Political Notes
Karl Dean is promising “ethical, pragmatic and progressive” leadership if he’s elected mayor, “not a return to the old-style politics” in the person of the mayoral campaign’s leader, candidate-for-life Bob Clement. Yet Dean’s critics are raising questions about whether he’s really an untainted political innocent. In at least one way, if elected mayor, he may unwittingly bear some resemblance to two of the legendary back-scratching politicians of Nashville’s past.
In the 1950s, Mayor Ben West and Judge Beverly Briley handed out government business to lawyers like lollipops as political favors in return for help at election time. To stop it, the founders of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County included a provision in the charter prohibiting the hiring of private attorneys in at least some circumstances without Metro Council approval.
But when Dean was Metro law director, his department gave about $2.5 million worth of contracts to law firms without asking the Metro Council. As a candidate for mayor, he now has accepted more than $40,000 in contributions from attorneys belonging to some of those same firms. Their contributions were a decent-sized chunk of the roughly $275,000 that Dean’s campaign had raised by April 10, when the last public report was made. To borrow a line from Dean himself, his critics would say, “it’s all connected.”
Accepting the contributions is perfectly legal, and is no worse than other candidates, three of whom currently sit on the Metro Council, taking money from lobbyists or supporters who regularly have business before the body. But that so much money from lawyers is coming into the Dean campaign could say something about the contributors’ motives, skeptics say.
“The main people who first supported Karl were a bunch of lawyers,” says one attorney who asks not to be named. “At least there has been speculation that they looked around and said, ‘Hell, if we’re going to be able to keep any Metro legal department work, we need to get us a candidate out there,’ and hey, Karl Dean was the perfect one. That may be a little cynical, but I’ll let you draw your only conclusions.”
Indeed, Dean finds that theory much too cynical. “When I announced I was running for mayor, I resigned my position,” he says. “I’m no longer the law director, so I think lawyers are obviously free to contribute to my campaign. We’ve reached out to almost all lawyers. Some of them have been people who know me well and obviously know me through work and other things and have decided to contribute, and obviously they are free to do so.”
As for whether council approval is required for Metro to hire private attorneys, a judge has decided it’s not, Dean points out. Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle has ruled against motions in two lawsuits to strike lawyers who were hired by Dean without asking the council.
At least two of Dean’s rival campaigns have been shopping this story to the news media. If in the Aug. 2 election Dean makes it into a runoff, it will probably become the topic of a TV attack ad from the Clement camp. Prominent attorneys in Nashville also have complained to the Scene, saying the law department under Dean put politics back into Metro’s hiring of private lawyers.
Longtime Nashville attorney George Barrett says that, in the days of Ben West and Beverly Briley (whose grandson David is also running for mayor), the hiring of outside lawyers “was just a way to reward your friends. ‘Here do a little legal work. Send me a bill. We’ll pay it. And by the way, can you help me raise some money for my campaign?’ ” (To be fair, Barrett should know. He was the beneficiary of significant legal work for MDHA under Mayor Richard Fulton and is therefore an ironic mouthpiece for such criticism.)
According to Dean, what he did actually took politics out of the process rather than the other way around. “You don’t want to go through the council because that would make a political issue out of who we hire,” he says. “The law department’s given the authority to do what’s in the best interest of the city.”
The disputed Metro charter provision bars employment of “special counsels” without Metro Council approval. Dean won the rulings by Chancellor Lyle by persuading her that he was hiring “additional counsels,” not “special counsels.” Dean argued that “additional counsels” are hired to assist Metro attorneys for their expertise in specialized areas of the law, while “special counsels” are hired only when conflicting interests prevent Metro’s own lawyers from handling the case.
But in an affidavit in one of the cases, Cecil Branstetter, who served on the commission that wrote the charter in 1958, disputed Dean’s interpretation of the provision on the hiring of private lawyers. “It is my opinion,” Branstetter says, “that whether a lawyer is referred to as ‘special counsel,’ ‘co-counsel,’ ‘additional counsel,’ or any other designation, does not change the fact that the charter requires that such counsel be employed only as authorized by the mayor and approved by the Metropolitan Council.”
When the charter was written, “special counsels were always attorneys who supported a campaign or worked in a campaign,” Branstetter, now 86, told the Scene. “They were always hired for political purposes. That was the general consensus of the charter commission.” He adds, “It would appear that it could be” happening again under Mayor Bill Purcell. It should be noted that Branstetter’s son, Dewey, was one of the lawyers who asked Chancellor Lyle to bar private attorneys from representing Metro without council OK. Barrett was also an attorney opposing Dean in one of those cases.
With rare exceptions, law directors under mayors before Purcell sought council approval for such hirings, says Don Jones, special counsel to the council. “This is a new practice of hiring all these attorneys,” Jones says. “This is a new phenomenon.” As part of the budget process, the law department has reported its hiring of private attorneys, but apparently not too many council members have been paying attention, because Jones says, “I don’t think council is aware of it.”
Dean resigned in January when he announced his mayoral candidacy after seven years as law director. Law firms that received law department work under Dean included the most prominent in the city. Bass, Berry and Sims took $35,989 in Metro business, and its attorneys have given Dean $14,700 for his campaign. Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis received $47,016 in Metro business, and the firm’s lawyers have given Dean’s campaign $13,900. Metro paid $104,399 to Baker Donelson, and that firm’s lawyers have given Dean’s campaign $8,950.
Attorney Matthew Sweeney, who works for Baker Donelson and has been paid to represent Metro in court, gave $1,000 to Dean’s campaign. “Did I make a contribution to him because I’ve been hired by the city? No,” Sweeney says. “I’ve known Karl a long time. I’ve known him for most of my professional career, and I think that he’d make the best mayor. If I didn’t think that he was the best person for the office, I wouldn’t contribute.”
Sue Cain, the acting law director, says her department hires outside attorneys because “we don’t have lawyers with the depth of expertise in patent and trademark and immigration law and complicated bankruptcy cases, class-action lawsuits, federal income tax law and securities law and other very complicated commercial transactions.”
The law department employs 30 in-house lawyers, but “at any one time we have 600 litigation matters that we’re handling,” Cain says. She says Metro’s practice of hiring private attorneys is “cost-efficient,” and she credits them with helping win a $10 million settlement in one case and saving $7 million for taxpayers in another.“We do what is ethically required,” Cain says. “We do not select attorneys based on any kind of patronage. The mayor has never suggested to us who we should hire. We try to look in the community to see who has expertise.”