Medford City Council frustrated by restricted access to legal advice

City Councilor George Scarpelli said he remembered the days when he could pick up the phone and call the city solicitor and have legal questions answered quickly and easily. 

Those days are gone though, because Medford has no city solicitor. Instead, the city contracts with KP Law for all its legal needs – or, at least, some of them.

“We know that KP Law has already stated multiple times that they don't work for us,” said Scarpelli. “They work for the mayor.”

A discussion on confidentiality during a Committee of the Whole meeting triggered a larger, and at times volatile, debate on access to legal advice for the council. Scarpelli, at one point, asked the mayor's chief of staff, Nina Nazarian, who councilors could reach out to if they had a legal question regarding City Council business. He argued that he’d never received any information or guidance from any city administrator regarding legal advice. He also wanted to know about the financial ramifications of any conversations with attorneys at KP Law.

Nazarian gave Scarpelli a name and said that the city had a retainer with KP Law that would cover such inquiries. But the administration would also like department heads and the councilors to keep the administration informed, broadly, of any communication essentially so they can track expenses, she said.

That touched off a nerve with Scarpelli, who asked Nazarian to put that information, along with the name and number of the KP Law attorney, in writing and send it to everyone on the City Council.

“Because it seems that this has been something that's been written in policy …  that we as a council have been informed, that this is the process,” he said, adding later that it was news to him.

Scarpelli said he wanted to share the information with his constituents who have been asking serious questions about responsibility and fiscal accountability. He also said it was the third time Nazarian had embarrassed the city by forcing them to raise reasonable questions regarding the city’s legal process. 

Councilor Matt Leming said he, too, has had limited success in getting legal advice from KP Law. He noted that as an outside vendor, KP Law had a different role than a city solicitor. He said early in his last term he reached out to the law firm several times for legal advice on various draft ordinances before being told to stop. He said he was told he could only get a legal review or advice with a full vote of support by the City Council. 

“So it would have to be routed through the council president and then put forth as an official request,” he said. 

He called that a change from his brief experience with a city solicitor, who he could meet with at any time. 

Nazarian said council doesn’t work as individuals, it works as a majority and that it, “I’m sorry to say” has no true authority without a majority. 

Councilor Anna Callahan was flummoxed by the idea that councilors could not individually reach out to a legal firm for advice. 

“We are prohibited, because of open meeting law, from working together on policies while we are drafting them and if you think that we do not do any work outside of our meetings, that is very, I'm sorry to say, insulting,” she said. “We have to be able to do our work outside of public meetings so that we arrive prepared for the public meetings.” 

Scarpelli called it unfair to restrict council’s access to legal advice, not only to them but to the residents they serve as well. 

“If it comes off that I'm angry, I am angry because I'm trying to do the work of the people that voted me into the seat, but I don't have the tools to be successful,” he said. 

Then there was the confidentiality debate

The focus of the Committee of the Whole meeting was a draft ordinance first introduced in December of 2025 that aims to ensure that when the city contracts out for janitorial and security services, those employees are being fairly compensated through both wages and benefits. City Council President Zac Bears said he’d had some back and forth with KP Law seeking legal advice on the draft, but he said Nazarian has indicated to him that any conversations with KP Law on the ordinance should be kept confidential. 

Nazarian argued that it wasn’t so much that they wanted to keep it confidential but that they had a duty to keep it confidential. She said the email was marked privileged and the document marked confidential and Bears’ decision to waive attorney client privilege was made in error. Bears argued that he told KP Law he was putting it on the agenda and they responded that they were not available but had no objections.

Since a draft of the ordinance was included in the meeting packet that was posted online, it is fair to say that ship has sailed.

Callahan said she was baffled by the confidentiality request particularly since the issue didn’t involve a legal case or specific personnel. She said in her two-plus years as a city councilor she couldn’t remember another time when legal advice on a draft ordinance was deemed confidential. 

In the end she made a motion requesting that the administration provide the council with the policy for how and when city councilors and/or the City Council could request and receive legal advice.

It passed unanimously.