.
.
.
$267,530.74 in one month in Tustin.

Image by Dave Bruno, deviantart.com
.
That’s the check that the City of Tustin wrote to Woodruff Spradlin and Smart on their May checks for approval report.
One month of attorney bills.
The contract city attorney for Tustin may be a pretty smart guy with lots of experience, but really, over a quarter of a million dollars in one month?
Really?
At $200 an hour, which looks like their current rate, that’s 1300 hours. over thirty forty-hour weeks, of attorney time with a little money left over for copies at a quarter a copy. And let’s not forget that is for a part-time City Attorney, Doug Holland, Tustin’s City Attorney, who also has to put time in as City Attorney of Palm Springs.
So Holland must be getting a lot of help from the other 37 attorneys in his premier local government law firm.
WS&S listed $4,000 for “training”. Wonder what that was. Were they being trained? You would think if they are pulling down a quarter million in a month, they could spring for their own training.
When Tustin Councilwoman Deborah Gavello published her March newsletter, the city had already paid Woodruff, Spradlin, and Smart $654,000 year to date, which pretty much used up the $660,000 annual budget for the City of Tustin. Of course, Tustin probably has more money for attorneys buried in their multiple redevelopment agency budgets and their water enterprise fund.
But they keep on spending, way beyond their original budget.
The March 25th check register showed another $99,673.00 to the lawyers, followed by $9,493.49 on April 1st.
No wonder they want to recall “Let’s Sue ‘Em” Mayor Jerry Amante. I’ve seen estimates that Mayor Amante’s legal vendetta against the Tustin School District to double-bill for permit and grading fees is now in the quarter million dollar range. But who knows what “Red Tape Jerry”‘s War Against Old Town Tustin is costing? Or how much Tustin spent in legal fees to fire the City Manager they had just hired and give him $200,000 in severance payment.
Of course, it’s unfair just to single out Tustin, which actually has one major lawsuit with SEMA Construction in addition to the frivolous spending to punish Tustin Unified. There are plenty of other cities and agencies where attorney bills are out of control. Remember our friends at the OC Fair Board, who went from under $100K a year to over $400,000 a year in their latest contract, with secret contracts with Dick Ackerman “not to lobby” while he contacted legislators at $400.00 an hour.
Costa Mesa’s contract attorneys have the meter running at a rate where you can hear a high-pitched whine as the billing escalates, and Costa Mesa’s draft city budget projects a 32% increase in costs for the City Attorney’s office, probably because they are so far over budget this year.
Here’s my suggestion to local leaders.
Cut your spending on lawyers, consultants and lobbyists in half before you lay off a single police officer or paramedic.
Cut the spending on suits in half. Pay them less per hour, and give them work orders with the number of hours rather than just pay their damn bills.
Let them move out of their 12th floor office in glass towers and into strip malls.
Spend tax dollars on something we actually need.
Update: The use of the hyperbolic term “blood-sucking” in reference to attorneys was in no way intended to denigrate vampires, mosquitoes, ticks or other creatures that actually suck blood. No animals were harmed in the writing or posting of this opinion.
I remember also Capo USD – both under the recent “reform slate” of Maddox and Winsten, and before them in the Fleming years – a veritable goldmine for law firms back then (I hope that has improved.)
Tustin, CUSD, Costa Mesa, Fair Board … All these lawyers paid with public money, often to fight the public, and at the expense of education and public services, and done at the behest of politicians who specialize in whining about waste!
Attorneys are easy prey who can be attacked with monikers like “blood sucking” without consequence – frankly my profession is its own worst enemy. I would like to point out that not all legal fees are created equal. First, some are completely unavoidable such as where the public agency is sued (Tustin USD is having to pay the price for the actions of the City of Tustin and I would be reluctant to blame Tustin USD for spending money defending that claim). Second, there are the suits that we all WANT to be brought – I once represented a City opposing a tire burning plant that had been approved with zero environmental review). Finally, and the thrust the the post above, are those discretionary suits with middling merit. I actually support the concept that if we are pealing back staff, legal should be part of the picture. However, taken to its extreme, the logic of the post could be used to justify every staff raise and unnecessary pension increase.
Hm, I’m not so sure attorneys get attacked & insulted more than unions. Especially not on this site!
Next door in Costa Mesa you have the union threatening all kinds of suits without merit that will cost even more money. And I think the ACLU cost Costa Mesa over 500K in suing for some pig mouthed “la raza” punk. The ACLU lost but cost the city half a million. We need to do something or these unions and ACLU guys will bankrupt the city, even when they lose. They just want the cities to capitulate and settle to save money. It’s extortion.
How much is TollRoadJerry lining his pockets with kcikbacks from legal fees?
shouldn’t we lump the SA city council under the title of bloodsuckers?
The term “Bloodsucker” was widely debated by the writers of the Soprano’s TV series as the replacement for “Motherfucker” when the show went to sydication.
Since the held veto power, the played with that for ten days at the negotiations in New York, where they had Elvis Costello jam at a bar during the day, while they laughed.
Having said that the term is fitting.
At the end of the project between SEMA and the City of Tustin, SEMA offered to mediate the claim between SEMA and the City as ususally is done in construction contracts. The City attorney rejected mediation and told SEMA to sue the City so the City can sue IRWD for reimbursement of the money. The City all along believed that they owe SEMA money but forced SEMA to sue and incur about $2M in legal fees and experts plus other costs. WS&Smart were the legal council who drafetd the contract with SEMA, who approved the reimbursement agreement with IRWD, who consulted to the City during construction, who defended the City from WS&S decisions by using tax payers money. The City settled part of the suit during court for $600K. The other part is waiting ruling by the court. The City should never allow their legal council to be involved in a contract and defend suits caused by that same contract.