Arnold elected officials have started weighing options for the city’s attorney.
Mayor Bill Moritz, City Council members and some staff members on June 4 discussed options to replace Bob Sweeney and the Sweeney Law Firm, which also includes Sweeney’s daughter, Allison Sweeney, as the city’s attorneys, after the deadline to apply for the position passed on May 29.
The discussion was held during a closed meeting, which is typical when elected officials make personnel decisions.
Moritz announced on April 16 that Arnold would issue a request for qualifications (RFQ) for a new city attorney. When he made the announcement, Moritz said he believed Arnold would benefit from a new legal counsel after Bob Sweeney became a focal point for residents’ anger over an abandoned road project.
On June 5, City Administrator Anthony Traxler said, along with reviewing RFQs from potential legal counsel, City Council members are also talking about hiring a full-time lawyer for the city.
“We have received applications, and the council is going through them,” said Traxler, who would not say how many applications the city received.
“(Council members) are exploring any and all options. We are even exploring a full-time, in-house lawyer as well.”
Traxler said the council had not set a deadline for when to name a city attorney.
“They are trying to move it forward as quickly as possible,” he said. “It is obviously a process that they want to take their time with to get it right.”
Arnold Finance Director Bill Lehmann said the city pays $170 per hour to the Sweeney Law Firm for legal counsel.
Allison Sweeney also has been Arnold’s prosecuting attorney since March 2024. She previously said her contract to be Arnold’s prosecuting attorney is separate from the law firm’s agreement to represent the city, and she would like to continue that role if city officials want her to continue to be the prosecuting attorney.
Moritz said he would prefer the city to have a contract with a law firm, similar to the agreement with the Sweeney Law Firm, instead of hiring a lawyer.
“One attorney cannot possibly do everything that we have to have done,” he said. “My thought on this is if we have an in-house counsel, the person would have to do everything by himself or herself.
“You might even have to have a paralegal to help the attorney if it is done in-house. I don’t know if that is a good idea to take on two employees when, if we had a firm, we would have all of that as part of the firm.”
Moritz said he is willing to listen to why hiring an in-house counsel would benefit Arnold.
“It may be the direction the council wants to go,” he said. “We will see what happens.”
Sweeney has been Arnold’s attorney since September 2010, when he was reappointed to the role after briefly being removed from the position in December 2009. Before that, he had been Arnold’s city attorney for 17 years.
Some residents pushed the City Council to replace Sweeney after a proposed 2-mile, two-lane road between Hwy. 141 and Richardson Road, which was to be called the Arnold Parkway, sparked outrage throughout Arnold in August 2024.
Residents attempted to gather enough signatures to force recall elections for all Arnold elected officials, and the owners of the Water Tower shopping plaza filed a lawsuit to stop the $75 million road project and to dissolve the Arnold Retail Corridor Transportation Development District.
City officials said the road project would be paid for by a 1-cent sales tax collected by the ARC TDD.
Along with the cost to build the road, the project required buying 38 homes in the Key West Estates subdivision, multiple businesses and a portion of the Water Tower Place Shopping Center.
The project was abandoned the same month it was announced, but State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick had his office on Nov. 6, 2024, start an audit of Arnold’s oversight and operation of the ARC TDD and Triangle TDD after receiving multiple complaints from its Whistleblower Hotline.
The audit was released on April 6, and it said Sweeney had excessive involvement in ARC TDD matters. It also claimed Sweeney provided intentionally misleading statements about his involvement with the TDD, claiming he made false statements on March 18, 2025, that were not discovered until July 17, 2025.
The audit said the alleged misdemeanor violation has been referred to the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, even though the statute of limitations to prosecute may have passed on March 18. Fitzpatrick said that is the only potential violation the Auditor’s Office reported to authorities.
Prosecuting Attorney Trisha Stefanski has not responded to questions of whether her office will seek charges against Sweeney.