COUNTY ATTORNEY’S CHARMED LIFE
Two years ago, for the first time in 28 years, a Hamilton County commissioner had a concern about the reappointment process of Hamilton County attorney Rheubin Taylor.
Tim Boyd wasn’t ready to immediately sign off on an eighth four-year contract for the attorney as had been done in every previous instance. He thought a county attorney should be appointed at the same time a mayor and commission take office every four years.
“The new sitting commission would have their say in the new appointment of the attorney representing them instead of us selecting and appointing their attorney that represents them beyond Sept. 1, 2022,” he said during a June 9, 2021, commission meeting. “I’ve never liked it since I’ve been on the commission since 2010 — all this odd term of the attorney versus all the elected officials. I don’t know why it was ever set up like that. … I think it’s time for us to seriously consider changing this policy to be coinciding with the sitting term of the newly elected mayor and the newly elected commission.”
The then-District 8 commissioner, a watchdog of county finances, didn’t mention how Taylor’s office had blown past recent budgets. He didn’t bring up the county attorney’s intentional destruction of public records that the attorney knew had been requested a year before, and over which a new state law had been passed. And he didn’t get into Taylor’s outside work on county time, which the attorney’s contract vaguely allowed.
But, out of deference to those coming into office a year hence, he suggested the county attorney’s contract be extended only from July 1, 2021 to Sept. 1, 2022. If the then-mayor and commission wanted to reappoint him, so be it.
“With the new mayor coming in,” countered District 4 Commissioner Warren Mackey, “he’ll still be able to select whoever he wants or she wants to be the county attorney, so I propose we just leave that alone.”
Mackey didn’t explain what he meant, but then-Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger was probably following his line of thinking when he said, “If you look at the contract, there’s an out clause at any time over this period of four years.”
Indeed, a majority of commissioners can oust the county attorney with a majority vote. But the mayor cautioned against it.
“When you get a new group sworn in,” he said, “that’s when you need the legal expertise and the advice the most … . To swear everybody in at the same time is really a dangerous thing to do. … I hope that would never happen, but it’s a possibility.”
The following week, the commission reappointed Taylor in an 8-0 vote, with Boyd among them.
Now, since Weston Wamp took office as county mayor in September, contrary to Mackey’s 2021 proclamation, Wamp hasn’t been “able to select whoever he wants” as county attorney. And Mackey is among those who have stood in his way.
The new mayor wanted to name his own county attorney and privately talked to Taylor about it, but an angered Taylor called county commissioners, many of whom had extended his contract the previous year. They stood firmly against the mayor, who subsequently fired Taylor.
A suit and countersuit have been filed over the issue, and nothing is likely to be resolved until at least early March.
But we were astonished to find, having gone back over commission meeting minutes of each of Taylor’s four-year appointments, beginning July 1, 1993, that no questions were ever asked about his contract. No concerns were ever raised. It was as if signing off on the person to represent the county in all legal matters was as important as ordering a box of file folders.
The reappointments became so second nature that in 2005, the resolution for the county attorney’s reappointment was wrapped neatly in a group of resolutions that then-Commission Chairman Fred Skillern said were routine and had been approved in committee meetings the previous week.
The commission approved the omnibus group of resolutions — and another paying attorney local attorney Wade Hinton to continue his unspecified special services — 9-0.
Minutes of Taylor’s other reappointments indicate in 2001 he was asked to leave the room during deliberations, though there was no discussion, and in several other years, the commission chairman asked if there were any questions about the contract. There never were.
Finally, in 2017, Boyd made the same suggestion he did in 2021 about moving the dates to correspond to the date commissioners take office. When he pressed the issue, assistant county attorney Neill Southerland — present instead of Taylor, who was presiding at a funeral — said she understood it had been helpful in the past to have an experienced attorney on staff through the general election process and transition.
Boyd nevertheless put it in the form of an amendment to the reappointment resolution, but it died for lack of a second. The commission, including Boyd, then confirmed the reappointment 9-0.
Taylor, it must be said, has lived a charmed county government life for nearly 45 years (nearly 15 as a county commissioner, taking office when Jimmy Carter was president). At 74, he is more than twice the age of the 35-year-old Wamp, who hoped a new county attorney would help him change the culture of county government, and currently is a speed bump to that progress.