’ve needed an aggressive city attorney,” Bond said in agreement with Powell. “I feel that in light of the Terri McWilliams termination, choosing another attorney has nothing to do with that. I think we need an attorney that provides us superior service, a person that will follow the city council’s direction, a person that is aggressive in his duties.”
Councilman Roger Kepple went a step further than Bond. Kepple said the fallout, in which Richmond’s Police Personnel Board unanimously voted to reinstate McWilliams after declining Hall’s motion to dismiss her appeal, left a familiar “foul taste” in the council’s collective mouths.
Powell said Hall hasn’t responded to updates on the city’s interview process. He added that thus far, he favored any of the three interviewed candidates over retaining Hall’s services.
“It just seems that Brian is not an aggressive attorney. He’s a good attorney if you want to have simple ordinances or simple city problems; he can take care of that,” Kepple said, adding he felt that any of the three attorneys the council interviewed Tuesday could have produced a different outcome in McWilliams’ appeal hearing.
Council members openly criticized Hall for being slow to address council questions prior to their 7-1 closed session vote to fire McWilliams. Council members have expressed similar frustrations, that communication with Hall has often been filtered through Green or Childers.
Williams, a Camden native who graduated from high school with Mayor Pro Tem Mike Wright, touted his and Campo’s background focusing strongly on public law and finance since August 2005. His firm has represented in a city-attorney capacity Oak Grove, Greenwood, Lawson, Lone Jack, and Cleveland (Mo.) prior to bidding its service to Richmond. Campo said his law enforcement background in Greenwood spurred him into practicing law, serving a clerkship along the way with the Missouri Supreme Court.
Williams impressed the council, pledging both his firm’s personal presence at council meetings and the ability to keep documents answering common questions electronically available for short-notice situations.
“We attend city council meetings,” Williams said. “We would rather you be comfortable having us present. It’s a whole lot easier for us to do our job efficiently if we’re sitting here at a council meeting than reading minutes.”
Powell suggested they came across as the strongest candidates thus far.
“Campo and Williams are by far the most knowledgeable in the state and local ordinances we would be utilizing,” Powell said. “Schrader seems to me that if we were to use him, it would be on a very limited basis primarily because of cost, and I’d like to know a lot more about his expertise.”
Williams and Campo honestly admitted lacking collective bargaining negotiation experience. Schrader, a former Missouri Labor Relations Director with 37 years of labor law experience in Missouri and Illinois, made a strong case for a continued relationship with Richmond with his focused, specialized labor-relations background.
“I’m much more comfortable at the bargaining table dealing with labor relations,” Schrader said. Like Williams and Campo, he promised a fast, electronic turn-around when needed.
Banks polarized council members. His charisma and talkative manner kept a light tone and Powell deemed him “overly qualified” in post-interview remarks, but Councilman Jim Dunwoodie bluntly expressed some impatience with the broadly experienced attorney’s manner.
He was no more impressed with Banks’ constant references to his background practicing law in St. Louis.
“He talks a lot,” Dunwoodie said. “He kept going back to St. Louis. This ain’t St. Louis. I don’t think Richmond’s got anything in common with St. Louis, other than we’re close to the Missouri River.”
Councilwoman Terrie Stanley took a separate angle.
“I like short-and-direct, too, but I like honesty,” she said. A consensus arose among the council that while knowledgeable, Banks lacked experience representing municipalities.
Skepticism arose that Banks might be more likely to defer to one of the attorneys he oversees at Kutak Rock. His answers stretched on several minutes and were not directly to the point, often referencing his Kutak Rock management background or his representation of Gloria Squitiro, wife of Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhauser, in a 2008 discrimination lawsuit.
“One of the advantages as a professional that I would have in terms of a professional representing Richmond is that, while I would have 30 attorneys in Kansas City that I could call upon . . . and 400 attorneys throughout the United States that I could call upon, this would be my account and the one that I would be responsible for,” Banks said. “That would mean a lot to me.”
Banks pledged a turn-around time on requests for advice of “whenever you need it by,” elaborating that a question of how hard a client wants an attorney to work is a question attorneys often have to ask.
Dunwoodie skeptically remarked that response to him meant, “How much are you going to pay me?”
Green told all candidates they could expect some decision within 30 days. The council will resume interviews Sept. 21.
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