Burke, Williams, Sorensen

     On August 14, the Rosemead City Council, meeting as the Community Development Commission, voted 4-0 to negotiate a deal with Burke, Williams, Sorensen, LLP to serve as redevelopment attorney.  The law firm's home page is here:  http://www.bwslaw.com/

    Gary Taylor did not attend the CDC meeting, took no part in the interview process, and did not cast a vote among the applicants.

     The motion to hire BWS came from Clark, with Low seconding the motion.  Nunez offered a substitute motion to hire Alvarez-Glasman & Colvin, which was seconded by Tran.  The substitute motion died on a 2-2 vote.  The original motion was then adopted unanimously.

     All five of the applicants sent representatives to interview with the CDC.  Some of the representatives were more senior than others.  All were multi-cultural, and all claimed some connection with the San Gabriel Valley in general, and usually with Rosemead, in particular.  Also, somewhat interestingly, all of the firms that were asked said they would not bill the city for travel time.

     I say that's interesting because, in the big scheme of things, travel time is a pretty small portion of the total dollar-cost of a law firm representating either the city overall or the CDC in particular.  [Travel costs were probably no more than 3-5% of the last attorney fees bill that several council members expressed great concerned about].  Nonetheless, all five firms were smart enough to see that the only real argument against adopting a separate law firm for the CDC would be that now we'd have to pay for the travel time of two different lawyers.  They also know that, when it comes to technical issues that the mass public doesn't know a lot about, the key is always to pick something simple that the public can relate to and focus on that.

     The interview process was also interesting to watch.  In practice, five questions were asked of all applicants:  1)  Introduce yourself and your law firm; 2) Give an example of a successful development project you worked on; 3) Tell us something that you did NOT include in your response to the Request For Qualifications (RFQ); 4) Why should we pick your firm instead of one of your competitors?; 5) What experience does your firm have with eminent domain?

     From a public perspective, I thought the more effective responses to (2) were those that presented projects from neighboring cities.  The better responses to (4) included efforts to show that the firm was especially qualified to be successful in Rosemead and the SGV rather than just generally.  The best response to (5) was to stress that, while eminent domain would be a last and reluctant resort, that they were experienced in using ED as a tool for redevelopment.

     Regarding #5, I'm a little surprised that only BWS managed to give the "right" answer.  Given the popular misconceptions about eminent domain, that seemed to me to be the obvious answer.  Instead, the other four applicants focused on cases where they utilized eminent domain to make a project happen.  Meanwhile, only Alvarez-Glasman (A-G) managed to also address the issue of regulatory takings, also called inverse condemnation.

     There's no way to know if the BWS answer to #5 was actually important in determining anyone's vote (it was asserted to be a reason by Clark, but I tend to think that she, like the other council members, had a pretty good idea which firm she was going to support before anyone even opened their mouths.