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Morro Bay considers hiring in-house attorney

April 7, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

The Morro Bay City Council on Tuesday will consider moving back to an in-house city attorney, according to its agenda.

From its incorporation in 1964 until 2002, Morro Bay contracted its city attorney services. Then from 2002 until 2013, the city had an in-house city attorney before switching back to contracted services in 2013.

On Tuesday, the city council will discuss costs, loyalty to the council and expertise as it considers returning to an in-house attorney at an estimated cost of $550,000 to $700,000 a year. This includes salary and benefits for the city attorney and an assistant along with office costs.

The city council will consider costs to cities using contract city attorneys:

City                                   Fiscal year 2022-2023          Fiscal year 2023-2024        

Atascadero                         $279,195                                         $216,106

Grover Beach                     $437,642                                        $388,081

Arroyo Grande                  $166,002                                        $539,177

Paso Robles                       $1,049,357                                      $945,456

Morro Bay                         $794,195                                          $995,470

Pismo Beach                     $643,335                                         $1,819,440

 


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The problem is that both the city attorney and city manager were let go by petty politicians (Jamie irons, Christine Johnson et al) for more political reasons than anything else. The city is still trying to recover from that group.

City legal services were outsourced so there would be no independent legal thought within the city to block some of the stupidity of that council agenda.


2

Pismo Beach $1.8 mil? Probably would be a good idea to fire Fleishman.


5

A step in the right direction, but why not go even further and elect the city attorney!


4

Because we don’t need an attorney in that position that was hired because they sold out to the wealthiest in the city to ensure their personal agendas were fulfilled. The average voter would have ZERO insight into who would be a good attorney for the city; they would vote for whoever ran the best campaign. That’s how we ended up with a pathologically lying, misogynistic, sexual abuser in the white house, a nepobaby oligarch giving himself billions in contracts, a whack-job with a worm-eaten brain spreading measles, etc.


3

I’m good, as long as what they do is legal, legal.


0