CENTRAL La. POLITICS: MAJOR BUDGET AMENDMENT: LEGAL

Friday, January 13, 2012

MAJOR BUDGET AMENDMENT: LEGAL

The Alexandria City Council plans to discuss and then vote on the city's major budget amendment at its Jan. 24 meeting after Mayor Jacques Roy distributed the proposed amendment to council members on Tuesday. (See: "Alexandria could add overtime funds for police, firefighters"). It will be heard in the Finance and Legal Committee which is chaired by City Councilman Chuck Fowler. id.

With that committee including Councilman Jim Villard on the 3 man committee and Mayor Roy having the majority votes of the entire Council in his pocket, I expect that Jacques will have smooth sailing with his major budget amendment.

I obtained a copy of that major budget amendment and, even though Jacques will probably have smooth sailing on it, I have some questions on the Legal department's amended budget.

See the Legal department's amended budget:

As you will recall, at last year's major budget amendment, Alexandria City Attorney Chuck Johnson was shot down by the City Council on his increase request. The Council was concerned with the increase in attorney fees paid to some of the highest priced defense firms in this city and who are some of the mayor's largest contributors. You will also recall, that, to retaliate for his budget amendment's failure, Chuck fired all of the City's criminal prosecutors, which were just about the only lawyers who were bringing money into the City by the fines they collected.

Chuck and the mayor then can up with the plan to charge each department of the City for its legal expenses, which brings up the question of why does the City need much of a legal budget anyway?

The City's in-house lawyers handle far fewer cases than a lawyer in the private sector does.

Despite all of this, you will note from the above that the Legal Department intends to only decrease its budget by $5,000 this year. Of course there is nothing being budgeted for prosecutors. And I, being a lawyer myself, cannot fathom Chuck's wanting an increase of $6,000 for dues and subscriptions.

But the biggest concern that I have is with the $93,000 increase in the fees paid to contract attorneys. These are primarily the same lawyers that the Council complained of last year.

In my opinion, I believe that Chuck may have violated state law and the laws and policies of the City by going over budget last year. Despite his being over budget, Chuck managed to pay for the mayor's unsuccessful lawsuits last year.