Commissioner Gary Suggs
Last week, Sept 15, 2008, Commissioner Gary Suggs’ efforts to reduce the cost of the legal services were thwarted with a vote of 5 for, 4 against, and 1 abstention.
A 2/3rds vote was required. To get the full story on both sides both Commissioner John Gunn and Commissioner Gary Suggs agreed to meet with me and talk about the issue. I’ve recently posted my interview with Commissioner John Gunn, who opposed the motion. Now we hear from Commissioner Gary Suggs to see what he has to say. This will be a two part interview.
Sean: So if you don’t mind, tell me a little about yourself.
Commissioner Gary Suggs: I was born and raised here, in this county, all my life. I’ve been on the commission, this is my second term. I work at Pleasant View Water Treatment Plant. I’m the plant super attendant. That’s in Cheatam County. That’s the business I’ve been in for about the last twelve years at different places. I worked eight years in Dickson. I was over three plants up there.
S: You are commissioner of District 3?
G. S.: That’s Vanleer, Slayden, and Cumberland Furnace.
S: To save money, you introduced two ideas. One was to consolidate the legals services for the Roads Department, Sheriff Department, the County, and the Board of Education. The second idea was to bid it out annually for the legal services.
G. S.: Yes.
S: Do you think there are more advantages in consolidating the legals services other than the savings advantage?
G. S.: Probably. They would have a better view of what the entire county is up against. In other words, the right hand would know what the left hand is doing. Yeah, I think there would be other advantages to it other than money. I can’t say if we would have bid it out that we would have gotten a cheaper bid. But I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to find out if you could get a cheaper bid.
S: Do you think there would be any disadvantages to consolidating the legal services?
G. S.: There might be some issues with elected officials. They have the right to choose who they want. We as the commission can’t dictate to them who they’re going to use. We’ve got some of that going on right now. The Highway Department has their own attorneys, the schools have separate attorneys, and then the county general has different attorneys. Right now we are running on about three different sets of them.
S: What would you say about the lawyer expertise of a certain field. If you consolidate the legal services to a set of lawyers or a team, would you lose on the expertise of education laws, etc.
G. S.: Not really. I think one of the stipulations on this bidding of attorneys was going to that they had to be a local firm. You can’t expect somebody to come from Nashville or Clarksville to as many meetings as they would have to attend. You also want local people because they live here and they keep up with what’s going on in the county. There might be a slight difference of the attorneys in the county of the ones I know about, the firms that are big enough to handle it. But there wouldn’t be much difference in the expertise, I would think.
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In part two, Commissioner Suggs will talk about the bidding of the legal services annually. The second part will be available in a few days.
