When Times-Union Editor Frank Denton sued the Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund over breaking the law by meeting secretly to negotiate pension benefits, the fund and the city blew nearly half a million dollars fighting the case before finally losing.
Then Curtis Lee, a retired lawyer, had to sue the fund over its unwillingness to comply with his open records request, and the fund blew another half million on that.
All told, the pension fund has spent nearly $2M of taxpayer money, first by breaking the law, then by refusing to admit wrongdoing and instead fighting all the way to the highest court that will hear its cases, before (inevitably) losing and having to pay its opponents’ legal fees.
A year after his first suit was filed, Lee joined the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County and sued the city and the pension fund after discovering that the entities had, just like in the Denton case in 2013, met illegally when they hammered out over the course of several years what had become known as the 30-year agreement. That single battle will cost taxpayers close to $1 million after the city pays approximately $255,000 sometime later this year to attorney Bob Dees, who represented Lee and the Concerned Taxpayers. Dees, who took the case mostly pro bono, has already been awarded $331,800 by the pension fund. The fund spent $313,137 defending itself.
Then in 2014, Lee and his attorney sued the pension fund for again withholding public records. The pension fund, which at the time had been heavily criticized for excessive legal bills, chose to use the city’s Office of General Counsel to defend its actions. In the end, Lee was given the records as Dees’ firm, Milam Howard Nicandri Dees & Gillam, was paid about $43,000.
Open government lawsuits against city, pension fund cost taxpayers more than $2 million
[Eileen Kelley/Florida Times-Union]
(via Naked Capitalism)