Mar 30, 2022
OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Dunkirk City Attorney Richard Morrisroe will now be handling traffic ticket prosecutions.
Dunkirk is poised to overturn a resolution paying city attorney Richard Morrisroe and his paralegal a percentage of future traffic ticket prosecution revenues.
The Common Council’s Finance Committee agreed Monday to instead pay a set rate based on revenues from the past couple of years. City officials differed on whether to call it a stipend, a pay raise or a lump sum.
The funding for the extra pay is now apparently going to come from a budget transfer. It’s part of a six-month pilot program Dunkirk is doing in response to a decision by the Chautauqua County District Attorney’s office to scale back its own traffic ticket prosecution.
“I think we will be doing that ticket prosecution for some time,” Morrisroe said. Dunkirk Mayor Wilfred Rosas added that it was presented as a six-month pilot program mainly because he wasn’t sure Morrisroe would have time for the prosecutions over the long term.
Morrisroe and Rosas both asked the Common Council to change the method of pay.
“The perception of kickback is the issue, that we would be maximizing fine income to pad our wallets,” Morrisroe said. However, he doesn’t control the police or what the fine amounts are, the city attorney added.
Rosas said public perception is important and “keeping it simple with a flat amount is the way to go.”
The mayor also questioned the legality of a resolution that would give the prosecuting attorney a portion of revenues from the cases he was arguing.
While Finance Committee members Martin Bamonto, Natalie Luczkowiak and Nancy Nichols generally agreed with Morrisroe and Rosas, they differed on what to call the outlay to the legal workers. Nichols said it should be called a stipend while Luczkowiak felt it should be termed a pay raise.
“It’s all semantics,” said Morrisroe. “The end result is the same.”
County District Attorney Jason Schmidt told the OBSERVER and Post-Journal he was concerned with the agreement passed earlier this month by the city. “I recognize the sensitivities and considerations here and have made inquiries concerning the terms of the agreement Dunkirk City reached with its attorney relative to the prosecution of Vehicle and Traffic Law violations,” he wrote. “It is imperative for all involved that my delegation of authority to prosecute (vehicle and traffic) violations be implemented in a manner that promotes public confidence, avoids and appearance of impropriety and ensures that the new policy is undertaken ethically.”
The three members of the committee agreed to rescind the original resolution, passed March 15, at the next full Common Council meeting. The Finance Committee is a majority of the council, which has five members overall.
Nichols said the original resolution “left a bad taste from the get-go.”
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