City Council voted yesterday to approve a three-year contact to hire outside Land Use/CEQA attorneys to handle lawsuits against the City from neighborhoods hiring attorneys to fight certain aspects of development in their neighborhoods.

Councilman Mike Bonin was absent for the vote. http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=14-1438 Homeowners association of Encino claims this is not good for the public and the reasons are:

• The City should already have been requiring developers to pay for the City Attorney’s costs and time. The City should have kept track of those expenses, but instead gave developers a free pass for all these years. That is a scandal in and of itself.

• Developers can fulfill their obligation through paying for the City Attorney’s office to increase their staffing to handle things internally.

• Using outside law firms to represent the City will create an economic incentive for the private firms to file harassing motions and use other procedural tricks to increase their billings. The City, being indemnified by the developers, will have no reason to try to control or stop such abuses. The upshot is that community groups will face even more “scorched earth” tactics than already being waged against them.

• Using outside law firms to represent the City will allow these outside firms to learn confidential information, e.g., the City’s philosophy about settlement and other strategic issues, which these outside law firms — which also have a heavy practice representing developers — will use to benefit their developer clients, and hurt the public. The City’s proposed action is ripe for conflict of interest problems.

• Other conflict of interests arise because the outside counsel, being paid by the developers, will protect the developers’ interests, and might not encourage the City to settle or resolve issues, or take positions against the developers, if that were not in the best interests of the parties paying their fees. Again, economic forces will drive the outside firms to run up bills so that their profits are as high as possible. The result will be more harassment for community groups already fighting the government and well financed developers.