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  • South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) board members, from left, Stan Wood, D.H. Haynes, Ron Stone and Wiley Kitchens, gathered Monday and immediately went into executive session. Benjamin Bullard

    SCCD meets, take no action

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June 15, 2010

SCCD meets, take no action

Board enters into executive session to discuss lawsuit

By Benjamin Bullard The Cullman Times

CULLMAN — The board of the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) gathered Monday for its scheduled June meeting, but adhered to a court order by taking no action in public session.

The board called its meeting to order at 1 p.m. and immediately went into executive session to discuss its role as a party defendant in a lawsuit filed by seven county residents seeking to overturn the April county commission actions which created the cooperative and its oversight board, the Governmental Utility Services Corporation of Cullman County (GUSC).

The board met in executive session with an attorney from Birmingham law firm Johnston Barton Proctor & Rose, LLP who are serving on a pro bono basis. Attrition from the politically-charged atmosphere surrounding the board’s April formation, as well as from the lawsuit, has whittled the five-person panel to four members, with original appointee Don Wilbanks having resigned in May. The remaining board members are Stan Wood, Ron Stone, D.H. Haynes and Wiley Kitchens.

Stone, Haynes and Kitchens also comprise the three-member GUSC board.

Kitchens said Monday the board would not attempt to replace Wilbanks until a circuit court injunction issued May 28 had been lifted, since such a move would violate the terms of the order. The injunction order enjoins the board from taking any deliberative action, other than to elect to dissolve itself and to pursue legal remedies available to it through the court system.

That order was filed after Circuit Judge Don Hardeman held a hearing in the civil lawsuit against the water entities—as well as associate county commissioners Doug Williams and Wayne Willingham—to determine whether plaintiffs could present sufficient evidence to move forward with one of the lawsuit’s allegations: that a quorum of the Cullman County Commission violated the Alabama Open Meetings act by deliberating in secret to plan the creation of the GUSC and SCCD.

The two water boards Friday appealed the injunction to the Supreme Court of Alabama, a move that carves out a separate court docket and timeline from the rest of the circuit court suit. In filing the appeal, the SCCD documented that it had shifted its legal representation in the suit from Wilmer & Lee, PA of Athens, Ala. to Johnston & Barton, etc., who previously had been representing only the GUSC.

As of Monday evening, the state court had not assigned a timeline or case number to the appeal.

The county commission, which is forbidden by court order from “...taking any action concerning the GUSC or SCCD or any similar entity except, if it elects, to rescind its actions of April 27, 2010, which led to the creation of the GUSC and SCCD” holds it regular meeting today at 10 a.m. the meeting will take place in the first-floor commission meeting room of the Cullman County Courthouse.



* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

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