Review Says Liability Rose Under Hahn as City Attorney

Under the leadership of James K. Hahn, the city attorney’s office won guilty pleas or verdicts in 90% of its misdemeanor cases, but allowed the city’s liability in lawsuits to soar, according to a confidential review of the office obtained by The Times.

The three-month review of the office, ordered by City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo to assess the status of the department he took over this summer, found that the city’s attorneys have been adequately performing their basic responsibilities.

But the 26-page report also concluded that under Hahn, the office suffered from a stagnant bureaucracy created by a poor infrastructure and mediocre internal communications. In addition, there was no system for assessing the performance of the 900 employees who make up the largest municipal law firm in the country.

“Compared to similar public and private legal organizations, the office has an inadequate infrastructure,” the report said. “This inadequacy directly impacts the quality of the office’s legal work and level of client service.”

The review offers a glimpse of how Mayor Hahn performed as a manager during his 16 years as city attorney, a position that is difficult to evaluate because of the confidential nature of much of the work.

On Monday, Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook said the mayor had no comment on the report, saying that he had not seen it.

Delgadillo, who was a deputy mayor under Mayor Richard Riordan, also declined to comment on the review.

McKinsey and Co., an international management consulting firm, conducted the review by interviewing hundreds of office employees, city staff and officials, judges and outside attorneys. In addition, the firm examined the internal office information systems. The $200,000 report, which was completed in October, was distributed to city officials last month.

Ben Austin, Delgadillo’s communications director, said the city attorney has already made some of the changes suggested in the report, including reorganizing the top management structure to create clearer lines of authority.

The consulting team found that a lack of communication kept the office from being nimble, and contributed to the city’s soaring liability problem and dissatisfaction among some of the city departments it serves.

During the last four years, the city’s potential liabilities from lawsuits have grown by an average of 7% annually, including a 26% leap in the last year to more than $1 billion. A large portion of that increase was due to police-related lawsuits and a change in reporting methods. At the current rate, the city’s liability for everything from workers’ compensation to injuries from sidewalk cracks could reach $1.5 billion to $2.9 billion by 2005, the review concluded.

The amount the city actually had to pay increased about 9% a year, totaling $168 million in 2000.

While the city attorney is not directly responsible for slowing the growth of liability, the consulting team concluded that the office could do more to prevent it by prioritizing cases and tracking them more efficiently.

In addition, the office could do a better job of matching its top attorneys with the most serious cases and helping other departments identify regular sources of liability problems, the review said.

The consultants found some areas to praise. The review complimented the office for having a highly dedicated group of attorneys and a large number of satisfied clients within the city.

The report said that the office’s criminal branch has been successful in prosecuting misdemeanors, with a 90% rate of guilty pleas or convictions. The review also said the office has done a good job of creating specialized units to deal with complicated cases such as domestic violence and nuisance abatement.

However, the consultants noted that about a fifth of 53,000 cases the city attorney’s office filed and disposed of last year went to trial--a figure they said could be reduced by better attorney preparation and more communication with police and the court system.

In addition, the report said the office was burdened by antiquated technology and obsolete software. At the time of the review, some staff did not have voicemail and had to share computers.