City Councilman Larry Grohn on Tuesday raised issues about City Attorney Wade Hinton using a law firm involving one of his former law partners.
However, the City Council on Tuesday night approved a resolution to add the law firm of Frost Brown Todd LLC and Bradley Arant Bolt Cummings LLP for legal services from July 1, 2016 through June 30.
Councilman Grohn said, "Todd Presnell was a member, and a partner, in the firm Miller and Martin until June 5, 2012. City Attorney Hinton worked at Miller & Martin at the same time as Mr. Presnell."
Chairman Moses Freeman said Councilman Grohn asked "a litany of questions" about the issue at a private meeting with attorney Hinton earlier Tuesday.
He said, "I don't want to hear it again."
Chairman Freeman said the councilman, if he chooses, could file an ethics complaint against attorney Hinton.
Councilman Grohn made a motion to defer for one week. He said that would give time to clear up questions and it likely could be approved then.
However, Councilman Chris Anderson moved for a vote, saying, "I'm not going to play politics with this."
It was approved with no votes from council members Grohn and Ken Smith.
Attorney Hinton said the amount of the business with the firm was below $25,000, but the city purchasing office recommended that the matter still go before the City Council.
Councilman Grohn said, "Mr. Hinton engaged the firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, LLP (Bradley) from Nashville to render a legal finding, I believe, on issues concerning open records requests and atty-client privilege. The city attorney did this even though he had 16 firms from which he could have sought a ruling. He also could have taken advantage of the free resources of MTAS, the state of Tennessee open records and ethics office and the Nashville Open Records Council.
"Since the firm has not included in the original list, Mr. Hinton claims the city purchasing dept. requested he add this firm to the list on the resolution.
"These are my questions.
1) Concerning the above information. Why did Mr. Hinton deem it necessary to contract the services of Bradley?
2) What was the particular issue for which Bradley was contracted?
3) What was the city attorney's question? What was the written ruling delivered to the city attorney?
4) Does the city attorneyhave any friend or former colleague who is a member of the Bradley firm?
5) Was Todd Presnell the attorney ( or part of the team) which rendered the legal finding?
6) When was the firm of Bradley used by the city attorney?
7) What was the invoice number and the amount paid for their services?
8) Why did the city attorneybelieve he did not have informed the City Council of any possible conflict of interest?
9) Why would Chattanooga's Chief Ethics officer deem it not important to openly disclose any relationship which could be remotely seen as a conflict of interest?
10) Was he city attorney "shopping around" to obtain a legal finding to suit a particular interest?
Councilman Grohn said City Attorney Hinton told him on Tuesday afternoon that Bradley, and specifically Todd Presnell, are supposed to be specialists in terms of open records and attorney-client privilege questions.
He said an open records request was filed against Mr. Hinton covering the time frame requesting all his emails from Oct. 1 to I believe Dec. 1st. Bradley is advising him on that request. The firm is giving their legal advice on what items are atty-client privilege and not subject to open records availability. Supposedly their services are for a very limited scope of work based directly on Mr. Hinton's situation in terms of all his emails.