The legal memo related to Leland’s laptop dust-up in February is out, and indicates that the efforts to circumvent city staff to procure a laptop were potentially unlawful. But, intervention by the town manager to stop that process prevented any illegal action from occurring, the memo notes.
That legal advisory opinion will be the center of a special council meeting in Leland on Wednesday, March 18 at 7 p.m. The meeting does not have a public comment period, and the only item for discussion is the memo.
The full legal memo is available below, but first: context.
On February 9, the town of Leland held a special meeting to discuss an issue related to one council member’s efforts to procure a laptop for council business. While all council members typically use an iPad, new councilmember Frank Pendleton requested a laptop, saying it would help him review budget spreadsheets and other complicated documents.
The city agreed to purchase one for him, but when the timeline was longer than he anticipated, he tried to go around city staff to talk with the vendor directly and order a different laptop.
The meeting came about because Town Manager David Hollis had sent an email to council raising concerns about these efforts. He wrote, “The unilateral injection of the council person into the procurement process raises serious policy and potential legal concerns.”
Hollis added, “The manager is responsible for all purchases and executes procurement through adhering to the purchasing policies of the town. The policies are established to be compliant with state and federal laws and to create the appropriate checks and balances to assure proper stewardship of the town's financial resources. Injection of persons not expressly authorized by the policy to act on behalf of the town and whose actions do not take place in the checks and balances procedures in the policy exposes the town to risk and create confusion.”
The special meeting did not initially name the councilmember in question, but council member Frank Pendleton outed himself as the person in question during the meeting, and stated, “a lot of the information in that letter was not factual.”
Council voted 4-1 at that time to ask town attorney Stephen Coggins to “research this matter and provide us with an advisory legal opinion about potential matters related to regulations and policies,” as Mayor Brenda Bozeman said in the meeting.
That legal review is now available, and the 175-page report finds that the facts of the issue are undisputed: That Pendleton’s request for a laptop was approved, but he didn’t want to wait till April for the laptop and went to the vendor to request a different laptop. The vendor then told staff about the intervention, and Town Manager Hollis told the vendor not to substitute the product.
“The Town Manager treated the original PO as being cancelled and directed the Vendor to not order a substitute product and to deal with Staff and not Councilperson Pendleton in connection with the same," according to the memo.
According to the review’s conclusions, the town manager’s intervention “removed the risk of any violations of law that conceivably could have occurred had those contacts continued unabated.”
WHQR reached out to councilmember Pendleton, but he did not respond before press time. The full report can be viewed below.
