Guest Blog: Giuliano Speaks Out

Hush and Rush! Why fill position so fast?
 Former Middletown Mayor Seb Giuliano speaks out.
When I took office, we had 3 attorneys in the legal department.  It had been my intention to assign each of them two related areas of concentration: labor and personnel matters to Adrienne DeLuca, land use and contractual matters (other than labor) to Tim Lynch and public safety and municipal liability to City Attorney Trina Solecki. Outside counsel would continue to be retained for complex litigation.

Deluca left to take a private sector job with a labor law firm (specialty in representing management) and, within a few more months, Solecki retired. This left only Lynch, who was named Acting City Attorney, which position he continues to occupy. In the meantime, the legal department was reduced from 3 to 2 lawyers and the qualifications for the City Attorney position had been made more - and subsequently less - stringent. Obviously, any concept of a three lawyer office, with each of them being responsible for specific areas of legal expertise, was shelved. Also, a logical consequence of having only one lawyer in the office was more reliance on outside counsel, with its attendant costs.

At one point, I felt it helpful and logical to send Geen Thazhampallath, my Administrative Assistant (not "Chief of Staff"), who is a lawyer, to the legal department as an acting deputy city attorney.  Council Democrats objected that, under the Charter, nobody could hold a city job and, at the same time, be the mayoral AA. I thought their argument was misplaced, but it was not an argument worth getting into, so I brought Thazhampallath back to my office and left Tim Lynch by himself.

There are those who have suggested that we eliminate the legal department altogether and use outside counsel for everything. This is not a position I support. I believe that it is more cost effective to keep ordinary municipal functions "in house", and only outsource for those needs that arise infrequently. For a small, “general practice” law firm, which the City’s legal department essentially is (even though it has only one client), litigation is something that should be handled by outside counsel. Most small law offices would be brought to a standstill by litigation, especially federal litigation. This detracts from the City Attorney’s ability to advise the municipal departments (e.g., planning, conservation, municipal development, personnel, finance, tax assessor, tax collector, health, public works, parks, recreation, human relations, purchasing, sanitation, et c.), to negotiate and review contracts, to advise and assist the City’s enforcement officials in the exercise of their respective duties, or to issue legal opinions when requested or authorized by the Mayor.

Clearly, I have no quarrel with the concept of a three-lawyer legal department along the lines I previously described. That, however, does not completely describe what is being proposed. The Mayor - and his "blue ribbon" commission (just who awarded them this blue ribbon and what they did to earn it still to be explained) are proposing that the legal department take operational control of a city department, i.e., personnel, an idea that is rife with potential - if not actual - conflicts of interest. The client of the City Attorney is the corporate entity known as the City of Middletown, which includes all of its departments, boards and commissions, and its ethical responsibility is to represent that entity fully, To place municipal management functions within that office is to compromise the ability of the office to exercise its true function, to be the City’s lawyers.

Sebastian Giuliano,

Middletown, CT