District 51 school board approves amended contract with GJ law firm - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
After abandoning plans to hire a Front Range law firm, the District 51 Board of Education approved, in a split vote, an expanded agreement with their current outside legal counsel based in Grand Junction.
In recent years, Mesa County Valley School District 51 has relied on David Price and his law firm, Hoskin Farina & Kampf, to handle any legal matters that are beyond the scope of the district’s in-house counsel, John Williams.
The District 51 Board of Education bolstered its agreement with the firm in a special meeting Friday, voting 3-2 to approve a contract expanding the scope of that work, including to serve as legal representative of the board itself.
President Andrea Haitz, Vice President Will Jones and Treasurer/Secretary Angela Lema voted to ratify the contract that Superintendent Diana Sirko signed with the firm Jan. 13. Doug Levinson and Kari Sholtes, who expressed concerns about the move and the process that led to it, voted against the expanded agreement.
Levinson and Sholtes said the move was reminiscent of an earlier attempt to hire Colorado Springs-based Miller Farmer Law Firm, a decision criticized for sending money to a Front Range law firm.
The move also may have violated open meetings law because there were no public meetings or discussions preceding the vote, which was eventually tabled when it came up in December.
As in that instance, Sholtes and Levinson say they didn’t learn of the contract to expand Hoskin Farina & Kampf’s services for the district until this past Tuesday.
Levinson quoted baseball legend Yogi Berra: “This feels like déjà vu all over again.”
Haitz and Lema defended the move, stating it doesn’t change the structure of the district’s previous deal with the firm, which was signed Aug. 20, 2020, and is not a new contract or a replacement for their current counsel, Williams. Additionally, Lema noted that not every contract signed by Sirko has to go through the school board.
“Here’s what happened: we all decided at the board retreat and prior to that that we were all up for doing some board training with Hoskin Farina & Kampf,” Haitz said. “When I was helping coordinate that, I asked David Price, ‘What do we need to do to make sure that we’re operating within them being able to do their training with us,’ and he said, ‘I just need to talk to Diana to coordinate some things.’ I asked Diana to reach out to David to get that coordinated so that we could do the training. I didn’t direct her to sign it. I just asked her if it had been signed. There was no unilateral decision there, and that was so we could all do the training that we all agreed to do.”
Sholtes asked why the special meeting took place instead of a public discussion to determine a future date for voting on ratifying the contract, which drew a rebuke from Haitz.
“Because you were concerned, Kari, and you wanted to talk about it over email and I wasn’t going to talk about it over email with you,” Haitz said. “I wanted to do it in public since you’re so bent on doing everything in public, so I called a special meeting so the public can hear what’s going on. This is what it is. For the accusations that things are nefarious or that things are happening behind the scenes without picking up the phone and just asking, I’m kind of done with it.”
Levinson and Sholtes both asked why the other board members felt such a sense of urgency to change the structure of its legal counsel so quickly, both in terms of the December attempt to hire Miller Farmer Law Firm and the expansion of the scope of Hoskin Farina & Kampf’s services.
Haitz and Lema both said that the primary function of the amendment to Hoskin Farina & Kampf’s contract, aside from providing representation for the board, is that it allows board members to ask the firm any legal questions that would have otherwise been asked of Williams.
Haitz, Lema and Jones praised the board training they’ve received from Price, with Lema telling Sirko that the training the new board members received from the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) in Colorado Springs prior to being sworn in was “absolutely useless.”
“This is just a simple agreement so that board members can feel comfortable going to an additional attorney that we’re already engaged with,” Lema said. “This is not a new contract with an RFP because of all of that we would need if we were looking for new services with a new vendor. We’re asking for a tiny little expansion. We’re not asking them to take over for anything that our in-house counsel does. All we’re asking is a simple request that we’ll be able to go to David Price or Tammy Eret if we have additional questions.”
Lema said that Williams never offered any training for the board and that was another factor in wanting to expand the scope of Hoskin Farina & Kampf to provide that training. Sholtes said that on Nov. 30, the day the three new members were sworn into office, Williams sent an email to each board member offering training. Lema and Haitz said they didn’t receive any such email.
Sholtes countered by saying Lema responded to Williams’ email.
Price was briefly called up to explain how the school board approached him for the expansion of his firm’s services.
“I spoke with you and several other board members before the training,” Price said. “There was a strong concern expressed that these meetings would be used to discuss legal issues that would be better served for executive sessions for the board.”
In the contract Sirko signed, Hoskin Farina & Kampf stated that outside of its expanded roles in representing the board and offering legal advice and training, all other terms of its fee agreement from August 2020 shall remain the same. Per that agreement, Price and Eret charge $210 per hour for litigated or adversarial matters, including special education matters, and $230 per hour for all other matters.
At the board’s retreat earlier this month, the five unanimously agreed that the administration should identify the district’s legal needs and how well they’re being met by in-house counsel, with Sirko providing a report to the board Feb. 18.
Sholtes and Levinson asked why this decision was made in the midst of such an inquiry. Haitz and Lema said they believe that coming report and the amendment to Hoskin Farina & Kampf’s agreement are two separate issues.
“This was an issue of being able to work with Mr. Price and be able to ask questions when we’re at these meetings and broaden their scope to be able to do that with the board. The evaluation of in-house counsel is a completely separate issue,” Haitz said.
Haitz also said that she’s not sure if the firm will provide “additional services” but that this is a “matter of checks and balances.”
After the session, Williams told The Daily Sentinel that he has not been informed of any changes to his position and that he’ll continue showing up to work for the district each day. His contract with the district lasts until June.
source: https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/western_colorado/district-51-school-board-approves-amended-contract-with-gj-law-firm/article_fdcead12-7b05-11ec-a3ae-7348d936affc.html
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