Town Of Wakefield: Special Municipal Employee

Press release from the Town of Wakefield:

December 15, 2021 - 12:20pm

Our Town Counsel represents and advises the Zoning Board of Appeals.  When the ZBA has legal questions, he answers them.  When the ZBA's decisions are appealed, he defends them in court.  On the rare occasions when a Town board files an application with the ZBA, the Town Counsel cannot represent both the applicant and the ZBA because he can't ethically be on both sides of the table.  In that situation the Town Council has to appoint special counsel to represent the applicant board.

Ideally, the Town would aim in such a situation to engage the pro bono services of a local lawyer who would represent the applicant board without charging a fee.  But there's a problem: even an unpaid lawyer who represents a Town board becomes a 'municipal employee' for purposes of the State Ethics Law, meaning that he becomes conflicted out of representing anyone else before any local board.  There's only a small universe of lawyers who understand zoning well and who might consider donating their services to the Town; it would be an intolerable burden to tell them that in doing so, they would forfeit the right to represent other clients before the ZBA, the Planning Board, the Conservation Commission and other public bodies.

It was to avoid this 'no good deed goes unpunished' consequence that in 2017 the Board of Selectmen (as they were then known), unanimously voted that 'any lawyer who, without remuneration, represents the Board of Selectmen, the Permanent Building Committee and/or any other Town board or committee before the Board of Appeals and/or the Planning Board in connection with an application for relief or approval under any zoning or other land use regulation for any use or improvement of Town property [shall] be deemed a special municipal employee for purposes of the State Ethics Law. By virtue of being 'special municipal employees,' pro bono lawyers representing Town boards may appear before other boards on unrelated matters.  The designation eliminates a huge disincentive to municipal service and makes it possible for the Town to take advantage of the uncompensated services of volunteer attorneys.

Volunteers interested need to complete the Application for Appointment and submit that along with your resume via email to Sherri Dalton, Executive Assistant by 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 30th, 2021.  The special municipal employee will be appointed at the January 10th, 2022 Town Council meeting.

This press release was produced by the Town of Wakefield.The views expressed here are the author’s own.