City Councilman Jeff Cooper said this morning that only “reluctantly” did he sign onto the new campaign finance reform ordinance to comply with a state law at last evening’s meeting.
He was holding out because he was unclear about the degree of financial liability to City Hall if it were to face a legal challenge over non-compliance.
He kept asking City Hall’s legal team.
“I never really received a satisfactory response, he said.
Mr. Cooper and Mayor Mehaul O’Leary previously had resisted changing the laws because the next Council campaign already is under way. They said changing now would make the playing field uneven for later-arriving candidates.
The mayor shifted his position last evening while Mr. Cooper clung to his.
Insistently, Mr. Cooper kept asking City Atty. Carol Schwab and two other City Hall lawyers about the legal risk.
“As I have said, I still had not made up my mind, and I was not satisfied with the answers I was getting,” Mr. Cooper said.
“I wanted to know about our exposure risk if we were doing our due diligence and working on the issue. I did not feel like I got good clarity on my questions.”
Ultimately, Mr. Cooper jumped across the creek and voted for the side he did not necessarily believe in.
“Knowing that I was going to be on the losing end, and it was going to pass either way, I went along with it,” Mr. Cooper said.
Gotta ask again – what does a picture of Gary Silbiger and our City attorney have to do with this article? The consultant attorneys were alluding to threatened litigation if we didn’t change the law immediately – does Gary have something to do with that? I am just not understanding the connection here. Please explain.