Your City has a DRAFT account of the drivers for our litigation expenses. Some people, who may be less than completely informed, have on occasion, suggested the City expends too much of our tax dollars on legal expenses.
People seem to often confuse the entertainment value of the St Pete Times with actual facts but I do have two quotes from that venerable "rag" that seem to apply.
The first one:
"At the current rate, the city’s lawsuits are costing the annual equivalent of five staff
positions." --St. Petersburg Times
and the second:
"Politically motivated complaints to either the state ethics or elections commissions
seem to be a virtual blood sport in St. Pete Beach." --St. Petersburg Times
One name arises time and time again in connection with the drain on our tax dollars;
Mr. Ken Weiss.
I looked at a plethora of ways to comment on the following information.
One example is the information that between January of 2009 and March of 2011, Mr. Weiss sent 1,323 emails to the City’s counsel, including 598 to Mike Davis (our primary counsel) alone.
When I saw that info my engineering brain calculated that time span covers 819 total calendar days, which is about 117 weeks. If we assume 5 day work-weeks then that results in 585 work days.
That means that he sent our paid lawyers more than 2 emails a day, every workday, for over 2 years and 2 months. A hobby? A fetish? A fanatical obsession? As an engineer I am not qualified to say.
In the end, I finally figured out that the draft information speaks for itself. Do your own calculations, draw your own conclusions.
Here it is:
Since 2006, Weiss has sued the City 14 times in circuit court, and has filed TBD appeals of adverse rulings.
In 2009, the City raised property taxes by .107 mills to pay attorney’s fees, which had overshot the budget by $100,000 the previous year, most significantly in response to multiple lawsuits filed by Weiss.
The City reimburses legal fees for successful defense of ethics and elections complaints, of which there have been at least two initiated by Weiss and his clients.
522 docket entries in circuit and appellate cases against the City are attributed to Weiss.
Weiss has filed 75 motions in various courts that required a response from City attorneys.
The City Commission spent time discussing, hearing from, and hearing about Weiss and his lawsuits in public meetings at least 66 times between January, 2006 and June, 2010.
Since this is a DRAFT version of the information, the exact numbers could go down, or go up.
Draw your own conclusions as to what drives our legal costs. I think the situation is clear but I will post the final results as they become available.
The City received a request for ?an impartial audit of the legal expenses incurred by Mr. Michael Davis and his Law partners: Bryant Miller Olive PA as a result of lawsuits brought against the city?.The request is accompanied by petition signatures from, I think, 117 (I counted 109 after 3 counts, I might be missing a sheet; I did not verify residence ironically) people;about 1.2% of our residents.Residency has not yet been verified to my knowledge and I have not seen more than the eight (8) signatures that are included currently.So you can read it yourself I have put a link to the petition at the bottom of this epistle.
I have no problem whatsoever with the idea of having an outside independent audit of the charges billed for the legal services rendered if done in an objective and analytical manner. I believe that any such audit must take into account known audit standards, regional or local fee distributions and focus equally on an evaluation of the litigation work rendered in exchange.I.e.the methodology must be recognized as valid, objective standards must exist in order to audit, the value received for the value paid must be compared.
I also believe that we should be well aware of the cost of such an audit so that the taxpaying public has an idea of the tax expenditure involved. Lastly, I think the standards, process, data, and legal opinions used as benchmarks in any audit must from organizations such as FASB, Martindale-Hubbell, "Laffey Matrix" (or "United States Attorney's Office Matrix.") and the policies and procedures of Bryant, Miller Olive, the City of St Pete Beach and the State of Florida as applicable.
An audit is a comparison of conformity to a standard procedure or pre-arranged criteria not an open-ended research project.
I have a few observations after reading the ?petition?:
First, I, personally, have not seen any official request for an increase in hourly litigation charges.
Second, for the current fiscal year (2010-2011) the budgeted amount for litigation (excluding the retainer for normal business) is $235,000.The amount in the preliminary budget for fiscal year 2011-1-12) as submitted by the City Manager is $135,000; $100,000 less. I attended both days of the public meeting held by the Budget and Finance resident committee who examined and discussed the preliminary budget and they, not the city, did recommend adding $80,000 to the $135,000 for a total of $215,000, still a reduction, but even this has in no way been approved or even addressed by the City Commission.It also includes forecast labor and pension attorney spending in addition to estimated defense of the City.
Third, the petition notes that the city pays a retainer of $5,000 per month, plus $205/hr for additional services rendered, and $205/hr for consulting services by other attorneys from his firm.The petition goes on to say ?because he is not able to handle most of his cases by himself, he often consults with several other lawyers in his firm escalating the fees to 750 or more per hour.?
a)It?s not his firm
b)The retainer for next year is actually budgeted at $65,000 per year, unchanged from this year and works out to $5,417; no change.That retainer is for general operation including a variety of services associated with day to day administrative and Commission operations, such as drafting City ordinances, contract preparation or review, attendance of City Commission or other board meetings, administrative and Commission legal counseling, legal research and opinion drafting, and other miscellaneous services that may arise from time to time from daily government operations.
c)There is another category of legal expenses for which we budget.It is called Extra Legal. This account is to be used for the City Attorney defending the City of St Pete Beach in any lawsuits. brought against the City that are not covered by insurance.This account also includes any additional legal work from the labor attorney or pension attorney.
I?m not even going to get into the obvious point that the legal field, similar to the medical field, is best served by using specialists for non-routine issues.It is the same reasoning that suggests that you would be ill-advised to use your General Practitioner for open heart surgery and vice versa; you don?t go to your Cardiovascular Surgeon for a case of sunburn or a cold.
At any rate, to keep my constituents transparently informed, I will post updates as they become available.
I would also point out that I do read our attorney?s monthly statements, and in much more detail than presented on the petition information.I believe that some of the statements (such that ?Instead of blogging, Parent and Shavlan ought to take time to see how their attorneys are billing the taxpayers?) may have been written by the same people who distributed misinformation, false propaganda, if you will, during previous elections.I am confident the vast majority of residents will seek out the truth in exactly the same way they have in recent elections.