More than a dozen of the city’s most prominent business leaders gathered at the City Club this morning for a breakfast meeting and legal briefing on efforts to legally fight the St. George incorporation.
Roughly 60 local executives as well as Mayor Sharon Weston Broome attended the power breakfast, which comes nearly two weeks after voters in the St. George footprint voted to incorporate as an independent city.
Attorneys Mary Olive Pierson and Brett Furr, who have said they will lead the legal challenge against the incorporation, explained the process and the law on which the suit will be based. They were followed by Fishman Haygood attorney Lauren De Witt, who explained state laws governing municipal annexations.
“It was very informative,” says CSRS CEO Tim Barfield. “It wasn’t about sour grapes. It was just about the process that was contemplated in the statute. It was very informative and professional.”
The breakfast meeting also included a solicitation to help raise money to cover legal bills in connection with litigation. Pierson said Thursday she is working pro bono and is representing the mayor as an individual, not as the head of city-parish government.
Still, there will likely be other costs associated with legal challenges, which are expected to last a couple of years, and Pierson’s may not be the only suit.
“It was a good meeting,” says Cordell Haymon, who was in attendance. “There seem to be several serious legal grounds for a challenge and there was strong attendance.”
The gathering was the first of the city’s business community since the election and many who were in attendance this morning had previously gathered around Broome at a press conference at H&E headquarters in late September to express their united opposition to St. George.
The breakfast was privately funded.
Among those in attendance besides Barfield and Haymon were: Richard Lipsey, Mike Wampold, Mike Polito, John Engquist, John Noland, Bill Balhoff, Adam Knapp, Ann Trappey, John Snow, Bryan Jones, John Jackson, Coletta Barrett, Edgardo Tenreiro, and Shawn Usher.
A St. George spokesman did not return a call seeking comment in time for publication.
