The city won’t be looking at hiring an in-house attorney for now.
The Seal Beach City Council briefly discussed having staff look at the city’s legal costs Monday night, March 10. However, an informal straw poll showed that three council members opposed the idea.
The opponents were council members Gary Miller, Gordon Shanks and Michael Levitt.
Mayor Ellery Deaton advocated taking a look at Seal Beach’s legal expenses and at having an in-house city attorney.
Deaton made it clear she wasn’t asking for an investigation of the city attorney. Deaton said she would like a report on the city’s legal costs.
Miller said he did not want to take two months.
City Attorney Quinn M. Barrow is a shareholder in the law firm of Richards, Watson & Gershon. The firm provides city attorney services to Seal Beach. Barrow serves as city attorney for Seal Beach.
Barrow is city attorney for Seal Beach, South El Monte and Manhattan Beach.
Deaton and said the council was not performing its due diligence after it was clear a majority of council members opposed the idea.
Miller proposed having City Attorney Quinn Barrow look into his costs and give his recomendations to the council.
Miller raised his concern during council comments that in 2005 then-City Manager John Bahorski said such a study would take two months of staff time.
Shanks said the budget process would be the time to look at attorney costs. Shanks was apparently satisfied with the way things were.
Shanks said Barrow basically spends all day Monday in Seal Beach.
Shanks said the city was getting a pretty good bargain. Shanks said most problems had been solved by the performance review of the city attorney that was held year to a year-and-a-half-ago.
Deaton said if it took two months to perform the study, as Miller said, then council should have staff begin the work.
Levitt said that Barrow did work that was hard to put a price on. He said someone else would have to be trained to do that work.
“We are not doing our due dilligence for our city,” Deaton said.
She asked Shanks and Levitt if they were opposed. Each of them said yes. She said that was three votes, counting Miller’s, though no formal vote occurred and agreed not to have a staff review.
In a Tuesday, March 11, email, Deaton said that Seal Beach in $530,000 legal costs in 2013.
“This year at mid-year we spent $100,000 more than we did last year at this time,” Deaton wrote. “Our attorney tells us that we are getting competitive pricing for all our legal services: litigation, code enforcement, general legal, etc.
“My concern is that we have not done a full review of the attorney industry to be sure we are getting the most in competitive pricing in almost 10 years,” Deaton wrote. “We have been using the same firm since 1972. Good government and contract management would dictate that we would periodically review the pricing to be sure we are receiving competitive rates with the current market conditions.”
“I’d like to implement an annual pricing review of our attorney services as part of our budget process,” Deaton wrote. “We are spending one-half million taxpayer dollars; it is our fiduciary responsibility to know we are getting the best price for our taxpayers.”
Miller, however, disagreed. In a March 11 email, Miller said that according to the Oct. 24, 2005, staff report by then-City Manager Bahorski, it took staff two months to gather information on the subject.
The Bahorski report said staff looked at two years of attorney’s fees and looked at the cost of having an in-house attorney.
“In my opinion, there is no justification for the significant staff time required to provide the meaningful report needed to respond to the request of Mayor Deaton,” Miller wrote in his email.
“At the February 24 City Council meeting, we had the mid-year budget review and attorney costs were approximately $100,000 over the anticipated budget. This $100,000 was attributed to unanticipated litigation costs,” Miller wrote.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, Miller said Costa Mesa and Westminster use contract attorneys. He said Orange has an in-house attorney and Huntington Beach elects its city attorney.
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