City Lawyer Under Fire for Sending $15K/Month in Legal Support Work to Own Firm
The city attorney for Chattanooga, Tenn., is under fire, after a state auditor’s report criticized him for contracting out some $15,000 per month in secretarial and legal support work from his own private law firm.
But city attorney Mike McMahan—backed by the Chattanooga mayor—said he had done nothing wrong and was following a long-standing practice of decades that also used by two predecessors in the city attorney’s office, reports the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Questioned practices also reportedly included city payments for law offices and permitting the city attorney to perform outside legal work, although McMahan said he did very little outside work.
“I really am angry,” McMahan told the newspaper Friday. “This calls my integrity into question. My integrity has never been questioned.”
The extra payments in addition to McMahan’s annual salary of approximately $105,000 reportedly ended within the last year or so, apparently around the time that McMahan’s city attorney position was changed to employer-employee rather than independent contractor arrangement in November, according to the article and an earlier Times Free Press report.
In a memorandum to the mayor in September, the city’s internal auditor, Stan Sewell, said the arrangement was a conflict of interest prohibited by state law and called for reimbursement of extra payments. In May, the city council voted to forward Sewell’s audit to the state comptroller’s office for an independent opinion, which was released late last month. A staff attorney for the state comptroller’s office then forwarded its findings to the Hamilton County District Attorney for review.
