PRINCETON: Borough to delay paying its legal bills

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Wrier
   A divided Borough Council decided Tuesday to delay increasing its legal budget to pay for legal bills that some officials still have unanswered questions about.
   Council voted 3-2 to table or delay acting on separate resolutions raising by $70,000 the amount of its contract with Hill Wallack, its regular law firm, and by $33,000 a contract with Stephen Barcan, an outside lawyer. As part of that decision, officials agreed to have the council’s finance committee, led by Councilman Roger Martindell, review the submitted legal bills and then report back to the full governing body.
   A breakdown of Hill Wallack’s work, provided to the governing body and released to the public, showed $180,437 in legal expenses covering a gamut of issues for the first nine months of this year. That total, however, is more than the amount the council had authorized, $175,000, for all of 2012.
   ”For two years in a row, we’ve fallen all over ourselves with excess legal expenditures,” Councilman Kevin Wilkes said.
   Mr. Martindell said the details that council received do not go far in explaining things. “There’s just not enough information here as to what was done, for whom, authorized by whom and at what rate,” he said.
   Mr. Martindell questioned why Hill Wallack was billing the borough for work on lawsuits Princeton Township was going to handle.
   Though officials indicated they would pay what’s owed, Mr. Martindell, a lawyer, wondered why officials were not trying to negotiate down the legal bills. “Why are we just rushing to throw money at our attorneys, who want our business? It makes no sense.”
   Maeve E. Cannon, a partner with Hill Wallack and the borough’s attorney, did not respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment.
   For his part, Borough Administrator Robert W. Bruschi said the council had been told the legal budget would have to be amended. Regarding Hill Wallack, he said most of the increase is tied to $60,000 in transition-related legal work —including reconciling ordinances between the two municipalities.
   Officials have said that 20 percent of transition-related legal fees would be reimbursable from the state, which is providing 20 percent of all transition costs.
   There was no dollar amount breakdown for Mr. Barcan, although a memo from Mr. Bruschi to the council says the work involved representing the local Historic Preservation Commission, zoning-related issues, government records requests and NJ Transit related items. Hill Wallack has a conflict since NJ Transit is and has been a client of the firm, Mr. Martindell has said.
   Councilwoman Jo S. Butler said it was “maybe misleading” to call the legal expenditures excessive. She noted the transition costs and “big projects” like AvalonBay, the company seeking to develop the former hospital site on Witherspoon Street. And by way of comparison, she said the borough is spending about half what the Township budgets for legal costs.
   Ms. Butler joined Councilwoman Jenny Crumiller in voting against tabling the two resolutions. Messrs. Wilkes and Martindell and Council President Barbara Trelstad voted in favor.
   Ms. Trelstad said, “to look at the bills and find out how they were authorized is a really good thing to do. And we can pass this before the end of the year, but we will have had more information moving forward.”
   ”I do think that we need a clear policy going forward and the new governing body needs a policy for how we deal with attorneys,” said Ms. Crumiller, who will serve on the council of the consolidated Princeton. “Maybe we should all be very clear when the attorney is going to be working and billing us and who has permission to set that in motion.”