The East Ridge City Council this week backed off a November vote allowing them to keep their city-issued iPhones and iPads when they leave office.
On Nov. 8, the council members voted after former City Attorney John Anderson told them that the state's Municipal Technical Advisory Service said they could keep the electronics as a perk of the job.
Earlier this week, a legal adviser from the state government told them they weren't allowed to do that. So Thursday, they voted to rescind their previous resolution.
Greg Cothron, assistant general counsel for Tennessee's comptroller of the treasury, wrote to Mayor Brent Lambert on Wednesday that the East Ridge Charter does not allow for such perks.
The City Council fired Anderson in December and replaced him with interim City Attorney Hal North.
"MTAS legal staff further advised me that at no time did they indicate to the former city attorney that giving the city purchased electronic equipment to an elected official upon leaving office would be legal," Cothron wrote.
Lambert said Thursday he had been told otherwise by MTAS, but he didn't have anything in writing at the meeting. He said council members should be able to keep their phones because, after four years in office, the phones lost so much value that there's no sense in trying to sell them.
On Thursday, he suggested the city give council members a stipend to buy their own phones and other electronic equipment.
"This was something that we talked about before," he said. "It's actually what MTAS preferred us to do."
In his letter, Cothron wrote that council members should not be allowed to keep electronics because it doesn't help the city in any way, isn't expressly allowed under the charter and could create a conflict of interest.
For example, if the council voted on equipment that they would get to keep after leaving office, some council members might push for the most expensive gadgets rather than the most sensible ones. After all, they wouldn't pay for it, at least not all of it. Taxpayers would.
In addition to Lambert, council members Denny Manning and Larry Sewell also voted in November to pass the resolution. Vice Mayor Jim Bethune voted against it, and council member Marc Gravitt was not in office at the time.
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