CHC 1979-07-18 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MR. ISHIDA: . . . . MR. BESS: Okay. I 'm just reading from Section 5-2.3 as amended it says. . .Except as specified in Section 3-8 (c) of this charter, the corporation counsel shall be the chief legal advisor. . .okay, let ' s just take that for a minute. When I look at this new section relating to legal counsel for the county council , it makes it very clear that the counsel for the council cannot do anything that would be in conflict with the corporation counsel ' s office. Now, it seems to me that notwithstanding this provision relating to legal counsel for the council that the corporation counsel remain the chief legal advisor for the county, including the county council. So that there is no necessity to delete the council.When you leave the Section 5-2.3 as is, leaving the council in it still reads well with this new provision. I guess I should be the one asking the question. Why is it that the council was deleted from Section 5-2.3? MR. SCHUTTE: Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bess , I believe Mr. Oda was asked this question and he had an answer for that. MR. ODA: Well , basically, it ' s to be sure that the legal staff of the county council shall be giving the county council legal advice. It was unavoidable in that corporation counsel section to keep the corporation counsel as legal advisor to all county agencies but there is a rule of law that says any other specified provisions in the law shall overrule any general provisions of law. So, because the corporation counsel has to be the legal advisor for all the county, including the county council , in effect, the provision regards to legal staff makes it absolutely clear that the legal staff shall be giving advice to the county council . There might be a situation which none of us can really think of right now, a situation where maybe one of the councilmen might say, hey, I don ' t like your opinion, Mr. Jones, I 'm going to run to the corporation counsel for another opinion. I don 't know whether that can happen but the reverse cannot happen. If there is an opinion of the corporation counsel ' s office in existence then the staff attorney of the county council cannot overrule that. That ' s why we put that in. The reason why we left out the language the county council from the corporation counsel section , basically, is to--under the word agencies the county council is already included, I believe. By leaving the word council in sort of made it a little foggy as to the legal staff provision in the other section. I thought I was making it clear but maybe Mr. Bess is right, maybe it' s making it foggier, I don ' t know. Did you all understand that hazy, foggy explanation? MR. TRULSON : Basically, when it says in here representative of all county agencies, the council is automatically included, right? Without being named. -24-