Holden’s Dubious Legacy

With less than a year to go before he is termed out of office, Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden is once again burdening taxpayers with his legal expenses. Talk about a legacy.

This time the bite is $75,000--so far--to defend the longtime councilman against allegations that he forced a deputy to work on various political campaigns on city time and fired him after one campaign was unsuccessful. Previously, the city spent $1.5 million to defend Holden against sexual harassment charges.

As it had in the earlier lawsuits, the city attorney’s office recused itself from representing Holden, citing a conflict of interest in a case that involves city employees on both sides.

The City Council had little choice last week but to agree to pay for private legal representation. But why do so by stealth--an “emergency” motion, without public notice or even discussion?

The city attorney’s office had referred the case to a pool of outside law firms retained for just such conflicts, but Holden claimed that the assigned attorney did not return his calls. So he turned to Mark Geragos, a high-profile defense attorney who is defending actress Wynona Ryder on shoplifting charges and is a frequent legal commentator on CNN. Geragos has worked on criminal and civil defenses for the Holden family before.

When he is not defending himself against lawsuits, Holden has stayed busy racking up ethics violations for taking money beyond permissible campaign limits 334 times in his long career. Yet voters in his district continued to reelect him, albeit in closer races than the cake walk afforded other incumbents.

Voters often say he delivers on constituent services such as filling potholes and trimming trees. Just imagine, then, what services the city could provide with the almost $1.6 million that has gone toward defending Holden so far. The city could do any one of the following:

* buy 8,000 library books;

* refurbish 74 parks;

* hire 34 police officers;

* train 200 bomb-sniffing dogs;

* expand the LA’s BEST after-school program to 20 more schools;

* fill 160,000 potholes.

Now that would be a legacy.