By MONROE ROARK
mroark@thecitizennews.com

The City Council of Peachtree City is expected to end a four-month debate with the scheduled appointments of its various judicial positions.

The Peachtree City firm of Webb, Stuckey & Lindsey, which has performed the city's attorney duties since 1992, has been recommended by city staff for reappointment. That move was delayed by an ethics complaint against senior partner Jim Webb, which has since been dismissed.

Webb and his firm are suing The Citizen, publisher Cal Beverly and Peachtree City resident Steve Brown in connection with two letters to the editor Brown wrote earlier this year about the city attorney appointment. Webb alleges the letters libelled him by accusing him of unethical behavior. (See Beverly's opinion column about the issue on Page 5A.)

The Newnan firm of Glover & Davis was initially recommended in December, based on its low bid. But some confusion over the positions of city attorney and solicitor, with certain firms bidding for only one position or the other, led the City Council to solicit bids a second time, with the stipulation that city attorney and solicitor be combined in a single position.

Webb, Stuckey & Lindsey did not offer the lowest hourly rate, city manager Jim Basinger said in February, but “the firm's total fees would probably be the lowest due to increased portal-to-portal fees for those firms outside Peachtree City,” he added.

Five other firms were listed on the city's bid tabulation sheet — one from Fayetteville, one from Jonesboro and three from Atlanta. Glover & Davis did not bid the second time because Mitch Powell, the city's municipal judge, is a member of that firm and the same firm could not serve as judge and solicitor.

City staff has provided no additional comments to the council for tomorrow's meeting on this topic, with the exception of an April 24 memo that simply reads, “Staff's recommendation to appoint the firm of Webb, Stuckey & Lindsey as city attorney/solicitor remains unchanged.”

The city attorney position is also the focus of another item on the agenda, in the wake of the city ethics board's recent dismissal of an ethics complaint against Webb.

Ethics board advisor Andrew Whalen II, an attorney from Griffin, told the board that the city attorney is not a “city official” according to the city's own charter and ordinances, and thus is outside the jurisdiction of the ethics board in that case.

City attorney Rick Lindsey has advised the council that it may want to consider some changes to the ethics code. He reiterated his recent statements, made at the City Council's annual retreat, that he believes state law has preempted local governments from controlling the practice of law and that only the state's Supreme Court can govern lawyers. An ordinance requiring the city attorney to be subject to the ethics ordinance would then be unconstitutional, he opined.

He did, however, say that the city could exert some control over its attorney, by requiring financial disclosure and possibly making the city attorney an official of the city. Such an action would require either a new ordinance or a change in the city's charter, he said.