Are attorney general donors receiving financial incentives?

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker’s office has paid more than $173 million in the last five years to private lawyers to handle state business, and many of those attorneys or their firms have contributed to his re-election campaigns.

The attorney general, who is a Democratic candidate for governor in 2010, said his office is short-staffed and that the state can’t keep up with all its legal work without hiring private attorneys. But critics say the hiring of private lawyers, known as special assistant attorneys general, creates a financial incentive for lawyers and firms to contribute to an attorney general’s campaign to secure or retain business.

The eight lawyers who were paid the most for SAAG work during the past five years collected $22.7 million from the attorney general’s office. Since 2001, those lawyers, their law firms, colleagues and immediate family members have contributed nearly $200,000 to Baker campaigns, an AJC review of campaign records found.

Much more has come from other SAAG lawyers and their firms.

Baker said in an interview that he has a policy against taking contributions directly from lawyers while they are doing state work. When those attorneys do give money, he said, it is returned. The policy is intended to make it clear that there is no link between donors and lawyers who get state business, a Baker spokesman said.

However, the AJC found multiple instances where SAAG lawyers contributed in the same years they were collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in state fees. Campaign reports do not indicate that the money was returned in each case.

When the AJC sent Baker’s campaign examples of SAAG contributions, Jeff DiSantis, his campaign manager, said his staff would review the records and return any money given by those lawyers.

Baker said it’s not surprising that lawyers and law firms are major contributors.

“In every state in this country, the people who are going to be most interested in judicial races, the people most interested in the attorney general’s races will be lawyers,” he said. “That’s just the nature of this business. That is where you are going to find the greatest level of support.”

Of the $1.9 million he raised in the two years leading up to his last re-election campaign in 2006, about $600,000 came from attorneys and law firms, including many with no SAAG business. Baker’s re-election campaigns have raised more than $1.5 million from lawyers and law firms since 2001, according to a review of campaign reports.

State Rep. David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge), who ran against Baker in 1998, said because special assistant attorneys general and their firms are legally allowed to contribute to the attorney general who hires them, the system has the appearance of being “pay-for-play.”

“The truth of the matter is the SAAG system has become a built-in network for financing attorney generals’ races,” said Ralston, vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which handles court issues.

Ralston said he remembers being approached twice when was running against Baker by lawyers wanting to give him campaign help in exchange for being considered for special assistant attorney general work.

“I said, ‘No, I don’t want your check now,’ ” said Ralston.

Every state hires some outside lawyers, according to Marjorie Tharp of the National Association of Attorneys General. Tharp said the association doesn’t keep statistics on how much states spend.

Baker said Georgia uses more private attorneys than other states in part because of the General Assembly’s reluctance to pay for more state lawyers. That’s a problem that also existed under Baker’s predecessor, Republican Michael Bowers.

A National Association of Attorneys General survey in 2006 suggested that Georgia had among the fewest state attorneys per capita in the country. It listed Georgia’s attorney general’s office as having 108 lawyers at the time.

Legislators allowed Baker to hire 20 lawyers in 2008, but he said his office is still understaffed with 133 attorneys. Florida, which has roughly twice Georgia’s population, has three times as many lawyers in its attorney general’s office. In some years, two-thirds of Baker’s budget goes to pay outside lawyers.

“Every year I plead the case over and over and over again for more attorneys,” Baker said. “We can do the work in-house for about half the cost it takes us to send the work outside.”

Adding the new staff lawyers in 2008 saved $6 million that otherwise would have been spent on outside attorneys, Baker said.

Private lawyers say the state doesn’t pay as much as private clients. However, the state pays them more, in many cases, than it does lawyers on the Attorney General’s payroll.

The state pays the SAAGs a negotiated rate, which can range from $52.50 to hundreds of dollars an hour for complex legal cases.

In 2008, the last complete fiscal year, an AJC review of records found that the state paid nearly 100 outside lawyers more than $135,000 each, which is what Baker earns. Some have been paid more than $1 million for state work in a single year, and several annually average two or three times what Baker’s lawyers are paid.

Rep. Chuck Martin (R-Alpharetta), who heads a House subcommittee that reviews Baker’s budget, said the state doesn’t have money to add lawyers right now. Lawmakers slashed the state budget this year and are likely to do the same in 2010 because of continuing shortfalls.

Even if the state hired dozens of additional lawyers, Baker and other attorneys say special assistant attorneys general would likely still be needed because they have specific expertise or are based outside of Atlanta, where the attorney general’s office is located.

Atlanta lawyer Emmet Bondurant, who has battled state

SAAGs in court, said it’s hard to criticize the use of private lawyers in some cases. For instance, he said it might make sense to use a private attorney in Albany on local cases, rather than send a state lawyer from Atlanta. Bondurant said his law firm also hires outside lawyers to help in some cases.

“Some of the local lawyers may be wired in,” said Bondurant, past chairman of the government watchdog group Common Cause Georgia. “There are a lot of advantages to it. There are also political advantages as a source of great patronage.”

Many of the lawyers who have earned the most SAAG money over the past five years are from metro Atlanta. Most did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Top on the list over the last five years is G. Thomas Davis of the Atlanta firm of Davis, Pickren & Seydel, according to Baker’s office records. Davis, a former senior assistant attorney general, has collected $4.79 million in SAAG payments over the past five years. Baker said Davis has worked on transportation issues. His law firm or members of his firm have contributed $7,500 to Baker’s re-election campaigns since 2001, according to state reports.

Second on the list is Clay Long, founding partner of the politically wired McKenna Long & Aldridge firm. Long, who has worked on the tri-state water wars case, has collected $3.3 million from the state since 2005. Long, his firm and its lawyers have donated almost $40,000 to Baker’s re-election campaigns since 2001. Long himself has contributed to Baker, most recently when he gave $500 in 2006. That year he received $700,000 in SAAG payments. Records give no indication that Baker returned that contribution.

Three of the top 20 SAAG lawyers over the past five years have come from the Buford firm of Chandler, Britt, Jay & Beck. Combined, the three did more than $5 million in SAAG work. Baker said the firm’s lawyers work on transportation issues. The firm has contributed about $20,000 to Baker’s re-election campaigns since 2001. Luther Harold Beck Jr., who has done the most state work at the firm, did not return calls for comment.

One lawyer who would talk about his SAAG work and the system was Mark Cohen, a partner at Troutman Sanders in Atlanta. Cohen spent more than 13 years at the state attorney general’s office, working for Bowers and later Baker.

Cohen said Baker’s office hires outside lawyers because they have expertise in a particular area. Cohen is an expert on election law and has represented the state in high-profile election cases.

He said that in all his time at the attorney general’s office or while at Troutman Sanders, there was “never any connection between who gets the work and who gives [contributions].”

Cohen said taking on state cases is prestigious, but lawyers are paid “significantly less” than if they were doing work for private clients.

Cohen’s wife, his law firm and its lawyers have contributed about $49,000 to Baker’s re-election campaigns since 2001. Cohen has received $2.35 million in SAAG money over the past five years, according to records from Baker’s office.

Most special assistant attorneys general don’t contribute directly to Baker’s campaign. In most cases, the money comes from their law firms or other lawyers in the firms. Some contribute nothing to Baker’s campaign.

Atlanta lawyer George Reid, for example, has received about $1.9 million in SAAG money over the past five years and has been doing work for the state for approximately 20 years. Former chairman of the State Ethics Commission, he has served as an arbitrator in major construction cases for the state and as a mediator on construction claims.

“I believe that my experience in this field of law is why I have been retained on occasion by the state,” Reid said in an e-mail to the AJC. Reid hasn’t contributed to Baker. He didn’t contribute to the campaigns of Bowers, either, he said.

Still, some think the political side of the system should be reviewed.

Ralston said it might be time for lawmakers to review contribution laws that allow special assistant attorneys general to give to the attorney general.

“Whether that leads to an outright ban on giving by SAAGs or some limitations, I don’t know,” Ralston said. “There are reasons to be concerned about the way, at least from an appearance standpoint, that we allow people to give heavily in at least that race.”

State’s legal help

More than 60 percent of what the state Department of Law spends each year goes for outside lawyers to represent the state. Rather than use his own lawyers, the attorney general’s office has hired attorneys from some of Georgia’s top firms to represent the state. Below is the department’s annual expenditures, and the amount spent on special assistant attorneys general, as the outside lawyers are called.

Overall Money to

expenditures outside firms
‘05 $50.7 million $33.1 million
‘06 $54.3 million $36.6 million
‘07 $56.5 million $36.1 million
‘08 $62.7 million $38.6 million
‘09 $54.2 million ** $28.7 million*
*2009 figure of payments to law firms is for the first nine months of the fiscal year.
**2009 figure is the approved budget.
Source: Georgia Department of Law