2 L.A. Law Firms Hired to Negotiate Trash Pact

Rejecting the recommendation of its staff, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday added two local, politically well-connected law firms--including one employing a councilman’s son--to a team of lawyers to negotiate terms of the city’s proposed $235-million trash-burning plant.

A special committee of senior City Hall staff members had ranked the New York law firm of Hawkins, Delafield & Wood highest among the competing firms and strongly recommended that it be the sole representative for the city in negotiations with the owners and operators of the plant in South-Central Los Angeles.

Warnings of ‘Chaos’

But after two hours of intense debate and warnings that it was inviting higher costs and “chaos” in the negotiations, the council voted 11 to 3 to include the two Los Angeles firms in the $150,000 agreement. They are Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Heine, Underberg, Manley & Casey, a major City Hall campaign contributor which employs Councilman Dave Cunningham’s son, and Ochoa & Sillas, which includes Democratic activist Herman Sillas. A former U.S. attorney in Sacramento, Sillas was one of the highest ranking Mexican-Americans in the Jimmy Carter Administration.

The law firms will negotiate a 20-year contract with New Jersey-based Ogden Martin Corp., which was selected to build and operate the facility in March. A spokesman for the Finley, Kumble firm said Cunningham’s son would not be working on the city contract.

Spokesmen for Hawkins, Delafield, which was designated the lead law firm, said they would have preferred to have won the contract alone, but are willing to work with local law firms. It was not clear, however, whether the firm would agree that an earlier $150,000 lid on its bill to the city would still apply.

The council extended the $150,000 limit to cover all three firms, but Councilwoman Joy Picus warned that with the addition of two firms “plainly it is going to be more.”

Cunningham, who voted to add his son’s firm, argued that the New York firm did not adequately represent the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles. “We have a responsibility to make certain there is a broad brush of what this community represents in all aspects” of the project, Cunningham said. “I put a big premium on minorities and women participating in the business of this city.”

On the association of his son, David S. Cunningham III, with the firm, Councilman Cunningham said, “He works on his own. He lives on his own. I stand to gain no monetary interest from the success or failure” of the Finley, Kumble firm.

N.Y. Firm’s Rate Highest

Other council supporters of the local firms argued that the New York firm’s rate of $300 per hour was the highest of seven firms competing for the contract. They said it was in the long-term financial interests of the city, which plans to build several trash-burning plants, to help local law firms develop additional expertise in the highly specialized field.

However, critics of the addition of the local firms cited the importance of the contract and said there was no reason to reject the recommendation of the committee set up to screen the law firms. Council members Marvin Braude, Joan Milke Flores and Ernani Bernardi voted against adding the two local law firms.

Drew Sones, a city administrative analyst who is handling the project, told the council the Hawkins firm was “far and above” the most qualified of the top three firms. As one the city’s key representatives who will sit with the lawyers at the negotiating table, Sones said, “I would like to have one attorney advising me.”

Councilman Marvin Braude called the trash plant contract the “most important legal action” in recent city history. ‘We must get the finest quality. . . . The worst thing you can do is have no one responsible and that’s what we’re doing here.”

Robert E. Thomson, an attorney with Finley, Kumble, said the firm takes “great umbrage” with assertions it is not properly qualified. While never the lead representative of a city, he said, the firm has been otherwise involved in negotiations on $25 billion in contracts for energy plants.