An Arnold resident is trying to garner enough support to compel city officials to seek new legal representation.
On Aug. 21, Oscar Harrell, 43, of Arnold kicked off a drive for residents to sign a petition asking the city to stop employing the Sweeney Law Firm and remove City Attorney Bob Sweeney and Prosecuting Attorney Allison Sweeney from their positions. Bob Sweeney is Allison Sweeney’s father.
Harrell said about 40 people signed his petition on Aug. 21, when he collected signatures before and after that evening’s City Council meeting at City Hall.
He told the council during the meeting he wants to get about 1,400 signatures because he felt that would be a good representation of the approximately 14,000 registered voters in the city.
“The gleaming thing to me is the indefinite term for those positions, and the fact that the city attorney and city prosecutor can be within the same law firm or even the same person, raising concerns for me (about) a conflict of interest,” Harrell said. “I want to get the petition out in front of folks to educate them about the correction that I think needs to happen and is important.”
According to Arnold’s ordinance, the city attorney and prosecuting attorney position are filled by appointment from the mayor with consent of council members. The appointments are indefinite terms.
The attorneys are paid a fixed rate as approved by the City Council, and both Bob and Allison Sweeney are paid $170 per hour.
Harrell said he and other volunteers planned to collect signatures during the Arnold Farmers Market on Aug. 23 at Arnold City Park, and they may also go door to door to seek signatures.
“I am no rookie going door to door to collect signatures,” he said.
As of Monday, Harrell said, about 100 signatures had been collected.
Bob 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.
Allison Sweeney has been Arnold’s prosecuting attorney since March 2024. She replaced William Ekiss, who had been in that role since March 2018, when the Arnold Municipal Court began holding sessions during the day instead of at night.
The city had paid the Sweeney Law Firm $246,071.50 as of Aug. 22 for this fiscal year, which began on Sept. 1, 2024, and ends Aug. 31, said interim City Administrator Bill Lehmann, who also is the city’s finance director.
Lehmann said Arnold had budgeted $225,000 for legal services for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, and it has budgeted $190,000 for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, which begins Sept. 1.
He also said Arnold paid the law firm $284,157.75 for the 2023-2024 fiscal year after budgeting $175,000 for legal services that year.
According to Arnold’s ordinance, the city attorney and prosecuting attorney may be removed by the mayor with the consent of a majority of the council or by a two-thirds vote of council members, independently of the mayor’s recommendation or approval.
Mayor Bill Moritz said he does not plan to ask the council to remove Bob Sweeney as the city attorney.
“I would like for those folks to tell me why they don’t want an attorney who wins to represent our city,” said Moritz, who as a council member in 2009 voted against replacing Sweeney.
Moritz said Sweeney was instrumental in the development of the Arnold Commons and the redevelopment of the Arnold Crossroads shopping plazas in 2009 and annexing the land off Vogel Road in 2000 where the shopping plaza that houses the Home Depot and Target stores is located, as well as in protecting the city during the state Auditor’s Office audit of the city, Arnold Retail Corridor Transportation Development District (ARC TDD) and the old Triangle Transportation Development District connected to the abandoned Arnold Parkway road project.
“What would be their case for saying, ‘Oh, this guy wins too much. We can’t have this,’” Moritz said. “There has been plenty of things that he has done for the city.”
Harrell’s petition says the city should terminate its relationship with the Sweeney Law Firm due to “suspected inappropriate conduct by legal counsel; possible overbilling of taxpayers and mismanagement of public funds; and concerns regarding compliance with Missouri Sunshine Law.” The petition says, “These issues undermine transparency, accountability and public trust in our city government.”
Harrell said he would like Arnold to seek bids every four years for the city attorney and prosecuting attorney positions.
“That way it doesn’t keep someone in control of those positions for so long,” he said. “As a taxpayer, I want transparency. I want fair competition for those positions.”
While Moritz said he does not plan to recommend cutting ties with the Sweeney Law Firm, he said it is an interesting idea to have separate law firms or attorneys serving as city attorney and prosecuting attorney.
“I’m not ruling anything out,” Moritz said. “I have bigger fish to fry. We have to find a new city administrator and community development director.”
Longtime City Administrator Bryan Richison left on July 16, and Community Development Director David Bookless, who was serving as the interim city administrator, left Aug. 22.
Questioning Sweeney
Jim Avery, a lawyer seeking the Republican nomination for state Senate District 22 in the August 2026 primary, also spoke to the council about replacing Sweeney. Senate District 22 takes in roughly the northern half of Jefferson County.
Jim Avery, a lawyer seeking the Republican nomination for state Senate District 22 in August 2026, criticized Arnold City Attorney Bob Sweeney on Aug. 21 during an Arnold City Council meeting.
Avery, 54, said he lives in the Jefferson County portion of Pacific.
He told the council he was upset after Sweeney announced that Arnold Police are working to determine who turned over unredacted closed meeting minutes to the Auditor’s Office that were a subject of a lawsuit.
“You are setting yourself up for a lawsuit,” Avery told the council. “The name whistleblower says it all. They are blowing the whistle on something that is possibly improper.
“When Mr. Sweeney states that he is going to have the police investigate and prosecute the whistleblower, you are setting yourself up for lawsuits. It is illegal. Whistleblowers have protection. It is whistleblower protection, Google it.”
Near the end of the Aug. 21 meeting, Sweeney corrected Avery about who requested the investigation.
“The mayor asked for the investigation into how those documents were disclosed before the judge made his ruling, not the city attorney,” he said. “The city attorney merely pointed out that each of you (elected officials) who had those documents provided to you would be part of the investigation.”
Sweeney also disputed whether the person who turned over the unredacted documents to the Auditor’s Office would be considered a whistleblower.
“The fact that someone identifies themselves as a whistleblower doesn’t necessarily make them a whistleblower,” he said. “It is a defined term in Missouri. Even individuals who might have whistleblower protection lose that protection if they expose certain types of documents for certain reasons. It is actually a crime in Missouri to misuse official documents.”
Avery told the council he believes it is a conflict of interest to have Bob Sweeney as the city attorney and Allison Sweeney as the prosecuting attorney.
Bob Sweeney said if he violated a municipal law, his daughter would have to recuse herself from the case. He also said if there were a crime related to how he billed the city, he would not be charged in Municipal Court.
“It would be prosecuted in a much higher court than municipal court,” he said.
Avery also said he does not believe Arnold’s elected officials will consider changing the city’s legal representation.
“That is kind of what I gathered,” he said. “They just bury their heads in the sand like ostriches. They are not going to look into any problems.”
Sweeney also admonished Avery for his comments to the council.
“I understand the general public believing what they read on the internet. I would have thought a fellow member of the bar would have done a little more research before making opinions about what was going on,” Sweeney said.
Avery said he was not surprised Sweeney attacked him.
“I guess if my job was on the line, I would make the same kind of statement as he did,” Avery said. “I don’t know how (Sweeney) can’t Google and look at whistleblower protection. It is totally there. There are whistleblower protections there for a reason.”