12 of 14. Charging The Public With Attorney Fees For Poor Board Decisions:

Much has been said about the outrageous salary and compensation package given to Donofrio by this present board. Not addressed have been the associated costs of those decisions to the district taxpayers, which continue to escalate.

In the months preceding the retirement of Donofrio, CalPers reportedly challenged several aspects of his retirement package, presumably for being overly generous. The MPRPD board felt compelled to defend his benefits, but to do so they would be forced to expend monies on attorney’s fees to provide such defense. Did they choose to spend more of our money after the first bad decision? Yes, of course. How much? We don’t know, as the board has refused to divulge that information, even when asked via a public records request under the California Public Record’s Act.

A review of the financials for 2010 may provide at least a partial answer. We find there was $21,157 paid to the district’s regular attorney, plus other miscellaneous legal expenses, a fee in line with previous annual expenses. However, a more detailed reviewed of the years expense register shows an additional fee, paid to the district’s employment attorney of $36,545.43. For what purpose did the board pay their employment attorney $36,000? How much of that amount went into providing a legal defense for such an excessively high salary? Isn’t having to pay the salary and benefits package not sufficiently offensive? Why should taxpayers also be required to shoulder his defense costs. Isn’t this just adding insult to injury? And why is the district silent on these issue? Why are they refusing to divulge this salary to the public? It certainly couldn’t be client attorney privilege, since even with the agency as the client the agency has the election to waive secrecy in attorney-client discussions (Code Sections 6254(k), 6254.25, 6276.04).  Since this is the case, and since they are working for us, the taxpayer,  why do they insist on keeping such matters in the dark?

Here’s an idea. If the board felt so generous to award these benefits to this employee, why shouldn’t the costs to defend them be personally borne by the board who awarded them? The public never had an opportunity to offer input on the bighearted salary and benefits program (and if they had they would have been summarily rejected), yet now they have to pay someone to defend them? Are we missing the logic here?