A shortlist of applicants for the Haines Borough attorney position will be interviewed at the end of March, the assembly’s personnel committee decided.
Brooks Chandler, the current attorney contracted by the borough since 2010, is one of three finalists. The others are Paul Grant, who has a firm in Juneau, and Joseph Levesque, whose practice is in Anchorage.
The Haines Borough Assembly decided to hire a new attorney in April. The personnel committee didn’t discuss the reasoning for considering new legal counsel, but it was described by assembly member Heather Lende as “time for a change.”
Assembly member Brenda Josephson said there are some assembly members who were displeased with the way Chandler handled last summer’s assembly recall.
“Attention to detail is my main gripe with Brooks Chandler,” Morphet told the CVN. Morphet said he didn’t agree with each of Chandler’s certifications on the recall, nor with his handling of former borough manager Bill Seward’s lawsuit settlement.
Seward threatened a wrongful termination lawsuit against the borough in 2017. The assembly fired Seward without consulting Chandler, a violation of Alaska’s Public Entity Insurance liability contract that is “contingent on the member conferring with an attorney of the member’s choice before terminating an employee and then utilizing the services of an attorney to handle any pre-termination procedures.”
Morphet said it was up to Chandler or staff to notify the assembly of that clause, and to check with the insurance company to see if the assembly had in fact invalidated the insurance procedures.
Assembly member Heather Lende said her willingness to replace the borough attorney has less to do with the recall and more to do with a lack of understanding of each other. She said that she feels there have been several instances, like the lawsuit with Seward, where the assembly could have been given a heads up from Chandler, but wasn’t.
“I’m just ready for an attorney that I can trust,” she said. “I think part of it is probably because I’ve never even met him,” Lende added.
New assembly member Will Prisciandaro said he thought the assembly’s decision to look at options was a good thing. “There are going to be some land use issues coming up in Haines and we’re going to need an expert making sure we’re going the right way,” he said.
Assembly member Stephanie Scott said that Chandler often gives the borough a lot of choices when he’s asked for legal guidance. “I think that some of us would like a more direct attorney,” Scott said. “But maybe we’re being naive, maybe the law is more complex than we would like it to be so there isn’t ever a single good answer.”
The personnel committee directed staff to develop questions for the attorney interviews by the end of February. The questions will be evaluated by the committee and brought to the assembly for a vote at the first meeting in March. The assembly will then determine the structure of the interview, and a new attorney contract should be settled by April.