Oh gosh, I hate when I write seven paragraphs and then accidentally delete them.
So, here’s an abridged version of what I just lost.
The School Board is attempting a new legal scheme for shaking the taxpayers off their tail. They called a special meeting under “emergency” powers that their well paid attorneys alerted them to. Instead of a three day wait which would have given me the great fun of answering their deposition they met the day before and canceled my deposition.
The subject of the meeting was the defense attorney’s request to the Sixth District Court that it remove the taxpayer’s attorney, our sainted Craig Hunter, from the case for unethical conduct – specifically for representing a client who was part of a school board whose own attorney’s he was opposing in court. They argue that Attorney Craig Hunter used “privileged information” from the School Board attorneys against the School Board since Mr. Hunter represents one Board member who opposed the majority.
The second part of the meeting was to give the Board an excuse to kick Gary Glass off the Board for not agreeing with them and being a general pain in the neck by insisting that the voters should have a say in the future of the School District.
I seated myself in the Board room at noon along with the members of the press who had been alerted and JCI’s PR man Steve Greenfield. I read the letter of complaint sent to our attorney and chuckled at many of the howlers I read in it. This was a good one:
“[Gary Glass’] status as a school board member have given him access to information that plaintiffs have exploited to their advantage, allowing them to circumvent the discovery process.”
In two months since our attorney requested Discovery of the Sixth District Court the District’s attorneys have managed to find excuses not to provide this public data. Yet I, the principal antagonist of the District in Court provided over a thousand emails that they probably had no right to and which I realized they would use to impeach the motives of Gary Glass and others.
Furthermore, the District’s attorneys claim that Gary Glass has violated the attorney client privilege of School Board members. When? He’s never met with them. They have sent him no private communications. Perhaps this could be a sore point at some future date but today, in the closed meeting with his grim reaper colleagues, was the first time he’s seen the school board’s attorneys in private. Now he may, MAY, have to keep the School District’s attorney’s advice to himself.
What terrible things that Gary wrote to me did the District’s attorneys reveal to the judge? He was offering his analysis of the taxpayer’s legal position. Ironically, he was expressing disatisfaction that the Ttxpayer’s attorney wasn’t following his legal thinking. Here’s a civic’s question. Doe a person like Gary Glass lose his or her constitutional right to freedom of speech by being elected to public office? Apparently, according to the District’s lawyers Gary has. Another set of attorney’s for the District don’t think the people of Duluth should be able to exercise the same right to vote as other Minnesotans either. They are being paid a quarter of a million tax payers dollars to propound this manure. Watch out for the spray when their hammer comes down.
