The New Orleans City Council has moved to temporarily escrow the city Law Department’s operating budget, suggesting that the number of civil actions filed by the department may be excessive and that the council is not being consulted about legal filings.
During a contentious November 10 budget hearing, City Council members criticized City Attorney Donesia Turner for a lack of candor exhibited by outside attorneys working for the city. Some council members have questioned whether the 728 lawsuits filed by New Orleans this year and in 2022 might have been resolved by efforts other than litigation.
The handling of legal issues related to municipal pensions and the city Police Department’s federal consent decree also have been raised by city officials.
"We expect that when the city is being named as a defendant, and when the contract says who it is, the client (the council) has control over the matter," Councilman Joseph Giarrusso said during the hearing. “Under the charter, it says that the Law Department directs and supervises the legal affairs. It doesn't mean they control that – the client does."
The council should be consulted about legal strategies to ensure there is general agreement on the direction of litigation, according to Giarusso, and council members should be provided with legal documents before they are filed.
“The council sometimes doesn't know what is being filed,” he said during the hearing. “We are not being consulted front-end on important litigation that's being filed.”
A former city attorney, William Aaron Jr. of Aaron & Gianna PLC in New Orleans, said council members have authority to escrow budgets under certain conditions.
“I believe that the council, as the city’s governing authority, has the right and power under the charter to temporarily freeze the budget of any department, including the Law Department, in limited situations which would include: 1) a department exceeding its annual budget; 2) a reduction in budgeted revenues; or 3) where there is reasonable suspicion that monies for outside legal spending, or otherwise, are not being properly spent by the department,” Aaron said in an email to the Louisiana Record.
Council members have suggested that spending on outside counsel, as well as not having enough in-house attorneys, may not be in the best interest of the city and may lead to more regulation of the Law Department.
“A general freeze absent the above situations would in my considered opinion be an impingement on the authority of the city attorney to run the Law Department,” Aaron said.
The City Council also passed an ordinance directing the escrow of the department’s operating budget in August. That measure restricted outside expenses but was not intended to affect settlement negotiations or the drafting and reviewing of contracts.
Turner defended her department’s record during the budget hearing, saying that the department made 36 offers on pending legal matters on the city’s settlement list. This would reduce liabilities by $10.5 million if all the offers are accepted, she said. In addition, department officials have reviewed and approved more than 1,000 contracts and completed nearly 3,400 public records requests in 2023, according to a report the department submitted to the City Council.