Following a Friday dismissal of a Lauderdale County appeal against a 2015 ethics ruling, Lauderdale County board attorney Lee Thaggard clarified the county’s position on the issue.

Thaggard’s response came after Tommy Williams, a Marion resident who filed the initial ethics complaint, confronted the board during their Monday meeting.

Williams accused Rick Barry, Thaggard’s law firm partner, of purposely violating the Open Meetings Act with a “rolling quorum,” or meetings of elected officials in groups of two about the same issue at staggered times. Meetings of three elected officials concerning public policy must be publicized according to the act. 

Wayman Newell, the board president and District 2 representative, responded to Williams questions about whether Newell thought Barry intentionally violated the act. 

“I don’t think he (Barry) knew that it was against the law,” Newell said. 

Joe Norwood, the representative for District 4, advised Newell to discuss the issue with the board’s attorney and not with Williams during the board meeting.

Following an executive session, during which Williams had left, Thaggard said the practice in question, called either rolling quorums or piecemeal quorums, was a common practice several years ago up until the 2015 ruling from the Mississippi Ethics Commission.

Williams’ 2014 complaint, about 2013 meetings over a bond issue, predates any other rulings on meetings of less than a quorum, Thaggard said. 

“(Prior) to March of 2013, the Attorney General, who is statutorily tasked with providing advisory opinions to public officials on questions of law relating to their offices, was the only official to issue an opinion squarely on the subject involved in Mr. Williams’ Complaint,” Thaggard said Monday afternoon via email. “In 2015 when the MEC issued its adverse decisions against Lauderdale County and the City of Columbus, the MEC essentially expanded the statutory definition of a “meeting”.”

As for the three-year wait between the ethics commission ruling, in January of 2015, and formal case dismissal on Friday, Thaggard said Lauderdale County waited to see the outcome of the City of Columbus’ appeal, which faced a similar ethics violation about meetings in less than a quorum. 

Columbus lost that appeal in the fall, which Thaggard said prompted the county to let the case drop. Since the Chancery Court, where the appeal was filed, would automatically “clean up” its docket of year-old cases without actions, Thaggard said they waited until the appeal would be automatically dismissed by the court.

Thaggard also said that the retainer fee paid to his and Barry’s firm covered the costs associated with the ethics appeal.