City attorney issue resurfaces in Davenport

By Tory Brecht | Tuesday, March 04, 2008

After toying with the idea of leaving an open city attorney position vacant to help trim the Davenport budget, aldermen ultimately decided it would be unwise in the face of rising caseloads and an increasingly litigious society.

At a budget work session Monday, council members instructed City Administrator Craig Malin to begin an aggressive recruitment of a new corporate counsel.

Attorney Tom Warner has held the post of interim corporate counsel since June, when former head lawyer Mary Thee went to work for the county after being demoted.

That left the senior staff attorney job held by Warner open. Since that time, the city has hired a part-time nuisance abatement attorney, but still carries fewer lawyers — despite having more cases — than the rest of the large cities in Iowa.

While Davenport has three full-time and one part-time attorney, Des Moines has 16. Cedar Rapids, Sioux City and Iowa City all carry four — and their budgets typically are $100,000 higher per year.

Meantime, annual caseloads have spiked from between 60 and 80 per year in 2001 to between 150 and 175 in 2007, according to data submitted by Warner to aldermen Monday.

Foreclosures, tax assessment challenges and civil rights suits are the three areas seeing the most growth, he added.

“You could limit the number of attorneys in the office to three,” in the budget process, Malin said. “Although I think that runs counter to the information you are being given regarding the caseload.”

Finance Director Alan Guard said any short-term savings in salary and benefits would likely be dwarfed by increased hits to the city’s risk fund if the legal department were not fully staffed.

“They keep us out of trouble,” he said. “We want to ensure you maintain that fourth position.”

After Thee’s demotion — and the botched attempt to hire Senior District Judge John Nahra as corporate counsel — the council voted to require that the administrator’s hire be approved by aldermen.

On Monday,  2nd Ward Alderman Shawn Hamerlinck asked Malin whether the council could revisit that ordinance and appoint the interim attorney permanently instead of going through a full search.

“That is up to you to decide,” he said. “I don’t believe that is good professional practice.”

Tory Brecht can be contacted at (563) 383-2329 or tbrecht@qctimes.com.