Disqus - Latest Comments for John M

Re: WWYGU

John M — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:29:14 -0000

Commuter taxes are bad, bad news. They may provide some short-term benefit, but in the long term, if employees have to pay higher taxes if they commute into Marion County, it will provide an incentive for businesses to locate outside Marion County. I'm a Marion County resident who works in Marion County, so it certainly would have no direct negative effect on me, but I can't support the idea of charging a Hamilton County resident who works in Marion County higher taxes than a Hamilton County resident who lives in Hamilton County. Now, routing some of the taxes already paid by commuters to their county of work makes sense. Isn't that already done to some degree? It seems to me that we have list the county code for both home and work on our IT-40s, but since I live/work in the same county I have never paid all that much attention.

Re: Nice Work If You Can Get It

John M — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:18:20 -0000

Kevin Murray is with Locke Reynolds, right? I don't know anything about these contracts, but it's pretty ignorant to presume that because these contract exist, Kevin Murray is taking home $800,000 of taxpayer dollars. It's overwhelmingly likely that many LR attorneys other than Kevin Murray are doing work for the Sheriff's Department. Of course, any such arrangements that funnel so much work to a single attorney or law firm should be scrutinized, but it's highly unlikely that Kevin Murray is taking home anything close to making $836,000 a year off the sheriff's department in the sense that Abdul is trying to imply.

Of course, Abdul knows all this, because he has an amorhpous "of counsel" relationship with a firm, Lewis & Wilkins, that was created on the basis of a cozy revolving-door relationship with Steve Carter's office. But of course, it's cronyism when one of Abdul's adversaries does it, but it's "outsourcing" or "privatization" otherwise.

Re: Nice Work If You Can Get It

John M — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:50:19 -0000

As I said, I don't know if the contracts are justified or not. I don't know what hourly rate is contemplated, to what extent they are purely retainers as opposed to a flat fee, or anything else. I don't know enough about the operations of the sheriff's department to know what sort of legal services the department requires on an annual basis. Still, you know that there is a difference between revenue and income. $836,000 in legal fees doesn't mean $836,000 in a single lawyer's pocket as income, and it's misleading for you to suggest as much. Feel free to send those contracts, but make sure you throw in copies of all of L&W's contracts with the AG and other governmental entities.

"I wanna puke": As for the $50 per hour cap, that would yield $100,000 in revenue for an attorney who billed 2000 hours a year. Take away money for rent, utilities, support staff, equipment, computer network, furniture, insurance, and the like, and any attorney billing at that rate would be lucky to clear $45,000 per year. That's all fine and good, but you might not be happy with the quality of legal work produced by the attorneys who are willing to work for that amount. It's not that it isn't a good wage, it's that there's more money to be made elsewhere for those with law degrees. That pesky market! This is, of course, a form of "privatization." Expecting private employees to work for deputy prosecutor wages with none of the job security probably isn't going to yield a good result for the city.