Dickson Community

In the second part of my interview with Commissioner Gary Suggs we dive the actually bidding for legal services and what may be done in the future.

You can read the first part of the interviews at http://www.dicksoncommunity.com/interviews/commi….

Sean: You believe that bidding out for the legal services annually would save the county some money. Can you explain how it would?

Commissioner Gary Suggs: What’s showing on our budget right now is $300,000 for legal fees. That’s more than it has ever been since I’ve been on this commission. One year, $70,000 was budgeted and that was about the highest I’d seen until last year. Last year I think we spent around $114,000 and this time they said $300,000 was budgeted. And the attorneys told us that it could go higher than that. So, that’s what scared me.

S: In the previous years, was it bid out annually?

GS: As I’ve been on the commission, it’s always been done by the hour. And if you’re talking about this much money, you’d think that a firm would be willing to bid on it by the year. I would. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but I would think they would be willing to bid on it because that’s a lot of money.

S: What do you see that’s inefficient in the current structure?

GS: With the attorney situation? Well, I’m not saying that the ones we have are doing a bad job, I’m really not, and it’s nothing personal with me. I just feel like we could save some money by doing it this way, and that’s why I brought it up.

S: What are some pros and cons that you would see if we went the route of bidding annually?

GS: Well it would give us a hard number to put in the budget, you know. We could say we know our legal fees are not going to go over $180,000 or $200,000 or whatever it was going to be. We could say we know it won’t go over that and that would give us a hard number that we could count on to put in the budget.

S: Can you think of any negatives that might occur from bidding it out annually?

GS: The only negative that I think you would have to watch for would be the possibility that everybody could just put their heads together and say that none of them will do it for less than a certain amount.

S: Which would be kind of unfair.

GS: Right.

S: Let’s say you had a new litigation issue to come up. Would there be any provisions or would the lawyers be expected to honor the contract?

GS: You would have to have one provision in there, I would think. In fact, we have a case against us now that we’ve already had to hire an attorney from out of state for on environmental issues. Something like that would be understandable. But other than that. . .that would be the only thing. We have one case against us now for which we might have to get someone else again, an out of state attorney one more time. We’ve already done it once, but hopefully not.

S: This (suggestion to bid annually) did not pass. Do you have any intent to bring up the issue again in the future?

GS: I probably won’t because I think that there were other people besides me who wanted to see it happen, and I think I ought to let someone else take the initiative this round. I just really don’t understand why anybody would be against just finding out if we could do it. Because this wasn’t about changing attorneys at the present time. This was about getting a bid to find out if we could get the price down. That was all.

S: So you think it’s almost like a phase one out of many phases?

GS: Sure, I mean if we had received a bid for $150,000 from a firm then I think we would have been foolish not to pursue it. But this vote was just to see if we could reduce the price. And that’s what baffles me about it. I don’t understand why anyone would be so adamantly against it. In other words, a fact finding mission is what we wanted to do.

S: You said you’re probably not going to bring up the issue again. If someone else does, is there any time restraint for when it can be brought up again?

GS: Not that I know of, and it’s something that really should be brought up again. Sometimes on other issues we’ve had to bring them up two or three times to get them passed.

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.