Irrigation District investigates fees
Megan Strickland
Shelly Cordis, Carole Lyons, Sheila Vallejo
Megan Strickland
Tim Orr
Megan Strickland
Trudy Samuelson
Megan Strickland
Jerry Laskody
Megan Strickland
Gene Erb
Megan Strickland
Johanna Clark
Megan Strickland
Mission Irrigation Board
Megan Strickland
Johanna Clark
Megan Strickland
Gene Erb
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ST. IGNATIUS – Mission Irrigation District Commissioners have hired a Missoula attorney to determine if the district has to pay $56,000 in legal costs and consulting fees that commissioners claim were never properly approved or disclosed to the public.
Commission Chair Jerry Laskody said he and many members of the public specifically asked in summer 2013 if water expert Alan Mikkelson or Mikkelson’s firm, Alpine Research, LLC, was being paid by the district for consultation. Those who inquired never received a straight answer, according to Laskody.
In April, Laskody discovered through a conversation with the district’s then-attorney John Teets that Teets had hired Mikkelson under an alleged contract clause that allows the attorney to employ whomever he wants as a consultant. Laskody said he tried to hold a public meeting about the consulting fees before an April recall election, but he was not allowed to do so by the two other commissioners. Those two commissioners have since been recalled.
After instatement of new commissioners and the subsequent firing of the Browning, Kaleczyc, Berry, and Hoven, PC law firm that Teets is affiliated with, an itemized bill to the district revealed $36,000 in charges for consultation by Mikkelson and Alpine Research. In Laskody’s opinion, the charges weren’t properly authorized and might not be legal.
“No public discussion or a public vote was made to hire Mr. Mikkelson or Alpine Research,” Laskody said. “I was suspicious but unaware that Alan was somehow on the payroll.”
The charges are what Laskody called a “double whammy” to the district’s finances because both Teets and Mikkelson were billed separately at $185 an hour each to talk with each other. All in all, the district was billed $56,000 for Teets and Mikkelson to communicate.
Teets told the commissioners via telephone that the charges weren’t out of line.
“The invoices are there,” Teets said. “I charge for my time for the fact that I worked on the project and Alan charged for his time for what he worked on the project. When you have a consultant or an expert that works on your project that’s typically what happens. You have a consultant that is billing and an attorney that is billing. That is industry standard.”
“Industry standard” didn’t sit well with the majority of the public who attended the irrigation district commissioners’ June 4 special meeting and spoke against paying the undisclosed fees.
“Those commissioners were asked many, many times by the irrigators of the Mission District to do things different,” irrigator Gene Erb said. “If they would like to pay it themselves, then so be it … We need to charge those four commissioners for what they did to the irrigators … Without saying it, this is waste, fraud, and abuse on a big, large scale.”
Commissioners voted to hire Missoula attorney Bea Kaleva to investigate if the charges are legal, because the district’s requests to have information released to its current attorney Jon Metropoulos have been met with resistance. Possible conflicts of interests between Metropoulos and the Browning, Kaleczyc, Berry, and Hoven, PC law firm in ongoing water rights litigation necessitated the hiring of Kaleva.
Moving forward, the commissioners want to settle the district’s debts, but also want to only pay what is legally justified, Commissioners Gene Posivio and Tim Orr said.
“We may owe them something, but definitely don’t owe them all this ball of wax,” Posivio said.
The commissioners said it is imperative to get the billing fiasco behind the district so irrigators can focus on much more important issues including the pending Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Water Compact and possible resumption of control of the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project.
“We’ve had enough lawsuits in our community,” Orr said. “It is our desire to bring healing, peace and cooperation back into our community and the irrigation district.”
