Board sticks with law firm after prolonged debate

A months-long quarrel over the hiring of a law firm by school district leadership came to an end Sept. 6 when the board of education voted 4-3 to approve its contract renewal for the 2016-17 school year.
Trustee David Gerard, along with board allies Gino Borgioli and Rick Badillo, was adamant about parting ways with Burke, Williams & Sorensen and replacing them with another reputable firm.
However, despite Gerard’s continued efforts to convince the board majority, Trustees Bob Benevento, Donna Ruebusch, Ron Woolf and Tom Arnett voted in favor of keeping Burke, Williams & Sorensen as one of the district’s legal representatives. The district budgets for up to $350,000 worth of legal expenses per school year and keeps multiple firms under contract based on areas of expertise.
Gerard, Borgioli and Badillo did not agree with the law firm’s handling of Morgan Hill Unified School District’s litigation against the Santa Clara County Office of Education and its board April 2015. MHUSD sued SCCOE for approving the Voices-Morgan Hill charter school petition.
In that case, a judge ruled against MHUSD, which was seeking to reverse the county’s decision to authorize the Voices charter. The board then deadlocked 3-all in closed session on whether to file an appeal, but the law firm still filed one.
That’s where the disagreement lies in interpretation on what the 3-3 vote meant. For Gerard, Borgioli and Badillo, it meant no further action was to be taken by the law firm and an appeal would not be filed. However, last week the board majority read it differently because Burke, Williams & Sorenson was acting in accordance with a previous 4-3 vote by the then-seven-member board (which included former trustee Amy Porter-Jensen at the time) to pursue litigation against SCCOE.
“There was no action because there was no majority,” Betando tried to clarify. “(Because of the no action), all the points of the case refer back to the original approval of the case.”
Badillo disagreed with Betando’s take.
“Yeah, the attorneys weren’t given clear direction not to move forward. Yet, they were not given direction to move forward,” Badillo said. “I have some grave concerns about spending public money from the district on items that are not board approved.”
The Times attempted to get comment from the Burke Williams & Sorenson about the filing of the appeal, but that information falls under attorney-client privilege because it was discussed in closed session, according to school officials.
The contract renewal came before the board on multiple occasions. The then-six-member board failed to reach a majority on a 3-2 vote on its approval the first time in June (Arnett was not sworn in yet and Borgioli’s teleconference call could not be re-connected); the item was withdrawn from the agenda on another meeting; and then tabled on the third try in August.
Each time Betando explained that a change in representation would come at a significant cost to the district since “it would have to pay for the transfer of files and a new attorney’s time to review the prior documents.” District staff was unable to give an estimate of just of how much that would cost at the Sept. 6 meeting.
“There is also non-quantifiable costs such as the time it would take a new legal firm to build a relationship with both charter schools’ legal teams, something that Burke, Williams & Sorensen has built already over the last year,” according to district staff.
Burke, Williams & Sorensen was in the process of assisting the district with the facilities agreement between the Charter School of Morgan Hill and Voices-Morgan Hill as well as helping to complete the Memorandum of Understanding with CSOMH, according to the item’s rationale on the agenda.
The district’s unsuccessful case against the SCCOE cost about $76,000.
“I would recommend that we seize our relationship with them and find another competent firm for this kind of work and move forward,” said Gerard prior to the vote to approve the same law firm.