At its January 23 meeting, City Council agreed to look for a local attorney to handle any pressing legal matters for the City until a replacement has been found for City Attorney Clark Cannon. Cannon resigned from the post, effective February 1. Compensation for the interim assignment would be on an hourly basis, as is common practice in the legal profession.
To assist Council in its deliberations, City Manager Rich Rising presented a memo to Councilors outlining both the routine tasks that to might be handled by a local attorney and those weightier matters that typically are outsourced to a larger firm. For example, a local attorney would handle routine real estate closings on city property, and a big-city firm would handle labor and personnel issues that might arise.
Rising also indicated that the full time attorney’s workload has averaged 30 hours per week between work for the City, the IDA, and other agencies, such as the Revolving Loan Fund and Jobs for Geneva. (See our December post on this issue).
How these duties will be handled long term is the subject of the legal services review committee appointed by Mayor Einstein. The committee will study and report to Council on possible arrangements for City legal services (hourly contract,; salaried, part-time; salaried, full-time, with or without a private practice, etc.) within the next two months. Council will then review the committee’s recommendations and will proceed with filling the post based on one of those models.
All the talk about interim services raised important questions about the actual costs of outside legal work. Rising asserted, and it was repeated in the local paper, that an interim arrangement would likely cost more than the full time salary for the same period of time. That’s certainly possible, however, we are not convinced that the City will be paying more than it otherwise would have for total cost of all legal services.
How can that be? Well, a good many of the items that Rising bundled into the outside legal services category under the ‘interim services plan’ are legal services that the city is currently outsourcing-- and would have to outsource anyway, interim plan or not. To put it another way, the City has used “outside legal services” every year, when the city attorney post was part time and when the city attorney post was full time. Those items are scattered throughout the budget. It is a fact of life that some of the City’s legal work is better handled by larger firms, with more staff and greater technical expertise in certain aspects of the law.
Approval of an ‘interim legal services’ plan will be on the agenda for the February 6 City Council meeting. Because of the two pronged approach— an interim local attorney to handle legal issues on a short term basis and a large legal firm to handle the issues that are more complex—the cost of the interim arrangement will not be immediately clear.
It’s too early to determine the actual costs incurred, or saved, from the untimely resignation of the City’s full time attorney. Let no one criticize Cannon for resigning so suddenly and sticking the City with a larger legal bill from outside attorneys until the actual costs are known. We predict that the city will actually spend less money on ‘standard’ legal services this year (handled by a local attorney), and will expend the same amount on ‘specialized’ services (handled by a firm), so folks should go a little easier on Cannon.
Friday, February 1
Understanding the Cost of 'Interim Legal Services'
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2 comments:
I appreciate your highlighting and staying on the "City of Geneva legal case." I have been trying to prepare a Fact Set of my own that would possibly serve Council's Legal Services Review Committee. This consisted of requesting financial information on legal costs (inside and outside) for the City going back 6 years (through the FOIL process).
As a result of the information obtained I prepared a spreadsheet highlighting the historical costs and making a projection for the next six years based on this cost record and some conservative assumptions about cost. I recently sent this information over to all City Councilors and the City Manager. I would be happy to also provide it to you guys for posting if you feel this is appropriate.
Based on the data collected and the analysis I prepared, I can see an average of possibly $25,000 plus savings per year by going to the part-time legal services model. And this is in part because of the reasons you mention in your Blog - some outside legal services such as personnel and bonding services will always be contracted to outside firms.
Which is a nice segue to the impending cost of legal services that we are likely to face as a City this year. There are four City contracts up for negociation this year having to do with the Fire and Police Departments. My spreadsheet shows a cost in 2002 for personnel of upwards of $34,000. This cost was for legal services needed by the City for a union contract that went to arbitration. All four labor agreements this year will require some outside legal assistance. If they all end up in arbitration, the potential cost could be in excess of $150,000.
This is equivalent to the entire City budget for legal costs this year. So i don't expect legal costs for the City to go down this year anyway. The Council Legal Services Review Committee should focus on the long-term model that works most efficiently for taxpayers.
Finally, this brings me to my last point, which is really of concern to me. The potential costs of these four new labor contracts with the City will have a very large impact on future budgets and tax rates for the City that will swamp the impact of the legal budget regardless of the legal business model the City chooses. I really wonder if anyone on Council has the courage to take a stand on that issue and provide the guidelines and process needed to arrive at an equitable result for all.
Ken,
You have raised several important points. First, this kind of analysis of outside legal expenses is invaluable information (excuse the pun) for the legal services review committee, but also for the general public.
We know there are members of the public who believed that having a full time attorney meant that the City did everything 'in house.' Those people will probably be surprised to learn that outside firms have been used, and will continue to be used, each year for a variety of specialized services.
Second, the use of legal services in times of contract negotiations is another important point. It might be tempting, at the end of this year, for critics to say that changing the status quo caused increased costs. But given the number of contracts being negotiated this year, it's likely that costs would have been substantially increased whether the local services changed or not.
We think our readers would appreciate a look at the information you have, so, if you are agreeable to that, send it in and we'll post it for them.
The responsible use of taxpayer dollars is one of the most important government functions. To be responsible, the leaders and the residents should have an understanding of the realities and the options.
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