Supervisors rebuff county adminstrator over legal fees

<p>For the first time in three days of Sonoma County budget hearings, a clear majority of supervisors launched an open revolt against their administrator’s proposed cuts, blasting $1.5 million in independent contracts with law firms to conduct union negotiations as a waste of money that had circumvented their purview.</p><p>After the session marked by several testy exchanges, long-time county employees and officials in the sparse audience commented that they’d never witnessed such a pointed rebuff of administration budget plans by supervisors as well as a leading department head.</p><p>County Counsel Steven Woodside sparked the exchanges when he took the unusual step of handing supervisors a copy of his own budget plan, one that differed sharply with the proposal submitted by the staff of County Administrator Bob Deis.</p><p>Woodside’s document criticized “excessive reliance on outside counsel,” which was a pointed reference to the $1.5 million spent over the last three years with the San Francisco firm of Renne, Sloan, Holtzman and Sakai. Several representatives of that firm have been lead negotiators on union contracts over the last couple of years, and they’ve served as the county’s lawyers as disputes have spread to courtrooms and retirement board hearings.</p><p>Mounting bills for outside legal counsel have been criticized by the county’s 11 unions as producing ill-will at the bargaining tables and resulting in expensive litigation. The disputes center on major changes in the county’s declining contribution to employee and retiree medical premiums.</p><p>The issue gained attention during supervisorial election contests last year, with two of the leading critics, Shirlee Zane and Efren Carrillo, winning seats on the board.</p><p>Woodside, unlike most county administrators, is appointed by the Board of Supervisors for a four-year term and does not report directly to Deis. His term ends in December, 2010.</p><p>During a tense debate over Deis’ proposal to cut the county legal staff’s budget, supervisors Valerie Brown and Mike Kerns joined in verbally pummeling the legal services contracts as excessive and as escaping their notice.</p><p>Woodside said a cutback of 3,000 hours in his legal staff would make it impossible for his two dozen lawyers to serve all county functions.</p><p>“We will be below a minimal threshold to get the job done,” Woodside said. And, referring to spending on outside legal contracts, he added, “There are large dollar amounts of $1.3 million that...are not subject to the same scrutiny of my office.”</p><p>Zane, who several times in recent months has complained about growing county reliance on independent consultanting contracts, said, “If this room were filled with taxpayers, they would be outraged. The county has spent $1.5 million on excessive reliance on outside counsel.”</p><p>Brown and Kerns said they were upset that the administration had not alerted the board to increasing costs over the last two years. Both criticized the administration for funneling approvals for the increased costs through the human resources department, rather than the county counsel’s office.</p><p>Brown said: “When I hear that $1 million in legal advice is growing to $2 million and we don't even know about it, this is an eye opener on my part.”</p><p>Kerns added: “I think there has been over reliance on outside counsel. When ever we do that, it needs to go through the county counsel.”</p><p>Carrillo said, “I am concerned if this board feels things like this are being swept under the rug, that things are being funded that we don’t know about."</p><p>Deis defended his administrators, saying, “sweeping something under the rug just doesn’t happen here.”</p><p>He said $950,000 had been spent with a law firm when it represented the county in the medical premiums issue that went before the public employee retirement board and another $500,00 went to lawyers conducting labor negotiations with the county’s unions.</p><p>“We could not physically cover all the tables at one time,” Deis said.</p><p>He said the county counsel's office had been kept apprised of mounting legal costs, but Woodside disagreed.</p><p>“I think there are inconsistencies,” Woodside said. “I think there needs to be some changes and those should not be limited to outside counsel. Checks and balances, to be honest, have not been present as much as they should have.”</p><p>Board Chairman Paul Kelley defended the administration, saying outside legal counsel had allowed the county to retain experts in labor law who could devote time to the previous board'’ support for an administration move to shift costs of medical premiums on employees and retirees. He noted that the previous board, which included Brown and Kerns, supported the goal of achieving $30 million in reduced costs of future medical plan liabilities.</p><p>“I don't think that now we can stick our head in the sand,” Kelley said.</p><p>Two labor union leaders told supervisors that the county’s use of hired bargaining agents had contributed to the impasse in negotiations that ultimately led to the administration imposing the revised medical plan premiums on most of the unions.</p><p>“There was a decision to take adversarial rather than a collaborative approach,” said Bill Robotka, head of the county’s Union of Engineers and Scientists. “When you rely on outside, adversarial contractors to represent the county, you increase costs.”</p><p>With four supervisors siding with Woodside’s proposed budget, Kelley postponed a final decision to Friday. That’s when supervisors are scheduled to spend all day reviewing suggestions from administrators, departments and employees on how to make up an estimated $12 million deficit in the county $1.2 billion budget.</p>