John Russo: Part Two:
On Friday December 18th 2009 I sat down to talk with Oakland City Attorney John Russo and produce a vlog (video-blog) of our conversation. The result is a wide-rannging, 32-minute interview that essentially divides into three parts: the Oakland City Attorney's Office in the Economy, the Oakland A's, and the Oakland Mayor's race and Oakland politics. Here are some highlights from the videos:
Oakland City Attorney John Russo
The Oakland City Attorney's Office
Russo says that he has to cut a total 11 of a staff of 40 attorneys, or about 25 percent of his staff. He's already lost seven attorney positions this year, will lose another four, and is expected to cut another million from his budget during the next fiscal cycle. "Everybody works a little harder," Russo said. But he offered that when you lose that much of your core staff you're just not going to get as much done. As Russo pointed out, no one's yelling "save the lawyers."
"The City has to respond to lawsuits," he said. That means outsourcing, which is more expensive than having staff because the work needs to get done. "We're going to do the best we can," Russo said.
The Oakland A's
This conversation was covered extensively in my blog posting of Friday, December 18th. I wrote this:
Our conversation on the Oakland Athletics started because I asked John what he thought of San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera's letter to Major League Baseball. The letter, released on Thursday and I have (and will post for review) a copy of, states at length that the City of San Francisco is concerned with the potential negative financial impacts on that San Francisco if the Oakland A's are allowed to move into the San Francisco Giants 'territorial rights' area as established by the current Major League Agreement...
On the matter of the letter, Russo said "I think its an interesting letter. I spoke to Dennis today. I told him I think its an interesting theory. I can see where his concerns are; I understand it." Russo says that he can see where San Francisco taxpayers are a third-party beneficiary of those territorial rights given to the SF Giants...
"I do know that over the years, the Giants relied upon that territory in creating their ballpark, Russo said. "I also know that here in Oakland we relied on certain representations by the A's in signing a very flexible and advantageous lease with them. And I'm looking into whether or not their clear, and very clear attempt to move to San Jose - and San Jose's attempts to lure the A's - whether or not those are interfering with our rights under the lease."
In other words the City of Oakland's considering suing both the Oakland Athletics and the City of San Jose.
The City of Oakland
Russo explained why the City settled for $1.75 millionin the legal tussle with the Oakland Policewhere 500 officers successfully claimed they went without pay for pre-shift and post-shift activities. "As a matter of law, the City miscalculated over time...Once the court held as a matter of law we violated federal labor law standards in the calculation of overtime, that meant the party plaintiffs were guaranteed to get their attorney's fees for the case." Russo said that the City of Oakland has had 10 years of personnel problems in this area.
Russo didn't like the case but the city was legally bound. Russo said it was important to get the case "off the table" because the City of Oakland has a great relationship with the current new leadership of the Oakland Police Officer's Association. The lawsuit was filed under the OPOAs old regime.
The Race for Mayor Of Oakland
Russo said that there are really only two well-known mayoral candidates as of this writing: Oakland City Councilwoman Jean Quan and Former California State Senator Don Perata. John made an interesting observation in saying that the the executive power had leaked out and away from the Mayor's Office and to the City Council, and both can and need to spend time getting it back. That's a way of saying the Mayor's Office has not taken the lead in running the city, an observation that's become standard among Oakland insiders.
Follow-up coming
I decided to, as they say, eek this out in a series of posts rather than just one. This one introduces the videos but there's a lot Russo said that I will focus more on in blog posts leading up to Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
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