Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Jeff Ackerman: Pursuit of lawsuit simply shouldn't suit voters

With news last week that the county's financial woes continue and that more of its employees will lose their jobs and some services probably impacted, or cut, can someone tell me why our five elected members of the Board of Supervisors continue to throw hundreds of thousands of our dollars at a lawsuit they may, or may not, win?

I'm asking you because the five elected guys say they aren't allowed to tell us. It's all “hush-hush” behind closed-doors kind of stuff and they probably think we're too “legally challenged” to understand. Never mind it's our money they're spending.

In a nutshell, the county previously used a local vendor called AtPac to handle its registered voter database. Then Greg Diaz got appointed county elections chief and decided to switch vendors, going with a company out of Florida called Aptitude Solutions.

That decision didn't sit well with the local vendor, mostly because it claims the county gave Aptitude some of its trade secrets in the swap and so it sued the county and Diaz in federal court a year and a half ago.

Here's some math to consider:

AtPac offered to settle the suit for a million dollars, but the county refused, opting instead to spend $1.2 million and counting to fight it. The Board of Supervisors recently voted to pay its previous law firm in the case the balance of a $750,000 (the equivalent salaries of two full-time sheriff's deputies for the next seven years or so) bill it owed up to the time that firm was let go because it really had no federal court experience. Supervisors then agreed to a $500,000 (the equivalent salary of a full-time public defender for the next five years) contract with the new law firm, which apparently has more federal court experience.

As a recovering gambler (my name is Jeff Ackerman and I used to bet football, baseball and … yes … hockey), I wouldn't bet the farm on this one. I have read some of the court records and it appears to me that there is at least some merit to the case, which is probably why it has been allowed to proceed.

In April a federal judge pretty much chastised the county for “scrubbing” or destroying data critical to the case. “The spoliation (destruction), combined with other deceptive discovery practices by defendants (county), indicates that without some sort of sanction, a fair and just resolution of the action will be impossible,” ruled the judge.

Florida-based Aptitude's parent company Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) was subpoenaed last week by California Attorney General Kamala Harris in a wide-ranging probe of mortgage and foreclosure practices.

The rest of the article is here.

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