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One attorney is gone and another has been hired to represent the town of Chapin, even as the town’s mayor claims he will refuse to pay him despite a vote of the town council.
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Chapin Town Council voted 4-1 to hire Ryan Hicks of Columbia as the town’s new attorney in a specially-called meeting on Tuesday, with Mayor Bill Mitchell voting against. The vote came after Mitchell confirmed that attorney Bubba Samuels of Buford, Georgia — previously retained by the mayor to represent the town on utility matters — had resigned.
Tuesday’s vote came weeks after the four other council members voted to give themselves the ability to hire an attorney and have the attorney communicate with the council using other council members as a liaison, bypassing Mitchell. The council objected because Mitchell had previously engaged with attorneys on his own without the council’s knowledge or approval.
Mitchell, for his part, said council’s vote had illegally stripped him of his powers to supervise town employees under Chapin’s “strong mayor” form of government.
“It’s not only impractical in how the chief executive officer would function on a day-to-day basis,” Mitchell said, but “I’m going to refuse to pay him.”
Council members maintained the mayor did not have the authority to decide not to pay an attorney after he was hired by a council vote.
“We control the purse strings, not you,” said Councilman Warren Burritt.
The dispute leaves the town’s legal representation uncertain weeks after Lexington County filed a lawsuit against the town over Mitchell’s refusal to issue more than 600 sewer taps to a proposed development in the former county technology park at Brighton.
That refusal has jeopardized a $20 million sale of the site for a new housing development, the county contends in its suit, and could violate a contract to serve Brighton signed by a previous administration in 2015.
Lexington County is asking a judge to order Chapin to release the taps or pay the county $20.4 million in damages.
Mitchell has said the town doesn’t have the capacity at its current wastewater plant to serve the planned development and other new houses requesting municipal sewer service, which extends to many customers outside the limits of the town of some 2,000 north of Lake Murray. The mayor said in a Facebook livestream after Lexington County’s suit was filed that the town would be on the “winning side” of any legal confrontation.
Samuels had previously been retained as a “utility attorney” by Mitchell, but the mayor said during Tuesday’s meeting that he had received a “disengagement letter” from the Georgia attorney removing himself from any more business with the town.
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Council had placed an item on Tuesday’s meeting agenda to take “action” on Samuels’ “purported engagement,” but dropped the item after Mitchell confirmed his resignation.
The latest meeting was the latest in a series of unscheduled council meetings called by the four other town council members to pass a flurry of measures seeking to wrest control of the town’s legal trajectory away from Mitchell, who they accuse the mayor of shutting them out of decision-making as the town heads to court.
During a council meeting last week, Councilwoman Ainslee Bost said the council had not received or approved a contract authorizing Samuels or his firm to represent Chapin. Bost cited an opinion from the S.C. Attorney General’s Office stating that municipal councils have authority to appoint a town attorney and argued that the council should have a say in hiring any lawyer representing the town.
Mitchell said he has the discretion as mayor to hire attorneys on an as-needed basis.
“There was nothing ‘purported’ about it,” the mayor said Tuesday of Samuels’ hiring.
Samuels was the latest of at least four attorneys Mitchell has cycled through since he came to office 10 months ago, without the rest of the council’s input or knowledge.
Samuels, an attorney based in Buford, Georgia, was retained as a “utility attorney” to serve the town on issues related to its wastewater system, but the town council previously voted to give itself the authority to hire and fire the town attorney, with Mitchell being the only vote against.
The mayor’s threat not to pay Hicks as the town’s attorney may be hampered by another measure passed by the council Tuesday, which would require any checks issued by the town to be “co-signed by a designated member of town council and either the mayor or the appropriate town employee.”
Mitchell said that language cuts the mayor out of issuing town checks entirely, and told the rest of council he would not “enforce” the measure absent legal action — the latest threat from the mayor that the ongoing spat with town council would end up with town officials facing off with their own attorneys.
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“I’ll see you in court,” Mitchell said Tuesday.