A Miscellany
<b>Legal Disciplinary Proceeding as Ethics Enforcement Forum</b><br>
Occasionally, government ethics enforcement spills out from ethics
and criminal proceedings into other types of proceeding. Since Maricopa County's officials have managed to turn
ethics and criminal enforcement into a form of internecine warfare, the state's
lawyer disciplinary program has gotten into the action.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/probes-by-ariz-sheriff-under-rev…; target="”_blank”">an
Associated Press article last week</a>, the State Bar of Arizona
is considering allegations that the former Maricopa county attorney
brought criminal cases against two county officials to embarrass
them and charged a judge with bribery when he knew the charges were
false. All the charges brought by the county attorney were
dismissed. (For more on the disciplinary charges, see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Thomas_%28prosecutor%29" target="”_blank”">the Wikipedia page</a>)<br>
<br>
Why would he have brought false charges? The attorney prosecuting
the case says the false charges were retaliation against political
opponents. The charges of harassment, back and forth, were so bad
that Kenneth Feinberg was brought in last year to sort them out (see
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/harassment-and-intimidation-governmen…; target="”_blank”">my
blog post</a> on this).<br>
<br>
The former county attorney says he was trying to root out corruption
in the county and faced serious roadblocks from county officials.<br>
<br>
In other words, the internecine warfare has merely moved from one
forum to another.<br>
<br>
<b>Attorney Fees for Ethics Respondents</b><br>
Attorney fees for ethics respondents is a controversial issue.
According to <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110918/NEWS01/309190016/Judy-G…; target="”_blank”">an
article this week in the <i>Courier-Journal</i></a>, last year, the
Louisville council placed a provision in its ethics code to allow
officials to hire outside counsel to defend them in ethics
proceedings, and a council member was the first to profit from this (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/louisville-council-member-digs-ec-dec…; target="”_blank”">a blog post on her case</a>).
The provision also covered the council member's appeal of the ethics
commission ruling, but it did not cover the council's expulsion
hearing.<br>
<br>
A pleasant surprise is that, despite a long and hard-fought
proceeding, the attorney fees are not exceptionally high, nothing
like the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/who-should-pay-attorneys-fees-ethics-…; target="”_blank”">supposed
$100,000 plus by a Stamford, CT official</a>, the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/legal-defense-funds-misuse-office-and…; target="”_blank”">$390,000
raised by Sarah Palin's legal defense fund</a>, or the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/some-things-we-can-take-away-rep-rang…; target="”_blank”">over
$2 million supposedly rung up by Rep. Charles Rangel</a>.<br>
<br>
The council member's ethics proceeding representation cost
$53,153.90 plus "a small number of hours" for the appeal. Her
attorney charged $150, half his usual rate; he was contracted by the
county attorney's office. The prosecuting attorney for the ethics
proceeding charged $14,300, and the hearing officer cost $9,781.25.
Both charged only $125 an hour.<br>
<br>
If the local government is going to pay, it should be permitted to
either hire the official's attorney or negotiate a good rate. There
is no reason that an official's intransigence and opulence should
cost a local government hundreds of thousands of dollars, or that it
should be the basis for the pay to play extravaganza known as a
legal defense fund.<br>
<br>
There is also the issue of whether attorney fees should be paid only
when a case is dismissed, or divvied up as part of a settlement.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
203-859-1959