CURRITUCK
Currituck County has hired Ike McRee as a full-time staff attorney, a position vacant more than a year in a county with a reputation for fighting it out in court.
McRee, slated to start Aug. 1 at an annual salary of $170,000, leaves Hornthal Riley Ellis and Maland after serving as the firm's lead attorney for municipal law. In that position, he has represented Duck, Southern Shores, Nags Head, Hertford, Tyrrell County and Currituck County.
"This is an opportunity to go back to where I started," McRee said Tuesday.
McRee was Currituck County's first full-time staff attorney from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Pasquotank County's first full-time legal counsel from 1992 to 2000.
In recent years, Currituck attorneys have taken on large, drawn-out cases that received state and national attention, including a lawsuit to close a topless bar and litigation over ownership of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse and ownership of the local airport property.
Most of the high-profile cases have been dropped or resolved, McRee said. A tattoo parlor that opened without a county permit is the most prominent case now, he said.
The county averaged $280,000 annually in legal fees from 2001 to 2006. In 1999, Currituck's annual legal bills were about $56,000. Legal costs from July 1, 2007, through April were $131,895, said Sandra Hill, director of the county's finance department. The budget year runs from July 1 through June 30.
In 2007, legal expenses were $187,000. In 2006, the total was $208,000. In 2005, legal fees reached $435,000, a year when the county sued Gov. Michael Easley over local airport property. The litigation cost the county close to $200,000 in extra fees, Hill said.
In recent years, the county has budgeted $312,000 annually for attorney salaries and other legal services. Twiford Law Firm, based in Moyock, and Poyner & Spruill in Raleigh are consistently hired for additional legal services.
Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com
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