This story is taken from Metro/Regional News at sacbee.com.
Placer swaps legal teams
Choice of law firm to serve indigent defendants stirs up controversy.
By Jocelyn Wiener -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:01 am PDT Wednesday, June 28, 2006
The Placer County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a contract with a controversial law firm Tuesday to begin providing public defender services to poor people who are accused of crimes.
John A. Barker & Associates, the chosen firm, submitted a bid of $16.8 million for the next four years. Leonard Tauman & Dan Koukol, which has provided primary public defender services in Placer County for 16 years, bid $25.5 million.
Former employees and officials in at least one other county where Barker has a contract have criticized the firm. They allege that Barker attorneys are often inexperienced, given little material support and overloaded with cases. As a result, they say, poor clients often receive shoddy representation.
Barker representatives deny those allegations, and county officials in Modoc, Madera and Calaveras have given Barker good marks for providing competent attorneys and competitive costs.
"Reputation is not in the newspapers," Richard Ciummo, Barker's chief executive officer, told the board Tuesday, standing at a lectern in the supervisors' chambers in Auburn. "It's not from ex-employees. It comes from people we work with."
Rich Colwell, chief assistant to Placer County's executive officer, told the board that a six-person committee composed of two Superior Court judges and four other Placer County officials had investigated allegations against the firm and had been satisfied with what they found.
Colwell said some of the problems were old, others were explainable by poorly written contracts or problems in smaller counties, and still others had been cleaned up since Ciummo took over leadership of the firm two years ago.
Board members said they were satisfied with the committee's investigation and were inclined to save the money.
"We are running a business; that's the way I look at this," said Supervisor Bill Santucci.
Added Supervisor Bruce Kranz: "I want to look out for the taxpayers' dollars. We're talking $9 million. That's a lot of money."
The board voted 4-0, with Supervisor Robert Weygandt absent, to award Barker the public defender contract starting July 1. The board also approved two 90-day contracts to provide a transition period. During that time Tauman's firm and the firm of Dan Clymo, which also does some public defense work in the county, are expected to conclude the vast majority of pending cases.
Leonard Tauman addressed the board before the vote.
"We've done our work quietly. We've done our work efficiently. And we've done our work never failing to understand who our clients are -- indigent defendants," Tauman told the board.
He offered to sit down with board members, put the contracts side by side and examine where possible differences in cost were coming from. As the county allocates more funding for the district attorney and police departments, he said, it must maintain balance by allocating more for public defense.
After the meeting, several members of the Tauman firm stood in the heat outside the board chambers.
Mary Beth Acton, who works in Tauman's office as the chief assistant public defender, said she was "extremely worried" about what would happen to her indigent clients. She said she did not believe she would able to finish their cases within 90 days, and that she was not considering going to work with the Barker firm.
Ciummo had said during the meeting that eight to 10 attorneys from Tauman's firm were interested in working for Barker.
He also said he expected 13 of 28 attorneys would be ready to start representing clients by Monday.
Ciummo told the board his firm saves money because it operates on a slim profit margin.
"I'm the only shareholder and I'm a simple man," he said.
Only one other member of the public spoke at Tuesday morning's meeting. Sharen Neal , treasurer of the Placer County chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said she was concerned that there would not be adequate time or resources to transfer mentally ill defendants from Tauman's firm to Barker's.
"The District Attorney's Office is extremely strong in this county," she said. "Is there really going to be proper representation for the other side? That's what we're concerned about."
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