Alan Sorensen Havre Daily News asorensen@havredailynews.com
The pay scale for the two top law officers in Havre was settled Thursday evening, but the city of Havre still doesn’t have a lawyer to prosecute cases in city court. The Havre City Council unanimously approved paying Havre’s interim chief and assistant chief of police the wages paid for those same duties prior to former Chief Mike Barthel’s retirement. “The mayor wants to pay the interim chief chief’s wages until a new chief is appointed,” committee chairman Rick Pierson told the committee. The acting chief of police is George Tate and acting assistant chief of police is Stan Martin. The finance committee was then sent scrambling to rectify the prosecutor’s situation after City Judge Joyce Perszyk presented it with what she said were several violations of state annotated code. The city has been without a prosecutor since July 1, after city prosecutor Tammi Barkus’ one-year contract with the city expired on June 30. The lawyer the city thought had accepted the position withdrew his name late Monday afternoon. In his fax to Mayor Bob Rice, Havre attorney Carl White said he was withdrawing because he had thought no other lawyers had submitted bids. He said in his fax that he learned only after he had been offered and had accepted the job that Barkus had submitted a bid. White’s bid was $40,000 and Barkus’ was $51,600, Rice said Tuesday morning. City Judge Joyce Perszyk informed the finance committee members at their meeting Thursday night at City Hall that the city policy of splitting up the city attorney jobs was against state annotated code. She also said a single attorney must be appointed for a two-year term rather than one. Perszyk said the job of representing the city in civil matters was the secondary responsibility of a city attorney according to code. The primary function, she said, is to prosecute violations of city ordinances and misdemeanors. She added that she sent a request to the state Supreme Court in May for clarification of the city’s procedures for filling the city attorney positions. Perszyk told the committee the joint duties had been held by a single law firm until about six years ago when the duties were split into criminal and civil responsibilities. She said Barkus had first served as city prosecutor when she worked as a lawyer with the law firm Bosch, Kuhr, Dugdale, Martin and Kaze Attorneys, the city attorney firm then and now. After Barkus left the firm, Perszyk said, the Havre law firm decided it didn’t want to prosecute cases anymore and the city opted to contract out the prosecutor’s job. Barkus bid and was awarded the job each subsequent year, she said. The council has continued to approve the mayor’s appointment of the Havre law firm to represent its civil law issues, as it did again Monday evening, and to put the prosecutor’s job up for annual bid. Perszyk said that practice has left her court without a prosecutor for the first cases she handles after July 1 each of the last five or six years, a situation she is facing again this year. Committee members agreed that the situation needs immediate action. “There’s a case load here and we need to do something,” Gerry Veis said. “We’re just dancing around here,” Jack Brandon said. Pierson said he would contact Jim Kaze at the law firm as soon as possible and get clarification. “If we have to meet tomorrow night, we’ll meet,” Pierson said. “We have to get this cleared up. Personally, I don’t care who, we need a prosecutor to prosecute the cases.”
