12/14/07 - Legislators want more details in attorney investigation

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel Reporting)

As the county administrator moves forward with his push for a criminal investigation into the County Attorney’s Office, legislators want more details about how the office arrived at a settlement figure for a Randall Street property the county had backed out of buying.

County Administrator Scott Schrader said this morning that on Monday he would request the District Attorney to investigate the county attorney and an assistant county attorney, primarily for their role in arriving at a $17,433 settlement over the property.

“The public needs to know if this is on the up and up or not,” Schrader said after first proposing the investigation at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting Thursday morning.

The committee rejected the settlement at the meeting as well as a second $12,475 settlement for a Williams Street property.

Committee Co-chair John Troy (D-1st Ward) said he believed that if the committee had chosen to approve the settlements proposed by County Attorney Ric Van Donsel, it would have done so “too hastily.”

Van Donsel proposed the $17,433 settlement for the former owner of 6 Randall St., Steve Lissberger, and the $12,475 settlement for James and Yvonne Cole, who still own 11 Williams St. The property owners had signed contracts to sell their properties to the county last year and pursued legal action after the county backed out of the deal in January after the county scrubbed plans for a public health building in the area.

Schrader said during a committee meeting Thursday morning that the Lissberger settlement was too high, given that the actual August sale price of the property to a third party was only $500 less than what the county had agreed to pay in the contract it later reneged on.

The property was sold at the beginning of August for $72,500; the county had originally planned to purchase the property for $73,000.

“If you use the itemization in the record, it does not justify what he (Van Donsel) has asked the Legislature to do,” Schrader said.

Van Donsel and Lissberger did not return phone calls for comment Thursday or this morning.