Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 19, 1994 TAG: 9405190116
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
No longer, says Gilmore, will the state's legal work be farmed out to private lawyers on the basis of (1) their partisan persuasion and (2) their support, financial gifts included, for the AG.
At least on his watch, insists the attorney general, outside lawyers who handle millions of dollars' worth of state business each year will be chosen strictly on merit: the quality of their work, expertise and experience, cost-effectiveness, etc.
Further, Gilmore has called a halt to the ethically smelly practice of awarding state legal business to lawyers who also are members of the General Assembly or to the lawyer-legislators' firms.
In announcing the new policy, Gilmore is rejecting a tool - distribution of state-paid legal fees to friends - that an ambitious attorney general could use to build a political machine of loyal supporters.
Traditionally, this has mostly involved fees to private attorneys to handle highway right-of-way and condemnation cases. In 1992, for instance, then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, a Democrat, doled out at least $1.5 million in fees for highway-related legal work to private lawyers and law firms with Democratic Party ties - including those who had actively supported her previous bids for public office and who were supporting her for governor in 1993.
That was just one year's worth of nearly $8.6 million in highway work for outside lawyers that Terry had approved since 1986 - and highway-related fees were just a portion of those she had divvied up for outside lawyers.
No evidence suggests that the state's legal interests have suffered because Democratic attorneys general have favored Democratic lawyers (or because, prior to Gilmore, the only other Republican attorney general, Marshall Coleman, favored Republican lawyers.)
But the spoils system has little to recommend it in terms of quality control and public accountability. Legal work awarded by the attorney general is mostly done behind the scenes. It's hard to track, and harder still to evaluate. Plus, the system reinforces public distrust and resentment against political insiders' back-scratching games.
If lawyer-legislators or their firms are picked to handle state legal matters, for example, the perception is of legislators financially benefiting, directly or indirectly, from state legal decisions that they may have had a part in making - or, at the least, who-you-know payola.
A statutory ban against this practice was recommended two years ago by an ethics commission set up by former Gov. Douglas Wilder, and ignored by the assembly. In nixing the practice by policy directive, Gilmore has done the next best thing.
Another thing he could do: study when it is cost effective for the AG's office - nesting ground for more than 100 lawyers - to hire private attorneys to represent the state's interests.
Some 30 years ago, the federal government told Virginia it could save considerable money on highway right-of-way cases if the attorney general's office handled such cases instead of farming them out. The General Assembly refused even to study the matter. Why not study it now?
by CNB