City Attorney won’t face subpoena

THURSDAY, AUG. 20 — The Lansing City Attorney will not face a subpoena request from the City Council’s Committee on Ways and Means. After a sometimes contentious and vocal meeting at city hall yesterday, Judi Brown Clarke, a city councilmember at large and chair of the committee, said she felt the situation with Janene McIntyre, the city attorney, had been resolved.

“We have a deliverable date of Sept. 16,” Brown Clarke said in a phone interview after the meeting.

At issue was providing information to city retirees about their health care cost sharing. The issue has been simmering since 2010, when the Bernero administration changed the formula for those who retired after Feb. 20, 2004, said Denise Estee, a 2005 retiree.

Estee worked for the city for 34 years in the Department of Neighborhood and Planning. She said under her union contract she was vested for healthcare coverage as she paid it when she retired. At that time, her cost sharing was zero.

But in 2010 and for the next three years,, the city began charging her a portion of her monthly insurance premium. That averaged out to be about $111 a month. Late last year, city officials determined that they had been overcharging retirees for their cost sharing provision, and made a refund. Of the slightly more than $4,000 Estee spent in cost sharing in three years, the city cut her a check for $1,700, effectively reducing her average monthly payment during that period to about  $64 a month. Estee argues that she shouldn’t be paying anything, because the contract under which she retired vested her with no cost-sharing healthcare in retirement

She is now paying about $166 month.

McIntyre in her role as City Attorney had reviewed that specific change as well as a change to another group of retirees. Her review, in fact, found the city had inappropriately been over-charging the retirees for their benefits.

But how that partial compensation payment schedule was developed is unclear because McIntyre put her reasoning in a confidential legal memo to the Mayor and council. As a result of a closed door session, McIntyre has agreed to provide Council members with a memo which does not contain any of the confidential information and that can be shared with retirees and the public..   

On Monday, Brown Clarke indicated that if McIntyre failed to provide the committee with a redacted memo to release or appear for the committee for a closed session to separate the confidential material, that the Committee would send a resolution to the full council requesting a subpoena. A subpoena is authorized under the City Charter and would have required a simple majority vote by the Council to be issued.

That announcement had Mayor Virg Bernero seeing red. He issued a statement calling the demand “trivial” and “laughable.” Tuesday he appeared on the Dave Akerly radio show and said the move was politically motivated — charges Brown Clarke denies.

Also playing into the conflict, internal auditor Jim DeLine provided City Council with an audit report that alleged the city’s law department — run by McIntyre owed over $150,000 in past due legal bills. Those bills were over 90 days past their due date, he said.

DeLine indicated he had requested the billing from the City Attorney in early July, but two weeks later, her office still had not provided the documents. Brown Clarke said during the Committee meeting today that the committee authorized DeLine to contact law vendors the following week if he had not been provided the requested documents by the city attorney.

He did so.

Bernero sent a letter on Tuesday to City Council President Tina Houghton accusing DeLine of overstepping his authorized powers under the City Charter. The letter asked Houghton to reprimand DeLine.

DeLine declined to comment until after he had an opportunity to meet with Houghton.

But Brown Clarke read from the City Charter to note DeLine’s authorization to conduct audits and obtain information from vendors.

Bernero had accused DeLine and Brown of conducting a “fishing expedition,” with the audit, which also reviewed any outstanding bills for code compliance and the city owned property mowing contracts. That review found there were no outstanding bills.

Angela Bennett, Finance Director for the city, took issue with DeLine’s audit during the meeting. She said normal practice for audits was for the auditor to share a draft of findings with the audit targets.

“That lets everyone talk about it,” she said.

DeLine did not share the draft findings, which Bennett said had several issues.