Sangerville town attorney rebuts Dobson’s complaint

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

 SANGERVILLE — A resident’s complaint about legal bills related to a code of ethics ordinance defeated at the March annual town meeting took up the bulk of the June 11 Sangerville Board of Selectmen’s meeting.

 Richard Dobson, the complainant, brought a list of seven questions to the meeting about the expenses, and each was answered in detail by town attorney Thad Zmistowski.

 The town was charged $2,515 for 12.9 hours of legal services.

 But Dobson wasn’t happy about the exchange, claiming several times that the ordinance listed in the town meeting report was different than the one he submitted.

 Dobson’s first questions deal with who authorized the phone conference between the board and Zmistowski regarding the wording of the ordinance. “I initiated it,” Zmistowski said. “I’m an attorney and I was given a task. I needed further information to do that task appropriately.”

 Zmistowski added that the reason why there was a written opinion from him and the board about the ordinance in the town report was because “it was so poorly worded that it was hard to understand. And what we could understand was misleading, at best.”

 Dobson also asked why the opinion was inserted in the warrant “after it was already approved by the board (at three meetings) without any opinion.”

 The attorney responded that the board has the “inherent authority to offer an opinion on any item of town business. No voter — and we’re talking about the warrant — has to follow the selectmen’s advice, my advice or the town manager’s advice if he offers it.”

  As far as the two versions of the ordinance went, the dispute centered on whether Dobson circulated a petition with a different copy than the one that eventually went into the town warrant.

  Zmistowski said that he has copies of both ordinances in his files, but Dobson said that the disputed version was emailed to someone “who never signed the petition. It was never presented to him as such.”

 Another issue was whether the ordinance was designed primarily to require town officials to adhere to a code of ethics or allow residents to recall them. There was verbiage on both issues in the defeated article.

 Dobson’s final question to the board was whether they would now accept a stand-alone recall ordinance and schedule a special town meeting for residents to vote on it.

 While Zmistowski said that the proposed new ordinance “was well-written, understandable and not misleading.” However, the attorney recommended that it be initiated by a petition and considered at the regular annual town meeting.

 But he also said that if his opinion was asked about whether it should be approved, “I would say absolutely not.”  Zmistowski said that it lacked standards recommended by the State Legislature for removal from office such as criminal activity while serving in office. “This is just a sour grapes petition — an effort to change the results of an election without waiting for a term to expire.” he said.

 But Dobson disagreed. “You (Zmistowski) are representing the town officials,” he said. “Our attorney is representing the people. We vote these people in because we trust them. If we find out we can’t trust them, we should have the right to remove them,” he said.

 Selectmen officially rejected Dobson’s request for a special town meeting, and agreed with the attorney that a valid petition drive would be the best route to take.