Resolution To Remove Mayor Is Invalidated

A Prince George's County judge has ruled that the Forest Heights Town Council lacked a quorum when it voted in November to permanently remove embattled Mayor Myles Spires Jr. from office, town officials and an attorney for the mayor said yesterday.

The ruling this week, a key victory for Spires in his bid to remain in office despite a criminal probe of alleged financial irregularities, had the effect of invalidating a resolution that would have removed Spires at midnight tonight.

"I thought all along that the courts were going to do the right thing, and they did," said Spires, who is still suspended as a result of earlier council action.

The court-ordered reprieve is the latest twist in the political upheaval that for more than a year has roiled Forest Heights, a town of fewer than 1,000 homes tucked between Indian Head Highway and the District border.

Spires's predecessor, Joyce Beck, was driven from office by the council last January amid allegations that she knocked a former council member to the ground and slammed a door on a police officer's arm. Assault charges against Beck were dismissed.

Spires, appointed by the council to restore integrity to the office, was suspended in September as questions swirled about his spending of public funds. Investigators from the Maryland State Prosecutor's Office searched his home the following month.

Among the specific areas of interest in that probe, town officials have said, are two disbursements of $3,333 each -- one to Spires directly and the other to the nondenominational Internet church Abundant Life Ministries, of which he is bishop.

On Nov. 15, the council passed a charter amendment resolution removing Spires and ordering a special election. Spires went to court to contest the legality of that vote, and Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr. ruled in his favor on Tuesday.

Nichols ruled from the bench and has not yet issued a written ruling, but Paul Sciubba, an attorney for Spires, described the judge's holding in an interview.

Sciubba said Nichols found that two council members who participated in the November vote -- George Wiggers and Lynn Smith-Barnes -- had been appointed unlawfully. They were elected in September by three council members rather than the four required for such a vote, Sciubba said.

Because Wiggers and Smith-Barnes were not properly seated, Sciubba said, only three council members voted on the November resolution to remove Spires -- again, one fewer than necessary.

Wilmer A. Ticer, who represented the town, did not respond to messages seeking comment on the ruling.

Council President Larry Stoner, who had been acting mayor, called Nichols's ruling "a temporary setback." Rather than appeal it, he said, the town will hold special elections to fill the two seats properly and then revisit the issue of removing Spires.

"I think the best thing to do is go with a special election," Stoner said. "I think it would be much faster."

State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh did not respond to a message late yesterday, but Sciubba said the investigation of Spires appears to be ongoing.

"We're confident that he will be exonerated in the end," Sciubba said.