Newly surfaced county records show that Amy Drake was credited with uncovering nearly $13,000 in compensation paid to Jamie O’Brien beyond the salary budgeted for his job as attorney for the St. Joseph County Council.
The central document is a July 28, 2023 email from County Council member Mark Catanzarite to Jamie O’Brien. In it, Catanzarite wrote: “I applaud Councilor (Amy) Drake for making this discovery.” He then stated the issue directly: “I was totally unaware you were receiving additional compensation beyond your budgeted salary.”
Catanzarite’s email framed the matter as a breakdown in both disclosure and trust. He then wrote that O’Brien’s explanation had left him “astounded” and that “the lack of transparency over the last six months is concerning and evokes a lack of trust which should not exist with our legal counsel.”
He also said the arrangement was not what council members had been told when O’Brien was appointed. “When you were about to be appointed, President Root assured me that you were taking the job for the listed salary in our 2023 budget and that no additional cost would be incurred,” Catanzarite wrote.
Catanzarite argued that O’Brien’s billing practice departed from that of prior council attorneys. “In the history of our 4 most recent Council attorneys,” he wrote, “none of them have billed for additional work doing their council duties as our legal counsel.” He described those regular duties as including “drafting bills, resolutions, ordinances, attending our required meetings, and taking multiple phone calls from all nine members and the Administrative Assistant often every day and sometimes during the evening. And periodically, even on weekends.”
The email also rejected O’Brien’s claim that County Attorney Michael Misch had been reviewing and approving his monthly billing. “Mr. Misch and the Commissioners are not your ‘boss’,” Catanzarite wrote. “The nine County Council members are who you work for and report to.” Catanzarite also noted: “Having been a past Council member yourself, I would have expected that you already knew this and that things wouldn’t have gone awry as they seem to have. In fact, you were the one who most often made a point of asking attorneys who appeared before us on matters what their hourly rate and billing amounts were, often criticizing them for what you perceived was an excess.”
Catanzarite called for formal review of the arrangement. He wrote that he was asking Council President Mark Root and the Rules Committee to review and share O’Brien’s contract “to see if any of this type of compensation is defined.” He also asked for an audit to determine “what the nearly 13K in additional compensation was for during the last 6 months.” If the matter was not “satisfactorily reported back,” he wrote, he might seek action that “would request that the Rules Committee terminate your contract.”
By the end of the email, Catanzarite was calling for a wider review of county legal spending. “Based on this revelation,” he wrote, “it would be worthwhile to receive an audit of the past 4 years legal expenses countywide. We might be surprised at what we are getting billed outside of the normal salary for some attorneys.”
In a July 11, 2024 email exchange between O’Brien and County Auditor John Murphy, O’Brien wrote that he needed information to “respond to the request to remove me as the council attorney” and asked which county attorneys “provide monthly or periodic invoices / bills for their legal work in addition to their base salary.” In a follow-up, O’Brien asked which county attorneys “who were / are paid a salary also bill for their extra work in 2022 and today.”
In the same email thread, O’Brien wrote: “I do not think I have done anything improper with my billings,” while saying he believed he was likely to be “pushed out anyway.” Murphy responded that, “We will put something together and get it to you Monday afternoon,” and later wrote: “I think that it is terrible. It is ridiculous!”
Another later exchange shows O’Brien thanking Murphy for his “feedback with the (South Bend) tribune explaining that my bills are not out of line.”
Taken together, the records show that by mid-2023, county officials were questioning why the council’s salaried attorney was receiving compensation beyond the amount budgeted for the job, that Mark Catanzarite credited Amy Drake with uncovering the issue, and that Jamie O’Brien appeared to coordinate media statements with the County Auditor.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster founded Redress South Bend and reports on local government and public records in South Bend and St. Joseph County. He is 31 years old and is majoring in finance. He is a Cleveland sports fan and a longtime season ticket holder of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
