County paid firm $220,000 after 'New Times' case

[Coz]

County paid firm $220,000 after 'New Times' case
Yvonne Wingett
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 18, 2007 12:00 AM

The attorney accused of botching the controversial case involving the arrests of two Phoenix New Times editors has earned $220,000 more from Maricopa County taxpayers since that case fell apart in mid-October.

Dennis Wilenchik, a private attorney, and his firm Wilenchik & Bartness now have been paid a total of $2,072,467.21 by the county since May 2005, after County Attorney Andrew Thomas took office and began hiring the firm for contract work.

The Republic asked for detailed billing records of Wilenchik and his law firm in an attempt to show how taxpayer money is being spent. Information provided to the newspaper by the County Attorney's Office was heavily redacted, with county officials citing privileged "work product."

Maricopa County pays private attorneys to work cases involving a range of county departments, from Risk Management to the General Government Department to the Sheriff's Office.

Wilenchik and his firm were paid $219,530.49 between Oct. 19, when the New Times case came to a head, and Dec. 13. The money covered work the firm was involved in before the New Times case, in which two of the newspaper's executives were arrested at their homes by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies on charges of revealing grand jury information.

Amid public outrage and admissions that Wilenchik made serious mistakes in the case, Thomas dismissed all charges against the executives. Wilenchik has not received any new work from Maricopa County but has continued to handle cases assigned to him before mid-October.

On Monday, almost two months after The Republic filed a public-records request asking for detailed billing records submitted by Wilenchik and his firm, Thomas' office made public hundreds of pages of invoices and supporting documents.

David Bodney, a First Amendment lawyer who represents The Republic, sent two demand letters to county officials citing the law in support of the public's right to inspect the records.

"Mr. Wilenchik's billing records presumably provide the most accurate reflection of his efforts on the public's behalf because the public was paying his bills and because he was performing public services. The taxpayers are entitled to know what he was up to," said Bodney, who reviewed a sample of the billing records on Monday.

The redactions, he said, are "almost shockingly excessive," and "go far beyond what the law permits to shield attorney-client communications."

The documents show charges for work including telephone calls, e-mails, depositions and meetings with people involved in the cases. However, the details of whom Wilenchik and others met with, and the particulars of each case, are crossed out with black marker.

The County Attorney's Office hired Pamela Overton of the law firm of Greenberg Traurig to review the invoices and advise the County Attorney's Office "as to the law relating to redactions, and the type of information that could in fact be redacted from invoices," said Barnett Lotstein, a spokesman for Thomas.

The County Attorney's Office has not yet been billed for the work, Lotstein said. He said he could not estimate how much county taxpayers would pay the firm for the work.

According to the firm's contract, hourly rates for work related to public-records law range from $375 for a senior partner to $120 for work by legal assistants.

"One of the reasons why we asked outside counsel to do this is we didn't want anybody to say that we were just nilly-willy redacting things," said Lotstein. "We wanted to be on solid legal ground. We redacted that which we believed came within work-product provisions."

The New Times came under investigation after it published Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's home address in 2004.

That article was also published online, and may have violated a state law intended to protect law-enforcement officers. The New Times revealed in October that Wilenchik had issued subpoenas ordering the newspaper to relinquish information about its reporters and all readers of the online edition since Jan. 1, 2004.

The day the story ran, executives Michael Lacey and James Larkin were arrested at the request of Wilenchik's office. Thomas fired Wilenchik and dropped charges against Lacey and Larkin.

Reach the reporter at 602-444- 4712 or yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com.