The Jefferson County Health Department’s legal bills increased substantially over the past two years.
According to Health Department records, in 2019, the agency paid $11,206.26 in legal fees, and in 2020 the department paid $68,147.23, which was a 508.11 percent increase over the previous year. As of Sept. 30 of this year, the department had $72,008.85 in legal fees, and if the bills continue at the same pace, that would be a total of $96,011.80 by the end of 2021, a 40.88 percent increase over 2020.
Health Department Director Kelley Vollmar said the legal fees have increased because board members are contacting the department’s attorney more often and because the Health Department recently bought more land in Hillsboro, which required a lot of legal work.
“A substantial portion of our attorney’s fees, I believe, are due to board members directly contacting our attorney or issues (involving) particular board members that are being brought to the attorney,” she said. “Miss (Suzy) Davis has contacted our attorneys several times, either individually or in conjunction with emails to the chairperson and myself. Each of those times, she will contact our attorney both by email and text all hours of the day. Unfortunately, it has caused our bills to get much higher than we’ve seen in any of our previous years.”
Through a Sunshine Law request, the Leader obtained the Health Department’s itemized legal bills from November 2020 to October 2021, which includes all the legal fees charged to the Health Department since Sandberg Phoenix began representing the agency in late September 2020.
According to those records, Davis’ name was connected to $13,414, or 12.11 percent, of the $110,690.58 in legal bills since Sandberg Phoenix began representing the Health Department. Charges connected to Davis include correspondence with the attorney, meetings with the attorney, and a few Sunshine Law requests, with most of the costs for corresponding with the attorney.
The bill received in July for legal work completed in June totaled $10,035.89, with Davis connected to $2,530, or 25.21 percent, of those bills. That bill showed the largest amount of charges connected to Davis.
Over the past 12 months, board chairman Dennis Diehl was connected to the largest amount of the legal bills – $23,652, or 21.37 percent of them. However, as board chair, it is his duty to contact the attorney on behalf of the board, Vollmar said.
“There’s a lot of work that goes back and forth between both the board chair and the director and the attorney for normal operations of business,” she said. “The board chair and the director are also the point of contact for issues from the community that may come in and that we may need to consult with our attorney on.”
Vollmar said the policy to have the board chair contact the attorney on behalf of the board is not written anywhere, but board members are aware of it.
“There have been numerous emails that have gone out to the board members that have basically stated the only communication with the attorney should be through Dennis (Diehl) as the chair or myself as the director,” she said. “The reason being that every time we communicate with the attorney we are going to get charged for it. So, that (having the chair contact the attorney) limits it.”
Vollmar said the exception to the policy relates to board committees.
“Board committees are allowed to talk directly with the attorney related to board-approved expenses,” she said.
The board has two committees – a personnel committee made up of board members Tim Pigg and Amber Henry and a building committee made up of Pigg and board member James Prater.
Legal bills connected to Pigg totaled $3,752, or 3.39 percent of the bills, over the past 12 months. Henry was connected to a total of $1,596 in legal charges, or 1.44 percent of the bills during that 12 month period.
There were $952 in charges related to Prater, which made up 0.86 percent of the bills since Sandberg Phoenix began representing the Health Department.
While other attorneys at Sandberg Phoenix work on Health Department items, the Leader only obtained records for work completed by the firm’s attorney Christi Coleman, who represents the Health Department.
Those records did not include any real estate matters, but Coleman said real estate matters have totaled $26,986 since September 2020.
Diehl said there are many reasons for the increase in legal fees, including Sunshine Law requests and complaints from a board member he would not name, as well as Sunshine Law requests and complaints from public officials and community members. He said COVID-19-related issues also led to the increase, as did updating the board’s bylaws and purchasing the Hillsboro land for a new building.
“There are a lot of issues going on that have caused us to utilize our attorney for the legal work that needs to be done, but, again, a significant amount of money has been wasted on frivolous complaints and that’s unfortunate because we’re wasting taxpayers’ money,” he said.
Bills from November 2020 to September 2021 show work related to Sunshine Law requests, Sunshine Law complaints and general complaints made up $18,536, or 16.74 percent, of the $110,690.58 in legal bills.
Diehl said that while there were a number of Sunshine Law complaints and general complaints filed over the past year or so, after looking into each one, none “turned out to have any merit.”
He said some of the recent legal bills are related to complaints against a Health Department board member and employee.
The board voted 3-1 during a July 6 special meeting to extend the scope of an investigation into the complaints against the board member and Health Department employees. Board member Suzy Davis cast the only no vote.
Diehl said he could not name the board member or employee targeted in the ongoing investigation.
“I keep asking where we are with that, and the answer I get is that we continue to get new complaints and new issues, and it’s kind of an ongoing thing,” he said.
Vollmar said the Health Department started receiving numerous Sunshine Law requests in June 2020.
“I don’t really ever remember receiving a Sunshine request prior to that,” she said. “The majority of our requests have come regarding masks and our issuing of protocols in the community, whether that’s with businesses or with schools.
“There was a concerted effort, I believe, to fill our work with doing Sunshine requests so that we couldn’t focus on other things. I would say most of the ones from last year are dealing with our public health order. Then the ones this year dealt more with Maximus and our (COVID-19) contact tracing.”
Davis said she has submitted Sunshine Law requests to the Health Department and filed complaints against the Health Department with the Missouri Attorney General’s office.
Davis also has complained about the Health Department’s legal bills over the past couple of months.
She said she believes the legal costs are “excessive.”
Davis also said she believes the department is being overcharged and wants to see Coleman’s work log and itemized bills.
Diehl said Davis has been given a summary of the bills in her board packet at monthly meetings.
According to the Health Department’s July bill summary, Sandberg Phoenix was paid $10,035.89 for work completed in June.
One of the charges was $1,120 for four hours of work to “prepare for and attend board meetings.”
Another collection of charges in the summary of the bill was $3,024.10 for 10 hours for a “board member issue.”
Davis said she believes she is the board member and the work was related to the board’s recent censure of her. However, Davis questioned why it took 10 hours to deal with the issue.
“I don’t see what’s taking her 10 hours, maybe answering a few emails,” Davis said.
The board voted 3-1 on July 6 to censure her for reportedly not following bylaws and trying to tour the Health Department unaccompanied without a scheduled visit.
Diehl, Pigg and Henry voted in favor of the censure, and Prater was absent from the meeting.
Vollmar said she was surprised to hear that just 12.11 percent of the legal bills over the past 12 months were related to Davis.
“I think there’s maybe some underrepresentation (of charges connected to Davis) just because it may not have been just a directly planned contact.”
Diehl said he also believes that percentage is low.
“Her name may not have been included (on all the itemized bills), so I would say that it’s certainly reasonable, but it’s probably wrong,” he said.
Coleman said there could have been more charges connected to Davis because sometimes she would write “board member” in the itemized bill instead of Davis’ name.
Davis said she is aware of the policy directing board members to consult the chairperson about questions they have for the attorney, but nevertheless has contacted the attorney herself.
“She’s directly gotten in touch with me, and so I’m answering her. Sometimes I’m including her in on some of the emails I’ve sent to the chairman.”
Davis said she also emailed Coleman about the requirement that board members wear face masks at board meetings and in Health Department buildings.
“It’s against my core religious belief that I should have to wear a mask and inhibit my oxygen,” she said.
Davis, however, disputed the claim that she has texted Coleman but admitted she has emailed her.
Coleman said she has received texts from Davis, but mostly emails.
Coleman also said she has asked Davis to direct her communication to Vollmar or Diehl.
Davis said she has reached out directly to Coleman because Diehl does not respond to her because of his “disrespect” for her.
Diehl said he always answers Davis’ questions, but he does not respond to unsubstantiated claims and some questions like why the Health Department is immunizing people.
“She makes a lot of false claims that she repeats over and over again and one of those is that I don’t answer her questions,” he said. “I do respect that Ms. Davis was elected by the citizens and is expected to do a job, but I don’t respect the fact that she knows little to nothing about the Jefferson County Health Department or public health and has shown no interest in learning.”
Budget will be adjusted
Vollmar said the Health Department is going to have to budget more for legal expenses in the future.
“We’ve never really had this issue before with board members directly contacting our legal team and incurring expenses, and so from pretty much the time that (Davis has) come on board, I guess it’s been since July of last year, our legal expenses have increased tremendously, much more so than we budgeted for.”
Vollmar said $11,000 was budgeted for legal fees in 2020, and $20,000 in 2021.
She said the department is looking to budget about $120,000 for legal fees in 2022. “If we continue at the rate that we’re at, that’s like a 12-fold increase based on what has happened over the past year,” she said.
Coleman, who is the board’s main attorney, charges the Health Department an hourly rate of $280.
The Wegmann Law Firm, which had been the Health Department’s legal counsel since 1984, gave notice of resignation on Aug. 28, 2020, the day after the board passed a mask mandate, which was revoked 24 hours later.
Jessica Mikale was the main attorney for the Health Department when the Wegmann Law Firm represented the agency, and her rate was $145 per hour.