NewburyportNews.com, Newburyport, MA

In a 6 to 2 vote last night, the council agreed to give Council President Chris Lawrence the authority to move forward with the hiring.

Voting for the measure were councilors Hank Brennick, Alison Lindstrom, Mario Pinierio, Donna McClure, Michelle Thone and Lawrence. Voting against it were councilors Ann Connolly-King and Roger Benson. Councilor Bob Lavoie was absent.

Under the Town Charter, the council has the ability to hire staff to conduct the business of the Municipal Council. Thone said the bills for the lawyer will be submitted to the town's chief financial officer, Michael Basque, and paid for with the town's legal services budget. That budget was appropriated at $100,000 for FY2007.

The council is responding to a report sent to the town last summer by Inspector General Gregory Sullivan. Sullivan criticized aspects of the Fafard deal that would develop the area around Bailey's Pond, a 25-acre, town-owned parcel, south of the intersection of Interstate 495 and Route 150. Sullivan said the town may have violated municipal finance laws.

Mayor Thatcher Kezer has hired attorney Thomas Urbelis of the Boston law firm Urbelis and Fieldsteel, LLP, to conduct an independent review of the process the town took to make the deal.

But the council said it needs its own attorney to address specific questions. The council is considering a bill that will rescind the measure taken in 2005, which approved then-Mayor David Hildt's recommendation to award the development to Fafard Real Estate and Development Corp.

The town's law firm, Kopelman & Paige, issued an opinion on the bill shortly after it was first filed by then-Municipal Councilor Jim Chandler in January 2005. That opinion said the measure could not be rescinded because the agreement is "a binding obligation of the town" and that voiding the agreement could expose the town to a lawsuit.

After the town received the report from Sullivan last summer, Lawrence re-filed Chandler's bill. It hasn't yet been sent back to the full council for a vote.

"I think it's pretty clear that we need legal counsel," Thone said. "We have none."

The council does not have access to the town's attorneys, she said.

Kezer told the council that he is not asking Urbelis to look at their bill and is relying on the 2005 opinion of Kopelman & Paige.

"It is not my intention to use attorney Urbelis for reviewing current issues before the council," Kezer wrote to Lawrence in an e-mail last week. Lawrence said Kopelman & Paige have been wrong in the past, and the 2005 opinion was issued before Sullivan's report.

Thone said it is worth it for the council to hire an attorney, and its "hands have been tied" for further response to Sullivan's report until it gets a legal opinion.

If the council authorizes Lawrence to seek estimates for legal services without a set amount of money he can spend, Benson said, it's "putting the cart before the horse."

Connolly-King asked Lawrence if he knew how much was currently in the legal budget. Lawrence said he didn't know the figure offhand. "We know there's some (money) in there," Lawrence said.

Thone said she's hopeful there is "still plenty of money" in the legal budget since it's early in the fiscal year.

Benson said Lawrence criticized the mayor for not having a set price for how much Urbelis' services would cost the town when he was hired, and said the council should have its own parameters before going forward with the plan.

Lawrence said he will come back to the full council with estimates before hiring an attorney.

Connolly-King called the measure "wasteful spending." If the council goes over the town's legal budget, she said, it would be paid for by "raiding other people's budgets." The money is coming out of the pockets of the taxpayers, she said, while the mayor is already addressing the situation.

Pinierio said the town is losing money on the Bailey's Pond project. "Don't you want to get to the bottom of it?" Pinierio asked Connolly-King. "Somebody is hiding something, and we want to get to the bottom of it."

Lawrence and Thone sponsored the bill and initially proposed taking $20,000 from town departments that had staff vacancies to pay for the lawyer.