City attorney’s extension shows Charlotte leaders aren’t learning from past mistakes | Opinion
Charlotte leaders still don’t seem to be warming up to the idea of transparency.
Charlotte City Council voted Monday to extend the contract of Anthony Fox, the interim city attorney who came under fire in recent weeks due to his involvement in the controversial settlement between the city and its police chief. The vote to extend Fox’s contract was 7-3. Fox’s contract will be extended for six months, with the goal of having a new, permanent city attorney in office by October.
The timing of the decision is unfortunate, given recent events. Public confidence in the council, and in Fox, is shaky following the $305,000 “separation agreement” between the city and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings, which was made to avoid a potential lawsuit. There are many outstanding questions from the settlement, including why one was recommended when Jennings may not have necessarily had legitimate grounds to sue. The answer to that question should be relevant when evaluating the performance of a city attorney, even an interim one.
Shortly after news of the settlement broke, Fox suggested at a press conference that state law prohibits elected officials from publicly discussing anything that happens in closed session, and that there may be criminal penalties for those who do so. That legal interpretation is not correct, and it’s one that Fox had to walk back days later, revising his statement to say that someone could face criminal sanctions for sharing information from a personnel file.
None of that may be reason enough to remove Fox from his position. But it is enough to make the public skeptical of a contract renewal with so many questions left unanswered, especially when the process behind the renewal raises additional transparency concerns. WSOC reported last month that Mayor Vi Lyles had been “informally” asking colleagues whether they’d be interested in extending Fox’s contract, and Lyles said Monday that she’d received “positive feedback.” But that feedback was given prior to the settlement controversy, and council members may have answered differently if it had been solicited after.
Another transparency concern: Initially, Fox was hired on a six-month contract, with the goal of having a permanent city attorney in place by July 1. But city staff said they paused the hiring process — something that frustrated some council members.
At-large council member LaWana Mayfield said Monday that she’d been under the impression that they were renewing Fox’s contract because it was taking longer than expected to fill the role — not because “someone took it upon himself to make a decision that we’re going to slow this process down.” Another council member told me that the decision to pause the process was made without consulting or formally raising the issue with the council.
Other council members took issue with the fact that the contract extension includes a $75,000 retention bonus, which city staff said was necessary to make the contract comparable to what it would cost to hire outside counsel at an hourly rate. (The terms of the contract were not made public before the meeting and were only disclosed when one council member brought it up.) But, as some on the council pointed out, it’s not appropriate to compare the hourly rate for a private attorney to a salaried position in the public sector.
It’s the same problem all over again. Another decision made with little to no attempt at transparency. Deciding to extend Fox’s contract may ultimately have been the right outcome — especially given the self-imposed delays in the hiring process — but the process matters, too. If even some council members who voted for the extension felt left out of the decision-making process, how can the public feel confident that they made the right one?
After last month’s controversy, Lyles vowed to “improve” the council and its processes. That improvement is sorely needed in order to regain the public’s trust. But Monday’s decision proves yet again that city leaders still don’t understand what they need to improve in the first place. If they did, they wouldn’t keep making the same mistakes.
