When Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon accidentally signed his own term limits on Wednesday, Democratic legislators turned to their newfound tool to enforce their agenda: the legislature’s lawyer.
McMahon tried override his own signing with a veto about 20 minutes later. The county law department said the first email had been a mistake.
His accidental signing set off the newest skirmish in an ongoing legal arms race between his office and the legislature.
For the first three months of the Democrats’ majority in the legislature, they tried to find their footing. In interviews, many said the best time to enact their agenda would be September, during the county’s budget cycle.
That all changed in April, when the legislature approved its contract with Underberg & Kessler, a law firm in Rochester. The firm has helped the Democratic majority chart legal pathways to achieve their goals.
The legislature has access to county lawyers. But having their own lawyers helps them to get additional opinions on what is and isn’t legal, and how to navigate the sometimes narrow path between what they want to do and what they can do, legislators said.
“Sometimes that just gets you a little farther along than just asking the same people,” said Elaine Denton, a freshman legislator.
The Onondaga County Legislature’s legal battles have sped up significantly since their slow start this winter. Legislators attributed that slow start to their new majority — 6 of 10 legislators are in their first term — spent the first quarter of the year focused on learning. Since retaining counsel, they’ve sped up.
Past legislators have emphasized the importance of having outside counsel to independent governance. Democrats could determine that counsel once they obtained a majority on the legislature.
“The law department works for the county executive, and if he wants them to find something, they’re going to find it,” said Bill Kinne, a former legislator of more than twenty years and a critic of McMahon. “If you don’t have your own representation, you can’t challenge that.”
Kinne believes that both the majority party and the minority party should have their own separate legislative counsel.
Since April, legislators have passed three local laws related to term limits and filling vacancies in the legislature. McMahon has tried to veto all of them. They overhauled the board of the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency and passed another local law increasing transparency of donations from Friends groups, county foundations, to the county.
It is standard practice for the county legislature to have its own counsel. The previous iteration of the legislature retained Harris Beach PLLC, a firm that has donated nearly $40,000 to Ryan McMahon’s campaign fund over the last eight years.
One of the first things the new legislature voted on — back in their Jan. 2 session at the beginning of the year — was the assignment of legislative counsel.
They wanted to retain Bousquet Holstein, a local firm. One of the freshman legislators, Gregg Eriksen, works for that law firm. The choice stalled in conflict of interest reviews for several months, said Legislature Chair Nicole Watts.
Ultimately the legislature chose to retract their appointment and instead retain Underberg & Kessler, a law firm from Rochester. During the April legislative sessions when they made that decision, Republicans pushed back. They said that they were glad to see Democrats moving away from Bousquet Holstein but voted against the motion, adding that it was important to have a firm more directly connected to Onondaga County.
“It’s hard for me, being a local public entity, to get behind a non-local service provider to this body,” said Republican Minority Leader Brian May. “So for that reason, I will oppose it, but not vociferously.”
The decision to appoint Underberg & Kessler passed 10-7, along party lines.
Since then, Democrats have pushed back more forcefully on the county executive. Much of that has been made possible by the new legal counsel.
In April, shortly after the legislature approved its new counsel, legislators learned that the county had accepted funds from the sale of its film hub to help bridge the funding gap for the aquarium.
The month before, Bill Gilberti, a representative of Friends of the Aquarium had told the legislature that, so far, $7.6 million had been donated to the Friends organization. About $5.9 million of that money had been donated from the Friends organization to the county’s aquarium project, he said. When legislators asked who had donated, Gilberti told them that the donors had a right to anonymity, but added that 42 donors had contributed.
It soon became clear that $5.7 million of that total had been donated from the sale of the county’s film hub.
Democrats insisted that they should have a right to know who donated, in part to ensure there were not future conflicts of interest or perceived corruption in donations.
But the county continued to insist that United States Supreme Court case law required donors to have anonymity.
Democrats crafted a new local law, ensuring that their lawyer looked over it before they voted on it. That law required the Friends groups to inform the chair of the legislature and relevant committees of the donors while still following the Supreme Court case law by keeping the information completely private from the public.
The Democrats passed their law in the legislature in May. County Executive Ryan McMahon signed it into law.
Having outside counsel was an “important piece” of being able to confidently pursue their goals, said Watts at the time. “But I think we would have been stepping into this anyways,” she said.
The Democrats then turned to the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency. They replaced several members of that agency with people they believed better align with their goals of developing affordable housing. Many of the people who were replaced had years left in their terms.
The county law department questioned whether the move was legal. Republicans planned to challenge its legality on the floor. But shortly before the session, Democrats attached a letter from their lawyer responding to the county law department’s concerns and contending that the move was legal.
Unable to fight on legal grounds, Republicans instead offered a deal.
On Wednesday, after talking to both the county law department and their own legal counsel, the legislature decided to hold McMahon to the first letter he signed.
Democratic legislators ran the decision by their lawyer to get approval.
County Attorney Bob Durr called the move “illegal,” and said a court would find a “clear winner” in the county executive’s argument.
Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny, a Democrat, said he researched case law when legislators last year imposed term limits on themselves. He believes the Board of Elections must accept the adoption letter submitted by legislature Democrats but does not know what a court will find.
“I think we’re all going to be in court together,” he said.
Editor’s note: Bousquet Holstein PLLC is a sponsor of Central Current and Bousquet Holstein PLLC founding member Laurence Bousquet is the board chair of Central Current.
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