A lawyer working to get Bibb County school Superintendent Romain Dallemand’s employment contract thrown out says the school board badly and illegally bungled the vote to hire him.

Charles E. Cox Jr., the attorney for resident Brad DeFore, wrote in a court filing late Friday that four school board members erroneously claimed in affidavits that they’d voted to approve the same draft contract they’d been presented in a Dec. 3 closed-session meeting, though their own attorney said he had further changed the document.

DeFore is asking Bibb County Superior Court Judge Edgar Ennis to invalidate Dallemand’s newest employment contract, in part because the board never voted in public on a motion that included important contract provisions such as an extra year’s pay and benefits.

The Telegraph obtained Cox’s filing, a follow-up to a Feb. 1 hearing, on Monday.

A school board filing by attorney Benton J. Mathis Jr. last week said what’s important is what the board thought it was voting on, not what the public was told the board was voting on.

Mathis cited cases including one in which a government board never voted on a contract that was later upheld. Cox said those cases don’t involve the Open Meetings Act, which the school board violated.

“Whether the Board’s failure to include all material terms of Supt. Dallemand’s contract offer was the result of incompetence or intent to deceive the public, the result is the same,” Cox wrote.

“The Board’s extension of a contract to Supt. Dallemand that was not approved by a public vote violates the Open Meetings Act.”

Cox concluded, “The Board’s arguments simply make a mockery of the Open Meetings Act.”

Dallemand has until early March to decide whether he wants to participate in the lawsuit.

To contact writer Mike Stucka, call 744-4251.