During the “Council Reports” part of the October 2, 2016 Town Council Meeting, Councilmember Solomon read a privileged communication between the town attorney and the mayor and council.
Town Attorney Cohen explained the different types of Attorney-Client Privilege during the October 16th council meeting, when Mayor Winfield waived his attorney-client privilege in order to release private information.
“The lawyer has certain privileges with the body that only the body can waive. From time to time, the lawyer has confidential communication with individuals that are one-on-one. What we’re talking about here is a one-on-one communication with the mayor only, limited to an issue for the mayor that he has now instructed me to publicly disclose. This is not a “body” privilege. This is a one-on-one confidence.”In the case of Mayor Winfield, it was a one-on-one confidence, therefore, he was the only one who needed to waive the attorney-client privilege in order for the communication to be made public.
In the case of Councilmember Solomon, however, the letter he read from the dais was a private communication between the town attorney and the entire council (the body). Therefore, the entire council needed to waive the attorney-client privilege before Councilmember Solomon could make it public. But that was not the case. The entire council had not waived the attorney-client privilege.
I submitted a Public Records Request to obtain a copy of the letter. The Town responded that they could not release it due to attorney-client privilege. I responded that I thought the attorney-client privilege had been waived when Solomon read the letter publicly. The Town responded that the memo was addressed to the entire council and therefore the privilege had to be waived by the entire council and that Solomon made “a mistake” in releasing the content of that memo.
Solomon’s legal mistake is particularly amusing because during the October 16th council meeting, he professed to knowing more about the law than the town attorney. Read about that in Part 2. tomorrow.
Solomon doesn’t follow his own orders
When Councilmember Solomon was called out publicly at a prior meeting for having a conflict of interest regarding the golf course issue due to his being involved in a real estate deal to purchase property along the Canada Course, he denied it and said only, “I do not own property on the golf course.” He never admitted to being in escrow to purchase that property. He never admitted to planning to build condos and townhomes along that golf course.
With that in mind, it seems fitting to quote Solomon’s own words from the October 16th council meeting during his lecture on amending the council liaison appointments.
Solomon: “Be upfront about it. Be honest about it for once, what you’re doing. Don’t sit there and go through a whole charade of why this is happening.”Perhaps Solomon should stop lecturing others on what he himself refuses to do.
Part 2, “Councilmember Solomon violates Town Council Parliamentary Rules” will be published tomorrow.
