The response to Ken Charneski's lawsuit
Attorney Lee Turonie takes some shots on Charneski in his response
Last month, Village of Kronenwetter Board Member Ken Charneski filed a lawsuit against (for the sake of brevity) village officials.
He includes a litany of complaints, but the main concern outlined in the suit had to do with his access to attorney invoices. According to the suit, Charneski claims that former interim administrator Kim Manley withheld invoices from him sent by contracted village attorney Lee Turonie and his law firm Dempsey Law. That’s a violation of open records law, he argues, and names Turonie, Manley and current clerk Bobbi Birk-LaBarge in the complaint.
It’s not all that’s in Charneski’s lawsuit against the village of Kronenwetter — you can read the rest in the link.
Turonie filed a response to the complaint earlier this month, and, well, he makes no mistake about how he feels about Charneski and his suit.
No standing
Turonie asked for the writ to be quashed and the lawsuit dismissed. Why? For one, a writ of mandamus such as the one Charneski filed asked the court to force a government or government official to do something they’re supposed to do. Turonie, as he points out in his lawsuit, is not a government official, thus he is not a proper party to such a lawsuit.
As a private attorney, he has no obligations under open records law, thus he can be be made to comply with open records law, he argues in the response. Those only apply to actual government officials.
Manley should be out too, the response argues. Since her contract with the village has expired, there’s no contract under which the court could order her to do anything. Thus, she really doesn’t have any standing to be a party to the suit either.
Further, he says, the law doesn’t allow a gorvernment board member to sue when a vote doesn’t go his way. And here Turonie cites another case filed against the village, filed by former board member Joel Straub in 2022, in which a judge ruled as much (Straub was the only no vote in a 6-1 vote on a zoning matter).
Shots fired
Turonie took a couple of shots on the way out in closing out his response.
It has probably been a factor that the village has suffered from numerous staff turnover and vacancies. It is particularly unfortunate that Charneski filed a complaint seven days after he voted to hire the next village administrator (vacant since November 2023) 1 and two weeks before that person’s start date. If not for this bad luck in timing, perhaps this whole matter, to the extent that there is one, would be resolved without a suit.
Turonie says regardless that the court probably shouldn’t encourage members to starting suing every time a vote doesn’t go their way.
Turonie argued that the previous attorney ended his contract with the village after “repeated, meritless professional complaints against him.” Turonie adds: “It took only nine months to sue his successor.”
Interestingly, Turonie in one of his filings attached copies of the invoices in question. His filings also include a photograph of public notices Charneski claimed weren’t posted as they were supposed to have been.
The case is scheduled for a conference call 1:15 pm March 5 in Oneida County Court. I’ll be keeping an eye out for further developments in the case.
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Technically vacant since November, but the village hadn’t had a full-time administrator since 2022.