Lee’s legal defense cost taxpayers $24,000

Ethics Board attorneys: $9,594.76

Total: $33,591.01

Cobb County taxpayers spent $24,000 on Commission Chairman Tim Lee’s legal defense against an ethics complaint, plus another $9,600 to cover the bills of two lawyers advising the Board of Ethics on the case.

Lee’s defense team submitted a 13-page invoice detailing about six weeks of work performed on behalf of the chairman last fall.

Although the case ended Nov. 21, Lee’s two attorneys — Ben Mathis and David Cole, both of whom are partners at Freeman Mathis & Gary — submitted their bill for $18,871 to the Cobb County Attorney’s Office Aug. 18.

A bill for $5,125 was submitted last year by an expert witness hired by Lee’s legal team. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained the invoices last week under Georgia’s Open Records Act.

The invoices show that both Mathis and Cole billed taxpayers at a rate of $145 an hour — which Mathis said is “substantially below our normal rate.” Both Ethics Board attorneys also billed at an hourly rate of $145. The invoice also says Mathis and Cole did not bill for 74 hours of work, which would have amounted to another $10,000 in expense.

Patrick Longan, a Mercer University law professor who served as Lee’s expert witness, provided no such discounts.

Longan billed the county at rates of $500 an hour (for 5.5 hours) and $250 an hour (for 9.5 hours). He was also paid $937.50 directly from Freeman Mathis & Gary, which was an expense in the law firm’s original invoice submitted to the county. That expense was removed and the invoice was resubmitted at a lower amount after the AJC brought it to Mathis’ attention.

Longan did not return phone messages left at his office.

Mathis said his bill was submitted nine months after the case because he wanted to make sure the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the legality of Cobb’s $368 million contribution to building SunTrust Park before asking for the money.

“I just thought that, if the stadium deal had somehow collapsed, I just wasn’t going to send a bill,” Mathis said, who was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce at the time.

Lee referred questions about the bill to the county attorney’s office.

West Cobb software salesman Tom Cheek filed the ethics complaint against Lee in August 2014, accusing the chairman of not responding to a request made under the Georgia Open Records Act and violating county rules by hiring an outside attorney to negotiate a preliminary agreement with the Braves. In exchange, Cheek's complaint says, the attorney was promised future legal work on SunTrust Park the project.

The second part of Cheek's complaint largely mirrored reporting by the AJC, which published two stories on Lee's secret deal with outside attorney Dan McRae, which Lee initially denied making. The newspaper's reporting was based, in part, on an email written by a Cobb Chamber executive on Lee's behalf promising McRae the job of project and bond counsel on the stadium deal.

County Attorney Deborah Dance said her office’s policy allowed Lee to selected his own attorney, at the agreed upon hourly rate.

Larry Savage, a retired businessman who ran against Lee for the Republican nomination in 2012, said some conservatives may criticize Cheek for bringing an action that cost so much money. That would be unfair, he said.

“Tom Cheek was standing up for the county and he should be applauded for doing it,” said Savage, who was one of three people to file a Supreme Court challenge over the legality of the county’s contribution to the Braves stadium. “The amount of the bills show the seriousness of the matter.”

Cheek, who acted as his own attorney, said he gave himself a $300 budget for the case — all of which was spent on open records requests.

Cheek told Lee during a September 2014 commission meeting that he would drop the case if the chairman apologized

Lee eventually did apologize Nov. 12, after a preliminary hearing at which the ethics board voted 5-1 to proceed to a trial-like hearing.

At the trial, the ethics board dismissed the portion of Cheek’s complaint dealing with the alleged open records violations, saying that was a matter of law that should be decided by the court system. Cheek then withdrew the portion of his complaint dealing with McRae’s hiring, saying that he had promised to let that go in exchange for Lee’s apology.

Cheek said the process seemed like a “stacked deck,” but he is glad he went through with it. He said it is unfortunate that Lee didn’t apologize sooner.

“If Chairman Lee had apologized in early September, instead of in mid November, he would have saved the county a lot of money,” Cheek said. “I do not regret bringing the case forward, and I am proud of what has been accomplished before the ethics complaint process and after. I think the county is in a better place in regards to transparency than we were before.

“The Ethics Code is stronger. There is more staff in place for answering Open Records Requests, and the Attorney General is working with the County Attorney to improve response times and costs for requests.”