City Council legal spending

As promised, Matt Stiles has started digging into campaing finance reports for city officeholders and seekers. This installment has to do with expenditures a couple of Council members have made on legal fees.

Since January, council members Carol Alvarado and Michael Berry have paid lawyers $70,000 and $45,000, respectively, according to campaign filings made public Monday.

Berry and Alvarado, both of whom declined comment Tuesday, have been subjects of a broad inquiry into city officials and practices launched by District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal's office last year.

Rosenthal also declined comment, referring calls to a prosecutor in charge of the probe who was out of town Tuesday.

I'm a little confused by the last two paragraphs. As we saw last September, Council Member Alvarado appeared to be finished with the DA's office. Here's a quote from the Chron story that ran on September 29:

The grand jury issued a total of nine indictments against Rosita Hernandez, Florence Watkins, Christopher Mays and Theresa Orta, all of whom were fired after the investigation began earlier this year.

Each is charged with theft by a public servant of more than $200,000 and tampering with a public record. Watkins is named in two tampering indictments.

The indictment alleges that unauthorized bonuses totaled $143,500 and unauthorized raises brought the total to at least $200,000, said Assistant District Attorney Don Smyth.

The grand jury did not indict Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, who was mayor pro tem when the employees got the payments.

[...]

The indictments conclude the investigation in the Office of Mayor Pro Tem, Smyth said, but the investigation now will look into all other city departments to ensure that no more improper payments have been made.

So I'm not sure what else is going on at this time that might involve Alvarado. The story is a little vague, which is more the nature of this kind of inquiry than anything else:

The broader probe has included scrutiny of campaign records, bonuses and other matters involving several council members' offices, but prosecutors have not said much about their inquiries.

A grand jury last fall indicted four of Alvarado's former pro tem office employees, accusing them of illegally taking bonuses and raises totaling more than $200,000.

Alvarado and employees in her District I office were not implicated in any wrongdoing related to the payments, but prosecutors' investigation into other matters continues.

Who knows what that means? We haven't heard much about it in recent months.

Council Member Berry had a different issue:

Prosecutors have not disclosed the nature of the Berry investigation. Last year he amended his campaign and personal financial disclosure forms going back several years, adding previously unreported details. He voluntarily submitted the documents to prosecutors.

All I know is that with Chuck Rosenthal, you just never know. Maybe we'll have more information by the time next January's reports are due.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on July 18, 2007 to Local politics