GLAD YOU ASKED: Who pays city's attorney in union negotiations?

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Q. When the city hires an out-of-town lawyer to negotiate with the city employee unions, who pays for it: the city or the unions?

A. Dennis Maloney, an Aberdeen lawyer, is hired on a contract basis by the city of Mitchell as a special labor and employment counsel and union negotiator.

Maloney is paid by the city, since he is its attorney when it negotiates with the three unions that represent about 150 city workers, according to Finance Officer Marilyn Wilson.

He is paid $125 per hour. In 2012, he was paid $14,810, Wilson said.

That’s about $10,000 less than what he was paid by the city in 2011. Maloney is considered the top labor lawyer in the state, city officials have said in the past few years, and he works for numerous cities.

“I don’t do anything but labor and employment,” Maloney told The Daily Republic in 2011.

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