A Pressing Item for the New Council's Agenda

For those Ogden City townsfolk who've been eagerly awaiting the opinion letter from independent counsel regarding the legality of the Stuart Reid $43,000 severance windfall, the wait is far from over. No, gentle readers; the letter hasn't arrived.

It will not arrive imminently either, I am informed, because it will bear bad news for the Dear Leader of the Gang-of-Six. In an unprecedented act of arrogance, mendacity and political cowardice, the lame duck and motley Gang-of-Six "leadership" (comrades Safsten and Jorgenson) has called off their law dog, and instructed counsel to withhold the letter, according to yesterday morning's John Wright story:

After the city contracted with Reid to serve as the city's representative to Business Depot Ogden, the council requested that an outside attorney look into the question of whether his severance pay was legal. But City Council Executive Director Bill Cook said he subsequently informed the attorney that the council does not want the opinion.

"I can tell you that there will not be a legal opinion provided by outside counsel," Cook said Thursday.

Bill Cook doesn't want to see a formal written opinion on the legality of the severance deal; and neither does the Gang of Six. Above all, neither Mr. Cook nor council leadership want the Ogden townsfolk to get their hands on such a letter. Such a letter would be very bad for the political health of one particular Mayor in one politically-troubled northern Utah town.

As our regular readers will recall, I spent some time and energy earlier this month, obtaining the text of the Ogden city employee pay ordinance which was in effect at the time of Stuart Reid's original hiring, in January of 2000. There existed no legal authority for the mayor's unilateral award of a secret voluntary-retirement severance benefit for Mr. Reid in January of 2000, in my not so humble opinion, just as no such authority exists now. Apparently that's also the expressed informal view of outside counsel too, even though there will be no formal written opinion.

The legal analysis isn't complicated. It depends merely on a plain reading of the statute. You can read my analysis here. The severance bonus was illegal, It violated the law. Bill Cook and council leadership are aware of this by way of informal communication with the council's independent lawyer.

And there's that other dangling issue too. Bill Cook is quoted in John Wright's story regarding the subject of the council's changing the "pay plan" ordinance:

"However, the council is considering an ordinance to modify the current severance pay policy. They decided they wanted to take proactive action, so that's what they're going to do. ... The intent is to make changes to the ordinance regarding future similar situations," says Bill Cook.

As you'll recall in this connection, Councilman Jorgenson had earlier "let slip" the fact that the city council leadership was considering "tweaking" the Ogden City "pay plan" statute to ratify Mr. Reid's generous going away present. Several of my sources close to city hall had also confirmed this quite recently.

The latest reliable formation, however, is that the council will only go so far as to "tighten up" the statute, to prevent similar occurrences in the future. It's the council leadership's most recent intention now, I was informed late yesterday afternoon, to merely add statutory language which would explicitly require council approval of all future severance packages. It is NO LONGER the council's plan to take any action to ratify or approve the Reid severance deal, according to a source I deem reliable. What a difference an election makes.

In the wake of the November 8 election council house-cleaning, it would seem that there exist now some limits beyond which the council will not act to protect our aggressive but politically-weakened municipal CEO. In this connection, I'd expect that the Stuart Reid severance question ought to be one of the first matters of business to be brought up by the new council, after their January 2006 swearing-in.

I'll keep following this story, and provide updates as the story develops.

And what think our gentle readers about all this, I ask?