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I listened to the podcast (link from the commenter above). One thing I noticed was, City Solicitor Tim Bliss was speaking to the city council in a public meeting. He offers his advice as someone who is nominated for city solicitor, apparently not yet confirmed, but he was already working as some form of assistant solicitor. I’m not the expert, but you can do your own research. On the surface it seems benign, but there is a serious problem with what he was doing, because it appears to interfere with the proper operation of government:

First, the city solicitor (or any assistant) is the attorney for the city officers. He is not the attorney for any citizen. When he speaks, it is legal advice for the city officer, governed by attorney client privilege in a government setting. That means his words are privileged, we don’t get to hear it, and most importantly, we do not need to. This properly places the burden on the city officer to speak to the public first hand, and show substance. That way the city officer can be held accountable. He is not allowed to say “I’m just following my attorney’s directions”

Second, the only exception I can think of is called “legal opinion”. This is a written document, in a specific format with three main sections, basically the same format you see in judicial decisions, examples of which you can find online. The city charter requires a written document, which is public. So if Mr. Bliss was publicly testifying about his written legal opinion, I believe that would be proper. But if he was giving his opinions absent such a document, then that’s privileged, and it’s not proper to present it in public. The public is required to hire their own attorneys. It is a conflict of interest or worse to impose one attorney on another party who is entitled to their own attorney. A public statement like this is easily but wrongly adopted by the city council, taking them off the hook to show substance. They just put on a dog and pony show starring their attorney.