From Steven Greenhut:

Four supervisors’ offices have been adamant in their denial that they leaked the memo including an analysis suggesting that the effort by the board to retract the retroactive portion of the 2002 pension spike for deputies is likely to fail. The fifth office has been silent. That office is none other than Supervisor Janet Nguyen, and speculation is centering around her office. I put in a call to her, and will report what she says when she gets back to me.

The board has gotten three analyses from outside firms of its legal position — a standard practice as anyone considers legal strategy. All three opinions are protected by attorney-client privilege. The first, by a firm that specializes in municipal bond work, counseled against the strategy. The second argued that that it is a sound constitutional strategy, and the third — which, apparently, ignores the constitutional arguments and looks almost entirely at what pragmatic concerns — is the one that was released to a Register reporter.

Interesting that the second one wasn’t released. There’s nothing wrong with protecting these opinions as part of attorney-client privilege. If any of us were contemplating a legal strategy, we would get a variety of opinions to understand the strengths and weaknesses of that strategy. Every case has it soft spots and its more solid arguments.

It’s ironic that Sheriff Mike Carona and Wayne Quint, the union boss, argued at the board meeting that because the document is paid for with public dollars that it should be made public. OK … does that mean neither of them have attorney-client privilege in any cases they are involved in? Ironically, both men have opposed efforts to make public information about abusive deputies. Those deputies are paid for with public funds and their misbehavior involves the public, but the Carona/Quint duo don’t believe in openness in those cases.

The board needs to stick with its stategy. If Supervisor Nguyen doesn’t like the strategy, she should explain why directly rather than attempt to undermine it. Nguyen needs to become more principled and stop worrying about the next election. The unions are going to back Joe Dunn or any other Democratic candidate any way, so there’s not much that will be gained by her for taking pro-union positions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 11:49 am and is filed under Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.