A temporary restraining order against the Cullman County Commission was partially extended late Monday after a circuit judge ordered three measures be set aside until discovery in a lawsuit resulting from their passage has time to unfold.

Circuit Judge Don Hardeman ordered that the commission could not follow through with three of the decisions its two associates made at the end of a protracted Oct. 7 meeting after chairman James Graves had already declared the session adjourned.

The continuation of the restraining order affects:

•  The commission’s passing of a resolution that would have obligated Cullman County for payment of outstanding and future legal bills to the Birmingham law firm of Johnston Barton Proctor & Rose LLP. That firm drafted the incorporation documents that three county residents presented to the commission in April as part of a request — granted the same day — to form two water utility boards to replace the Cullman County water department. Those entities — the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) and the Governmental Utility Services Corporation of Cullman County (GUSC) — continue to be represented by Johnston, et. al. in separate legal proceedings in both circuit court and before the Supreme Court of Alabama.
•  A measure that would have paved the way for Cullman County and the SCCD to enter into a contractual relationship whereby the county would resell all the treated water it purchases from the City of Cullman to the new utility. Hardeman noted in Monday’s order that such an action on the part of the commission would violate a preliminary injunction he ordered in late May stipulating that the county would take no further action on water department issues; and that the SCCD refrain from corporate deliberation and action, pending a resolution of a separate lawsuit filed shortly after the SCCD was created.
•  An extension of a contract with water department / SCCD manager David Bussman. The new arrangement would have contracted the county to honor its current agreement with Bussman for an additional five years.

The court order made no reference to two additional measures that helped precipitate the lawsuit. Those include the passage of a revenue-short county budget for the 2011 fiscal year which the commission subsidized with $600,000 out of the county’s general fund; as well as approval of an agreement with Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. to pay the premium on a Supreme-Court-ordered defendants’ surety bond to continue the earlier lawsuit’s appeal before the high court.

The lawsuit against the three-member commission primarily targets the actions taken by associate commissioners Doug Williams and Wayne Willingham, both of whom continued with the Oct. 7 meeting and passed the items that have been contested in the case.

The suit was filed the day after that meeting, with all four of the candidates for the two open associate commissioners’ seats joining as plaintiffs.

In response to the controversy surrounding the approval of the contested measures, Willingham called a special public meeting of the commission that was to be held at 10 a.m. today at the Cullman County Courthouse.

Commission chairman James Graves, who has opposed all of the two associates’ actions on the water utility issue, said Monday he had consulted with attorneys and declared that meeting a no-go as well.

“The meeting has been canceled,” Graves said Monday evening. “It was canceled for a lack of a second signature on the notice Wayne Willingham provided last week. By law in the Code of Alabama, any special meeting of the county commission has to be attested by two commissioner signatures on the meeting notice, and Doug Williams never signed it. The meeting cannot go forward, and I have that on the advice of my attorneys. It would be illegal.”

An attempt to reach Willingham for comment late Monday night was unsuccessful.

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.