As you know, we have been asking for years how much the city spends on outside legal counsel. We have gotten the run-a-round in the past, saying that each department budgets separately for the work. You know, like there isn’t a spreadsheet somewhere on the total expenditures. Must be on the same hard drive as the no-mow list.
We have often wondered why the city uses expensive outside counsel when the city attorney’s office has $1.16 million in salaries (not including benefits) and a double-dipping retired city attorney, Diane Best working part-time for them at $48.57 per hour (collecting her pension while also receiving a part-time wage).
I don’t question the workload, I question the expertise of our city attorney’s office. Why even have several staff attorneys (7 full-time) when we just hire out the difficult stuff? Might as well just have one paralegal that hires the outside counsel.
Like the engineering department, we have speculated a couple of reasons why they use outside consultants.
- Accountability. When something needs to be justified or goes wrong, it’s easy to put it on the backs of independent consultants, for example raising water fees, applying flat siding on a building or recommending a bad location for an indoor pool.
- Tie up your competition. Ask anyone who has tried to sue the city and find out how difficult it is to find a local attorney to take the job. The city keeps dozens of law firms on retainer to make it more difficult for individuals to find an attorney to represent them.
This sucks for several reasons, obviously it costs the taxpayers a lot of money, and it works against our best interest in keeping taxes and fees low.
The next mayor needs to demand the outside counsel and consulting budgets of each department and put it under one umbrella. They also need to clean house in the city attorney’s office and hire competent and confident legal counsel.
The city attorney office had 3 employees when Huether was elected. Now there’s more than 20. The city grew such that 10 might be justified. I also suspect the city uses outside contractors so that they will not represent citizens. One must assume city government is always in trouble because they regularly break the law and violate the constitution. They’re always in court and often lose. They ignore legal decisions and/or wear out plaintiffs with lengthy litigation. Strong Mayor Charter makes the city sovereign government. We’re another Indian reservation. The best we can do is wait for our casino take and buy alcohol or meth so we won’t admit inside city limits is a concentration camp.
So well said! I helped on a past petition drive and asked an attorney friend to sign my petition. His response was that he could not sign because it would jeopardize his opportunities to work for the city on upcoming cases!
I wonder what we paid outside legal council on Christine’s favored parking ramp? I’m praying for someone to run against her!!!