Lawyers can give thanks for county government

These lawsuits can be defended in-house: If you have 8 lawyers on staff and you get sued then use those lawyers.  If they can’t handle a routine employee lawsuit (i.e. Travisano) then there is no justification for maintaining the staff if you wind up paying half-a-million dollars (i.e. Travisano) in defense costs to outside counsel. 

Others may do it but they may do it better: Essex County also uses outside counsel but they seem to have a better handle on costs.  Not only are they lower but, as shown in the last column of this spreadsheet they sent me, they get money back sometimes.  I’ve never seen that in Union County.

Lawyers interpret what lawmakers intended: Freeholders are lawmakers.  Why do they need to hire lawyers to interpret for them what they legislated?  And if there are grants to apply for or research to be done why can’t the freeholders themselves, or someone at the county manager’s or counsel’s office, do it?

We can’t afford it: Of course you’d like as much advice as you can get but when bills go unpaid (i.e. pensions and other employee benefits), hiring freezes and furloughs are implemented, and layoffs loom you can’t be paying DeCotiis, Fitzpatrick $120,000 “in connection with Golf Course Operations and Development.”

I can see why the freeholders wouldn’t buy these arguments.  They get a lot of thanks for keeping the status quo though those thanks aren’t coming from taxpayers.

Tagged: