Sandpoint City Council continues debate over legal counsel

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

High tension has animated Sandpoint City Hall proceedings since the Oct. 1 regular meeting of the City Council, when councilors walked out of the chambers in protest over the dismissal of Lake City Law attorneys following the Sept. 30 expiration of their legal services contract.

Councilor Joel Aispuro said at the top of the Oct. 1 meeting that “our actual legal counsel” had not been provided with a Zoom link to the meeting. Meanwhile, Sandpoint Mayor Jeremy Grimm brought on former-Sandpoint City Attorney Will Harrington to serve as interim city attorney, which didn’t sit well with several councilors.

“With all due respect, Mr. Harrington, we didn’t appoint you as legal counsel and, according to State Code, Lake City Law is actually still our legal counsel,” Aispuro said, going on to ask City Clerk Melissa Ward to send a Zoom link to LCL attorneys, including Fonda Jovick, who has held the position of city attorney since 2023. 

“I don’t feel comfortable moving forward with the meeting without our actual legal counsel, and if we’re not going to have our actual legal counsel, I will walk out and I would encourage all my council members to do the same thing, because Mr. Harrington was not appointed in any way, shape or form,” Aispuro said on Oct. 1. “And I found out about this this morning.”

Grimm said Oct. 1 that the city had a contract with Harrington, to which Aispuro responded, “You do, not we as a city.”

Council President Deb Ruehle argued that Jovick and her firm served under the appointment of the mayor and confirmation by the council, and, “their appointment does not expire” with the lapse of the legal services agreement.

The Oct. 1 meeting ended fewer than 45 minutes after its 5:30 p.m. start time, as councilors left the chambers. A subsequent special meeting on Oct. 3 failed to reach a quorum, with Councilors Aispuro, Ruehle and Schreiber not attending, according to reports.

Yet another special meeting on Oct. 8 began as normal at 5:30 p.m. with only two action items on the agenda addressing a legal services agreement with Harrington and revising the contract with Lake City Law.

Though fully attended by councilors and the mayor, no legal counsel at all was seated at the customary desk in chambers during the Oct. 8 meeting. A motion to enter into executive session followed votes on approval of bills and the consent agenda. Aispuro moved to amend that motion to include Jovick during executive session deliberation, saying it was in the interest of “transparency and clarity.”

Grimm refused to refer to Jovick as the city attorney, repeating the motion while stating, “I’m not going to use the title because I think that’s under question.”

Councilor Pam Duquette questioned why Jovick should be included in the council’s executive session.

“I see that we have ended that contract; as I see it, on the 30th [of September],” she said. “And, as I see it, that’s not necessary [to include Jovick in the executive session].”

Both Aispuro and Ruehle called for the vote, with Ruehle saying the issue needed to be discussed in private before receiving fuller public deliberation, and responded to Duquette’s question that the expiration of the legal services contract is “just the monetary part of the legal contract.”

Grimm said that, “The city has not received a legal opinion that Ms. Jovick is the city’s legal representative,” after which the council voted 4-2 in favor of including Jovick in the executive session, with Councilors Duquette and Rick Howarth in opposition.

The council had not returned to regular session as of press time on Oct. 8; however, Grimm told the Reader in an interview on Oct. 6 that he hoped “cooler heads will prevail and whatever the question is, regarding the current status of the former city attorney’s appointment, can be resolved through impartial third-party legal analysis. And that we can move on as a city from this small hiccup and prioritize and focus on the most important issues.”

According to Idaho Code 50-204, Harrington wrote, “Once a vacancy exists, such as by the expiration of a contract, it falls to the mayor to propose a successor for council confirmation. The position cannot be self-extended by the prior contractor or by implication.”

Grimm told the Reader that, in addition, I.C. 50-602 “makes it quite clear that the city manages the city and that includes the management of staff.”

“So it’s essential that the mayor — the Executive Branch — have the ability to run the city, and I would suggest that anyone look at Idaho Code and look at the authorities and powers granted the Executive Branch in 50-602,” he said. “The Legislative Branch is authorized to set and adopt a budget, to establish ordinances within a city, to approve and review contracts over a certain dollar amount, and to act in a quasi-judicial capacity to act on land use hearing matters. But it’s clear that they have no — and I repeat no — statutory authority to direct staff or related functions of the administration of the city.

Some councilors argued that the confirmation of Lake City Law and Jovick supersedes the legal services agreement, which establishes a fee schedule. However, according to Grimm and a legal opinion from Harrington, Idaho Code 50-204 gives the mayor wide latitude to govern appointments and contracts.

“To suggest that the mayor’s ability to contract with legal services doesn’t represent the interest of the city is preposterous,” Grimm added.

Councilors Aispuro, Dick, Howarth and Ruehle did not respond to a request for comment. Schreiber responded, but was unclear what information he was legally allowed to disclose related to the issue. Jovick, likewise, declined to comment prior to the meeting.

Duquette told the Reader, in part, in an Oct. 6 email that, “Yes, [Grimm] is the mayor and has rights/obligations, but I do remind him that we are not a big city and including council on things he may not think [are] needed, and I believe they are, and I see that as part of the problem in communication.  

“He did start corresponding to council members on the first of October about the expired contract with LCL as he saw it happen and that he acquired a temporary legal counsel,” she added. “I at that time was expecting that to be a topic on the dais.” 

Grimm told the Reader that he learned of the contract expiration on Sept. 18, though that coincided with the emergency medical leave of the Central Services director, and was complicated further by the migration of contract data from an in-house repository to the cloud, which resulted in expiration dates being pushed “many years out.”

“I acknowledge that due to some software issues we’re having at the city, our knowledge of the expiration of this contract was less than optimal,” Grimm said, later adding, “Council members were completely unaware of the expiration date, as well as Lake City Law appears to have been unaware of the expiration date

“Ideally, we would have all been aware of the expiration date and been proactively addressing that a month or two in advance of that expiration,” he said.

However, Grimm told the Reader that he “tried to remedy [the situation] with a short-term, three-month contract retaining Lake City Law, until the end of the calendar year. The response to that by Lake City Law was the proposal of a contract that seemed somewhat unfavorable to the city; and, as a result, I made the determination to allow the Lake City Law legal services agreement to expire.”

Regardless, he said, “There’s nothing in state statute or code that requires the mayor to inform the council of every contract that is pending expiration. The city has hundreds, if not thousands, of contracts live at any given moment — some are appropriate for renewal and others are appropriate for expiration.”

Furthermore, he said, “No council members reached out to me that day regarding questions [about the replacement of Lake City Law with Harrington]. … I was in the office all day and available, had council had any questions.”

All that said, Grimm told the Reader that he felt it was time to part ways with Lake City Law based on cost, as the firm’s billings “have ranged from $8,000 and change a month to almost $16,000 a month.” 

The Reader was unable to verify those figures in the budget by press time, though Grimm added: “Upon my investigation, it appeared that the city was bearing a significant legal cost for the simplistic legal opinion of the roles of government  — Executive vs. Legislative — which is frustrating, because the Idaho Association of Cities has a very simple and clear publication outlining the roles, clarifying that the mayor — the Executive Branch — has supremacy over all city affairs: all contracts, all employees and the budget once adopted by the council.”