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Aleppo's fired solicitor is refusing to turn over township records until he is paid the $29,000 he says he is owed for legal work, the new solicitor said Friday.

Interim solicitor Gianni Floro asked U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab to order Bernard Rubb to turn over records generated during 18 months as solicitor. Rubb, who was paid $234,113 in the past nine months, was fired Wednesday.

Rubb could not be reached for comment.

Floro is scheduled to represent the township at a police arbitration hearing Monday. The township eliminated its police force in March 2004 to save money. The grievances are about severance pay and benefits, Floro said.

He said he will have difficulty preparing for the hearing without the files.

"I suppose I can do it," he said. "It would be like skiing on one ski. You could do that, I guess, but why would anyone want to?"

Schwab said he would rule on the matter by Tuesday, Floro said.

According to Floro's court request, he went to Rubb's home office on Thursday to request the files. Rubb said he was charging a "lien" of $29,000 -- the money he says is owed for township work -- before he would relinquish the records, Floro said.

Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Rubb and four commissioners conspired to illegally exclude the fifth commissioner, Carolyn Smith, from township business.

Rubb was fired at a contentious commissioners meeting packed with residents angry that the township faces nearly $430,000 in legal bills so far this year -- about $430 per resident and about half the township budget.

Taxpayers are paying the fees for both sides in the dispute.

Rubb appealed Schwab's order that the township, population 1,039, pay Smith's legal fees, which total $152,359.

"I am just stunned," Smith said. "We fired him one day and he files an appeal the next day."

Rubb filed the appeal on behalf of himself and Oliver Poppenberg Sr. and Linda Talmon, two of the four commissioners Smith sued. That appeal did not include commissioners Rick Starr and Gloria Vish, who also were defendants in Smith's suit. Floro filed an appeal on behalf of those two.

The vote to fire Rubb was 3-2, with Starr, Vish and Smith in the majority.

Whether township legal records belong to the township or the lawyer is not clear.

"If it were a clerk or a secretary, I'd say the township owns the records. The case of a solicitor might be more complicated," said Michael Foreman, a local government policy specialist in the Center for Local Government Services, a division of the state's Department of Community and Economic Development.

Shaler Manager Tim Rogers, a Duquesne law school graduate who has been manager since 1992, said he has no doubt about ownership.

"Those records would go to the new solicitor -- that's what we'd expect. It is an open-and-shut thing," he said.

Rubb billed Aleppo for more than $120,000 last year in his first year as solicitor, four times what the township budgeted. Rubb's bills this year include $186,686 for defending the township in the Smith case. He also hired the Pittsburgh office of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis for that case. That firm billed the township $90,388.

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