The Chattanooga Times Free Press quoted Murphy's email in which he raised the possibility of immediately ousting Littlefield and replacing him with City Council Chair Pam Ladd:
The question of appointing District 3 representative Pam Ladd as interim mayor arose from conflicting pieces of the City Charter as reported by Beverly Carroll of the Nooga.com.“There is the question of whether we have a ministerial duty to pass a resolution that would temporarily replace him [Littlefield] with Chairwoman [Pam] Ladd,” he wrote.
In what would surely become a completely unprecedented constitutional crisis, Mayor Ron Littlefield's lawyer Hal North immediately threatened to sue the City of Chattanooga if they made any attempt to remove the Mayor from office.
During the Legal and Legislative and Safety Committee Meeting on Tuesday November 22 District 4 City Council representative Jack Benson repeatedly and fervently opposed any action by the City Council to hire an outside attorney to help clarify the confusing and possibly conflicting City Charter provisions.
During Benson's comments he openly admitted to meeting with other City Council representatives behind closed doors to "discuss with them" why an outside attorney should not be hired.
District One representative Deborah Scott then asked Benson who on the City Council he had met with to discuss this issue prior to the meeting. Benson was dismayed and asked the Council Recorder to read his comments back to him. She did and Benson's own admission of violating the Open Meetings Act was again read publicly.
Deborah Scott then repeated her question to Benson, who responded by saying "I will let the other Council members admit whether or not I talked to them." Apparently Benson is no snitch.
None of the subsequent media reports (Nooga & Times Free Press) mentioned Benson's admission to breaking the law and actually lobbying other City Council representatives behind closed doors to not seek an outside attorney to help interpret the City Charter. Nooga.com writer Beverly Carroll did tweet about it:
One City Council representative who I will not name has confirmed to me that they met with both City Council representative Jack Benson and recalled Mayor Ron Littlefield at the same time in their office prior to Tuesday's Legal and Legislative Committee Meeting.
The open admission of illegal back room lobbying by Jack Benson in the matter of the Recall should not be surprising, but is still symptomatic of the culture of corruption that has perpetuated the recurring misuse of authority by our elected leaders in Chattanooga City Government.