DiCamillo returns to S. Tahoe as temp attorney

By Kathryn Reed

Former South Lake Tahoe City Attorney Cathy DiCamillo is back on the payroll.

She started this week as interim deputy city attorney. She will be working for Nira Feeley, who is interim city attorney until Tom Watson takes the helm July 8. Feeley will be going out on maternity leave about a week later for three months. DiCamillo will be on board that entire time. She is making more than $7,000 per month.

“With Cathy’s extensive legal background and experience, she is able to pick up any of our cases fairly effortlessly and will provide the city as well as Nira and Tom leading the City Attorney’s Office with high-level legal assistance far better than bringing in another new and temporary attorney,” City Manager Nancy Kerry told Lake Tahoe News. “For example, I know that (Wednesday) she was reviewing redevelopment/successor agency dissolution matters. As deputy city attorney her day-to-day work assignments will be directed by the interim city attorney and/or city attorney.”

The irony is that when DiCamillo worked for the city the first time she was deemed to not have enough redevelopment experience. That is when then City Manager Dave Jinkens hired outside legal counsel to help with such matters.

DiCamillo was the city attorney for about a decade before retiring in June 2009. During a 2008 closed session DiCamillo received a less than favorable evaluation by the City Council. Months later she submitted her resignation.

Previously, she had worked for attorney Lew Feldman. He is the attorney who from the get-go and to this day is representing the developers for the Chateau project. (That project will be on the June 11 City Council meeting.)

Feeley is the lead attorney on the Chateau project. Kerry said Watson is being briefed on all aspects of it so he will be “up to speed when he officially begins.”

It is not known how much DiCamillo will eventually be involved with the Chateau project. She has nothing to do with the staff report that will be presented Tuesday and she has not been assigned to that project. But she was the city attorney at the time the project was allowed to start without having a consolidated map filed or financing in place.

DiCamillo was also the city attorney when Jaye Von Klug was the city’s redevelopment manager. Von Klug is the one who spearheaded the overspending at the Heavenly Village project that required $7.2 million being “borrowed” from the general fund unbeknownst to the City Council.