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The Board of Education has appointed as Labor Counsel the attorney who represented two unsuccessful candidates on the A-Team slate in their lawsuit to open 343 vote-by-mail ballots rejected by the Monmouth County Board of Elections in last November’s election.

Essex County based attorney Aaron Mizrahi filed the lawsuit on behalf of A-Team mayoral candidate Remond Palmer and Board of Education candidate Avra “Michele” Council. Although Council lost her bid for the board, her A-Team running mates Stephen Williams and Felicia Simmons won seats.

Williams and Simmons were part of the 5-4 majority that voted to appoint Mizrahi and his law firm. The vote came during a special meeting of the board Tuesday night.

Under the same motion to appoint Mizrahi and Associates, the board appointed the Riley and Riley Law Offices, Mount Holly, as board attorney. A separate motion calling for the appointments of two insurance agencies was also approved.

But state-appointed monitor Carole Morris said she will review the legality of the appointments. Morris has the power to reverse the decision.

“Unfortunately there are a couple of issues that cause me to inform the board tonight that I will have to take this under advisement,” Morris said.

“Certainly everyone knows it is not the responsibility or is it the authority of the state monitor to appoint your attorney,” she said. “That is not my intention and I have no interest in doing that.”

However, the previous board attorney had issued an opinion that the action at the special meeting to appoint the attorneys and the insurance consultants was a violation of the Open Public Meetings Act, Morris said.

“The attorney that was sitting with the board earlier indicated to me that he did warn the board of this. And so we do have that concern,” she said.

That attorney also issued an opinion that the Request for Proposals for the appointments was not properly worded. In addition, Morris said that the New Jersey School Boards Association had issued an opinion about a possible conflict of interest of two board members who participated in the voting.

The vote was initially pulled from the May 26 regular board meeting. According to that agenda, the appointments call for Riley and Riley to receive $160 per hour from July 1 2015 to June 30, 2016 and Mizrahi and Associates to receive $150 per hour during the same time frame.

Tuesday night’s votes called for the appointments to begin immediately.

“Our position is that we start work immediately,” said Riley and Riley firm partner Tracy Riley in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon.

Established in 2008, Riley and Riley is a husband and wife law firm with one other partner and an of counsel attorney with over 25 years of experience in representing school boards, Riley said.

The firm represented three board members in two separate ethics complaints filed by another board member, Riley said. Those complaints were dismissed Sept. 24, 2013 and April 22, 2014, she said.

Mizrahi and Associates, formed two years ago, is comprised of three fulltime attorneys and several part-time attorney with 30 to 40 years cumulative experience, Mizrahi said.

Felecia Simmons, one of the three-member search committee, said four board attorney and six labor counsel applicants were vetted.

Board member Barbara Lesinski challenged the vote, saying it was brought forward without giving the public an opportunity to hear a discussion about candidates.

“[According to the public notice], I expected to discuss proposals, the public expects proposals to be discussed and the motion was just to hire,” Lesinski said. “So you are not giving an opportunity for the the public to hear discussions.”

Morris, the state-appointed monitor, suggested the board start the process of the appointments again at one of its two other regularly-scheduled June meetings.

That would allow the board to follow proper procedure and take another vote that could result in the same appointments, she said. It could also avoid any legal challenges to the new appointments by those who were passed over for the posts, Morris said.

“I would just remind the board that you have two other meetings this month and there is an opportunity, rather than have me do this, to reschedule…and to start over again,” Morris said. “You could come out with the same result but at least it would remove any technicality or recourse it gives to people who did not win an appointment tonight.”

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