Lawyering up: Ottawa County looks to restructure legal services with new director

OTTAWA COUNTY — Ottawa County is looking to restructure its in-house legal services with the creation of a new employee position that will oversee day-to-day needs.

The move comes in the wake of longtime county attorney Doug Van Essen and interim corporation counsel Ron Bultje indicating their intentions to retire by the end of the year.

"The county has a need to fulfill legal services, at least at the in-house level. So, since coming here, it became quickly evident the amount of need there is for in-house legal support on a daily basis, and I think you have seen that over the course of your tenures as well," County Administrator Patrick Waterman told county commissioners on Tuesday, March 10, during a Finance and Administration meeting.

What is proposed

The idea, Waterman said, is to split what traditionally has been known as "corporation counsel" into two separate roles, where the legal services director would oversee day-to-day legal services, such as advising department heads and commissioners, drafting and reviewing contracts, regulatory compliance, fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests and coordinating with outside counsel.

Litigation services — when the county is sued or sues other parties — would then be delegated to outside attorneys on an as-needed basis, which would save the county money rather than retaining an attorney or firm year-round.

"The structure is really such that this board has said, when it comes to corporation counsel, that should be outsourced to an outside attorney that depoliticizes the position," Waterman said. "It allows that activity to be done without creating a conflict of interest with the rest of the organization."

The comments referenced a lawsuit filed by Administrative Health Officer Adeline Hambley in 2023 after the board, then controlled by far-right political group Ottawa Impact, unsuccessfully attempted to demote and then fire Hambley. The yearlong litigation was settled in February 2024, with her remaining in her job, and the county was ordered to pay $188,000 for her attorney fees.

Waterman noted that the county was represented in the lawsuit by Kallman Legal Group, which was serving as in-house counsel for department heads — including Hambley's — while simultaneously engaged in the litigation.

Kallman, a conservative Lansing-based law firm, was hired by the OI-led board majority in January 2023 — just moments after being sworn into office and firing Van Essen, and with no public bidding process. 

Kallman then proceeded to assist the board through numerous controversial decisions and seven lawsuits brought against the board over the next 24 months, which cost more than $1 million to handle the day-to-day legal operations from January 2023 through December 2024 and more than $1 million in payouts to settle litigation.

Waterman said the Hambley dynamic was deeply problematic.

"You have outside litigation in cases representing various officers of the county," he said. "You don't necessarily want that same person to be the in-house day-to-day legal advisor."

Commissioner Doug Zylstra, the board's lone Democrat, and OI Commissioner Sylvia Rhodea said they supported the general idea of splitting the role up, but they had concerns about access to information and how the in-house role and contracted outside providers would be supervised.

"I remember when we hired Kallman; we hired them for litigation counsel as well as corporate counsel," Zylstra said. "But what you're saying is corporate counsel is basically litigation."

"That's how I see it," Waterman replied.

"I guess it doesn't make sense to me," Zylstra said, saying the board is allowed to make two direct hires — the administrator and corporation counsel — so splicing off some of the role to a position the board won't oversee didn't feel right.

"We hire basically two people; one is yourself, the administrator, and the other is an attorney. The way I see it, and maybe I had that wrong, is that that attorney is not simply a department head. There's more of a direct relationship with the board, because that's a direct hire that we make," Zylstra said.

"So help me understand; I see what you're doing here, and I think I agree with a lot of it, but I still think that our board rules talk about us hiring basically two positions, attorney and the administrator."

Waterman said the legal affairs director would actually increase engagement with the board compared to previous corporation counsels.

"I see this as a much higher level of engagement with the board than a typical department head. In fact, that's in the job description that they serve," Waterman said. "They serve in the capacity of parliamentarian and support for the board.

"So I would say, don't look at it like you're separated from them. They would be at the service of the board, as they would with the remainder of the organization, the officers, the elected officials and the staff. That's the boots-on-the-ground, day-to-day support level we need; that's not the litigator. The litigator comes in when we have an issue. That's the board's appointment to determine who it is," he said.

A problematic past

Rhodea said part of the issue is that there have been recent questions about who oversees the county's various attorneys.

"We have, in the past, had an administrator and a corporate counsel who view the statute differently from each other, where the administrator believed that he was over corporate counsel. But when you look at the statute, it actually doesn't place the administrator over corporate counsel. It actually places corporate counsel underneath the board directly, not under the administrator," Rhodea said.

Rhodea was referring to former administrator John Gibbs, who claimed that while he was in the role from January 2023 through February 2024, he criticized Kallman's performance and responsiveness to aid in his role.

Hired in 2023, after the OI-led majority fired former administrator John Shay — at the same meeting Van Essen was fired and Hambley was demoted — Gibbs said he questioned the competency of Kallman's attorneys in the Hambley case and was subsequently fired on Feb. 29, 2024.

"When I raised questions about (Kallman Legal Group), they thought I wasn't being a team player or that the devil got to me or something," Gibbs told The Holland Sentinel in April 2024, after he sued the county for wrongful termination and defamation.

The county eventually settled with Gibbs out of court for $190,000.

Read More: 'We're in this bad deal because of you': Gibbs lawsuit settled as allegations fly between officials

"That can be complicated if it's not clear what the authority structure is," Rhodea continued, "because then you might have a corporate counselor ... who maybe disagrees with the administrator on something, and then who's in charge, who's calling the shots when it comes to that legal matter? So I think it'd be good to get some clarification on that."

Waterman said the change would not affect that direct oversight.

"I'm not proposing we change corporation counsel being under the board; that remains the same," Waterman said. "This is the introduction of a new employee that serves the day-to-day functions of the organization."

Commissioner John Teeples, who is an attorney, said he saw the new position as a good idea to remove any chance of conflicts, weighing specific legal needs within the departments and the county's overall interests.

"I see what Patrick is trying to do is to avoid a conflict of interest with corporate counsel and department heads, so corporate counsel reports to the board. I think that's an understood proposition, but that corporate council can't be in conflict with department heads," Teeples said.

He also referenced Kallman's two-year tenure with the county and that having those attorneys represent the county against its own health officer was "a clear conflict of interest."

"The corporate council is representing the board against its own department, and what Patrick is saying is that we still control corporate counsel, but we have a director of legal services, which I would say is general counsel, ... whose job it is to coordinate the various aspects of various legal things, including outside the council," Teeples said. "That's important, because we all have to have an independent person [who] can talk to all the departments.

"If we, as a board, don't like or don't trust the opinion of the attorney doing that, we hire a corporate counsel to take on the issue," Teeples said.

Rhodea said she generally agreed with supporting the new position, but that she still had concerns about "our viewing the oversight differently."

Waterman, who was the county's deputy administrator when the OI-led majority came into power in 2023 before leaving for another position in July that year, said his own experiences working with Kallman underscored a larger problem with organizing legal services better.

"I think the main bottom line for me is that corporation counsel, in its traditional position, can't be in-house counsel. It just doesn't work. It can't be the day-to-day person," he said.

Waterman was hired back as the administrator in September 2025.

Read More: County picks former deputy as next county administrator as far-right faction cries foul

"Where I ran into an issue ... was when I was here as deputy. I would go into the Kallman office and ask for a legal opinion on any given matter, and was told, 'We're too busy. We're preoccupied doing work for the board, something to that effect; so that makes it very difficult for administration to handle its day-to-day responsibilities for the things that are going on in the county," Waterman said.

"If I don't have some level of oversight ... I had no one else to go to for legal support than the corporation council office of Kallman. I think that Kallman was serving the board, and that's their role, but that doesn't help administration run the county," he said.

Another perk of divvying up legal services is not having to pay an attorney or firm for litigation services it might not need.

In the 2024 election cycle, only four of OI's incumbents were re-elected.

In December of that year, the OI majority pushed through a controversial contract with Kallman that pre-paid the law firm nearly $250,000 for legal services that presumably would be delivered between January and September 2025 — despite the new incoming majority indicating that it would terminate the firm's services (which it did in February of that year).

Waterman said retaining litigation attorneys as needed will mean the county will only pay for legal services it actually uses.

"I expect it will save the county quite a bit of money, because we're paying a salary. It's not based on billable [hours], and it just makes a lot of sense," he said.

Kallman resigned as corporation counsel on Feb. 21.

The current board approved the appointment of longtime municipal attorney Bultje, of Grand Rapids-based law firm Dickinson Wright. 

The Finance and Administration Committee voted 4-1 to advance approval of the new position to the full board; Zylstra, who initially abstained, voted no.

The position was also discussed during Tuesday's Planning and Policy Committee meeting, which immediately followed the finance meeting, and was unanimously approved to advance to the full board.

That was because the creation of the new position and job description falls under the planning committee's purview, while the expense of the role falls under finance, Board Chair Josh Brugger said Friday when the agendas were publicly posted.

"This position is the final piece to the puzzle, from short-term transition solutions to long-term stability for Ottawa County," Brugger said. "Except for the administrator hiring hiccup last summer, we’ve been working through a strategic, methodical, and pretty darn boring plan to move Ottawa County forward; county administrator first, deputy administrator second, legal third."

What happens next

The position will again be considered at the board's full meeting scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 24.

If approved, the job will be posted on the county's website to accept applications.

The proposed salary range for the position, based on the county's last wage and compensation study, would include a base pay scale of $123,434-$165,413, based on similar positions in comparable counties, Waterman said.

Once the position is filled and the salary determined, a budget adjustment will likely be necessary, Waterman said, as the position was not included in the 2025-26 budget, which began Oct. 1.

— Sarah Leach is the executive editor of the Ottawa News Network. Contact her at sleach@ottawanewsnetwork.org. Follow her on Twitter @ONNLeach.