"Fees for New Orleans airport attorneys drop sharply"

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Airport legal fees drop under Nagin
Bills halved since Morial was mayor
By Matt Scanlan
The New Orleans (LA) Times-Picayune


Fees for lawyers at Louis Armstrong International Airport, long a rich mine
of patronage money for political supporters of the New Orleans City Hall
administration, have plummeted more than 50 percent since Ray Nagin became
mayor in 2002. 

The airport's legal bills totaled $597,000 in 2004, down from almost $1.4
million in 2001, the last full year of Marc Morial's administration,
according to airport records. Comparisons do not include legal fees related
to construction, which can vary wildly from year to year depending on the
phase of a building program. 

The cost of legal services at the airport was a long-standing source of
criticism during Morial's administration in part because the primary
beneficiary was the Middleberg, Riddle & Gianna firm, headed by Morial's
chief campaign fund-raiser, Ira Middleberg. Morial took office in 1994 with
instructions to Middleberg to cut legal costs at the airport, but instead
they increased during his eight years as mayor -- with Middleberg's firm
collecting most of the cash. 

Nagin, too, took office with a goal of cutting legal costs, and for a
variety of reasons, his administration has succeeded. 

One is that the mayor-appointed New Orleans Aviation Board abolished a
complex system of committees after Nagin took office. The old system
sometimes kept as many as a half-dozen lawyers in the committee meeting
audience for hours while other matters were handled. Because the committees'
duties overlapped, the lawyers often had to return for more than one
meeting, then attend the full Aviation Board meeting until the matter under
consideration was decided. 

Shortly after Nagin became mayor and made Dan Packer chairman of the
Aviation Board, Packer abolished the committee system and began relying more
on the airport's in-house employees. 

"We felt that the staff could better handle these issues and bring them to
the board," Packer said. 

Aviation Director Roy Williams also credits Courtney Courseault Thornton,
who heads the airport's legal department, with riding herd on costs. In
2004, legal work was divided among 13 law firms, including Middleberg's.
Some of the new firms employ former Middleberg lawyers who developed
specialized expertise. 

Thornton, a $127,000-a-year contract employee, requires all requests for
legal services to go through her office. 

"Department heads can't pick up the phone and call a lawyer," she said.
"Consultants used to call our lawyers, and we don't let them do that
anymore. If research needs to be done, we make the calls. And we try to
limit the scope of what we ask outside counsel to do." 

Thornton's three-person staff, none of them lawyers, also are contract
workers. 

"Everybody answers the phone, including me," she said. 

While halving the amount of money paid to outside lawyers, Nagin's Aviation
Board hasn't beefed up its in-house legal staff, even though that was
recommended by a 1998 operational audit of the airport. Williams said he is
reluctant to hire staff lawyers because they would fall under the civil
service system, with extensive job protection. 

"All the city attorneys are at-will (non-civil service) employees, and we
would like to have that in place here," he said. 

The Aviation Board made some moves to add lawyers through the New Orleans
city attorney's office. But it ran into problems involving the airport's
status as an autonomous body under the New Orleans City Charter. 

"I think we've made some progress, but we aren't where we need to be," board
member Douglas Evans said. 

Another reason costs are lower now, Williams said, is that Nagin's Aviation
Board isn't handling as many projects that require lawyers. By contrast,
Morial's Aviation Board in the late 1990s tackled a number of complex
issues, such as re-negotiating major concessions leases for parking, car
rental and retail operations at the airport. In addition, the board oversaw
a complex terminal renovation project that spawned a number of lawsuits. 

Revius Ortique Jr., board chairman during the Morial administration, said
last week that much of that work was handled in the committee system. While
that cost more money, he said, it enabled board members to vet issues
thoroughly in a public forum. 

"We were at a very important crossroads," Ortique said. "We could have done
what others had done and just guessed at the solution, but we wanted to be
on firm legal ground because that saved us money down the road." 

Williams said he and his staff are still drawing on a wealth of legal
research commissioned during Morial's terms. 

But he can't promise that legal costs will stay low. The Aviation Board has
created three new committees for finance, personnel and disadvantaged
business enterprise issues in recent months, although none of the groups has
met. Board members say they can't easily handle those issues within the
framework of the full board's regular monthly meetings. 

"We can't control who sues us," Williams said. "And a lot of the concessions
contracts are coming up for renewal soon. We have to deal with these things
as they come up."


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