Hamilton County Commission Regular session -- Nov. 19, 2008

Hamilton County’s Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority has 10 days to hand over detailed versions of attorney John Anderson’s legal bills from the past year or the county will take it to court.

On Wednesday, the County Commission voted 7-1 to pass a resolution threatening the authority with a lawsuit if it doesn’t hand over the documents, which Commissioner Curtis Adams requested.

“After we pass this, we’ll put this in the hands of County Attorney Rheubin Taylor,” Mr. Adams said.

The one detractor was Commissioner Richard Casavant, who has said he believes efforts to demand the documents from the authority amount to micro-management.

Authority board Chairman Henry Hoss was not present at Wednesday’s meeting, but County Mayor Claude Ramsey relayed a message from Mr. Hoss.

“He has provided all the information that he has,” Mr. Ramsey said. “He has requested (Mr. Anderson) forward the detailed information.”

On Friday, Mr. Hoss provided to the commission a notebook containing invoices for services Mr. Anderson provided the authority.

In a set of near-identical documents received in October by Mr. Adams, most descriptions of services provided by Mr. Anderson for the authority were blacked out. In the versions provided Friday, only descriptions on pages labeled “pending litigation” were blacked out.

Mr. Adams said the information was “not worth the paper it’s printed on.” He said he wanted documentation of the amount of time Mr. Anderson spent working and descriptions of what he was doing.

Mr. Adams requested the documents on behalf of an East Ridge citizens group. Mr. Anderson is the attorney for the city of East Ridge and the authority.