2/17/07 County fails to respond to lawsuit threat

(As published by Cortland Standard, reported by Corey Preston)

The county Legislature has let a deadline pass to respond to an impeding lawsuit over its abandoned purchase of south Main Street properties without any formal discussion of how to reply.

The attorney who has threatened the lawsuit on behalf of two property owners said Friday afternoon that he had not heard anything from the county.
“I will report to my clients that nothing came back to us, and I’m sure probably next week they’ll direct me to do that,” Cortland attorney Russell Ruthig said of his promise to file suit.
Legislators argued over whether discussion of the lawsuit should be done in public at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting Friday morning. The meeting was ultimately adjourned without any discussion — public or private.
The Legislature’s decision at its Jan. 25 meeting to revoke its initial agreement to purchase nine parcels of land along south Main Street for a total of $894,000 has been challenged legally by attorneys for four of the six property owners involved in the deal.
Ruthig has said the county’s original decision to purchase the properties in December represented a binding agreement.
The committee meeting was to be the first opportunity for legislators to formally discuss the potential lawsuit, but discussions broke down when committee members could not agree on whether to go into an executive session.
County Attorney Ric Van Donsel requested the closed-door session at the end of the meeting — citing discussion of a legal matter, a typical reason for going into executive session — but a number of committee members said they would prefer to discuss the potential suit in public.
“This has been a very public issue from the beginning, so I don’t see why we couldn’t talk about it in open session,” Legislature Chairman Marilyn Brown (D-8th Ward) said after the meeting.
Committee Chairman Ron Van Dee (D-5th Ward) disagreed.
“This is a legal issue and if our county attorney says it needs to be discussed in executive session, I believe that’s the case,” Van Dee said afterward.
After brief and heated discussion during the meeting, Van Dee asked who on the committee was in favor of an executive session, and received no response.
The meeting was quickly adjourned, leaving committee members and a number of legislators in attendance still unsure on where the county stands legally.
“As I understand it, nobody wanted to go into executive session, so we just didn’t talk about it,” Legislator Newell Willcox (R-Homer) said after the meeting. “We need to though, and we need to do it openly and I’m willing any time — morning, noon or night.”
Legislator Danny Ross (R-Cortlandville) agreed, and suggested that the county still needed to consider ways of avoiding a lawsuit.
“It definitely should be done publicly,” Ross said. “I still think we need to talk about purchasing the property and then discuss what to do with it — we definitely don’t need a lawsuit.”
The full Legislature meets next at 6 p.m. Thursday.