Lowell’s long municipal nightmare is over. Six months after the City Council adorned itself with powers it likely doesn’t have and suspended the elected city attorney, the panel has begrudgingly accepted a settlement that resolves the standoff .
The council achieved its goal - ridding the city of the services of Vaughn-Michael Cordes - and in the process shed $60,984 from city coffers to do it.
Aldermen voted 7-1 to approve that payment to Cordes, who in return agreed to resign from a job he ran for two years ago but other city leaders universally suggested he didn’t have inclination to do.
Mayor Eldon Long and others thought they had the situation pinned down last year when they alleged a new home outside Lowell. Surely, they thought, Arkansas law would allow them to replace an official who no longer resides in the city he represents. So they suspended him and hired a new law firm to do the city’s legal work. They continued to pay his salary - $30,705 during the six months he was suspended - while they figured out what to do next.
It turns out ousting someone from an office the public authorized them to fill is no easy task. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible. Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel informed the City Council they lacked any authority to remove Cordes from office even if it’s proven he lived outside the city. That, the attorney general said, would be up to a judge.
Slowly, the real concerns about Cordes started seeping out. City officials complained he worked excruciatingly slow. He continued to maintain his private practice - as law allows him to do - and it appeared city business was simply not getting done. Indications were Cordes may have gotten in over his head by taking the city attorney post.
We have to agree with Alderman Kendall Stucki, the one who cast the lone dissenting vote against the settlement. He acknowledged the settlement was the right move so the city could move on with the public’s business, but the idea of paying someone a lump sum to give up a job he apparently wasn’t doing just didn’t feel right.
It doesn’t, and we suspect it never will.
But as we continue to learn in this litigious society we’re in, it sometimes makes far more sense to accept a known cost than to take a dispute to court and risk losing more.
Hopefully, some of the lawmakers in Little Rock’s General Assembly have paid attention to this situation. Arkansas law on how to recall a public official who isn’t getting the job done should be clarified to provide some relief. It needs to be clearly written so it doesn’t become a political tool, but Lowell really found itself backed into a corner. There should be an out beyond ponying up a cash settlement.
Arkansas needs a smartly crafted mechanism for recalling an official when there’s strong evidence he has failed to meet the responsibilities of the office to which he was elected. Hey lawmakers, any takers? We know it doesn’t involve a gun, abortion or Medicaid, but it would sure be helpful to the residents of Arkansas.
Hopefully, Lowell can move on with its business and its residents will one day get an elected city attorney who thoroughly fulfills his duties.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 02/18/2013