City shells out thousands to private law firm

The city of Johnson City paid nearly $25,000 more to a local law firm last year than its own city manager. In 2025, the city of Johnson City doled out $271,122 in checks to The Seeley Law Firm, which is headed by City Attorney Tom Seeley, according to public records reviewed by the Johnson City Press. For comparison, this is $86,000 more than what Washington County pays its attorney and $67,000 more than what's budgeted for Kingsport's attorney. For services in January and February 2026 alone, The Seeley Law Firm was paid $52,715 —around $1200 shy of the average annual salary among City of Johnson City employees, according to public records. Seeley was officially hired on as the city attorney through a contract with his firm, approved by the commission in February 2024. It requires him to spend six hours a week at the city's office and accounts for a minimum annual retainer salary of $90,000 Additional work outside of the six hours is billed at a $275 hourly rate for attorneys and $125 hourly rate for paralegals. How does Johnson City's legal department compare to others in the region? The city's legal department consists of five positions: a city attorney (Seeley), a senior staff attorney, a staff attorney, a paralegal and a secretary. It's unclear what total expenditures are for the city's legal department alone because the department is listed as part of a much larger "General Government" budget category in the city's budget. However, when adding the 2025 Seeley Law Firm total to salaries for the department's other staff, the sum comes out to $617,943 for the four personnel lines. This does not include the vacant secretary position because the city salary numbers reviewed by the Johnson City Press in February only included current city employees. In comparison, the city of Kingsport allocates a maximum $650,900 for its six-person legal department, which includes two attorneys, two paralegals, an ADA representative and a secretary, according to its Fiscal Year 2026 budget. With one city attorney and one staff attorney, the city of Bristol spends a total of $323,967 on its legal department across personnel, operating and fixed costs, according to its FY26 budget. This number is $376,312 for Washington County's legal department, which pays one attorney and one paralegal. In 2025, Johnson City paid The Seeley Law Firm $22k a month on average When asked why such large amount were paid out to The Seeley Law Firm with two other attorneys on staff, city spokeswoman Sarah Nobles cited two main reasons in an email statement: "First, the senior staff attorney has been on military leave since May 2025. During his absence, City Attorney Tom Seeley has supplemented staff support with additional paralegals and attorneys from the Seeley Law Firm in order to maintain routine legal services that would ordinarily be handled in-house," said in an email. "Second, Mr. Seeley, who has more than 25 years of municipal law experience, and attorneys in his office have provided representation for the city in multiple matters of complex litigation during this period." City checks to the firm over the six months before May 2025, before Watson left, still range from $14–26,000 monthly. May 2025 through March 2026 checks range from $18,000 to $28,000 monthly totals after Watson left. Nobles said Senior Staff Attorney Blake Watson would be returning next week and will resume handling the responsibilities Seeley has taken on since Watson's military leave. Additionally, the city's ongoing, major federal lawsuits all involve at least four other attorneys separate from the city's legal department, according to court records. Although The Seeley Law Firm was contracted by the city in 2024, checks to the firm date back to early 2021 for periodic legal services, according to public records.