Imagine my surprise today when I get an email from my attorney letting me know that the law firm that the county hired to fight me on my writ, and which just sent us pages and pages of lies, would like my cooperation in a deposition in the case of Mark Uffer. Yes, the county hired the same law firm to fight both Mark and me.
Anyone who reads this blog should have little doubt how I feel about County Counsel. Ruth Stringer was a crook and a worthless attorney who dragged taxpayers into one bad lawsuit after another. Jean-René Baslé was her protegé and now sits in the top spot giving out equally less-than-stellar legal advice to a board of supervisors too stupid to know better. If anyone has any question about the quality of county attorneys, they should check out the Colonies debacle.
A while back I renamed our crack(ed) team of “legal eagles” as “legal beagles” because it was a much more accurate fit. If you can’t cut it at the Attorney General, District Attorney Office or the Public Defender and you really don’t want to have to do much work for a living, but you want the benefits afforded a public attorney, County Counsel is the place to be . . . at least in Green Acres . . . um I mean San Bernardino County.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 – 08:00 a.m.
Talking about someone hanging on.
A review of San Bernardino County retirement rolls for December and January seem to be missing a name.
Ruth Stringer, the now former county counsel, is missing from the list.
Meaning Stringer is still on active payroll.
Heard some discussion about our new County Counsel, Jean-Rene Basle. Seems I’m not the only one who questions his competence.
But the more interesting part was other males (not county employees) calling him a “pretty boy.” Someone needs to explain to me what that means in this situation.
We know we don’t have many qualified analysts in county government. Nothing could be more obvious with two facts that came out this week.
We discovered that the investigation of the century has so far cost the District Attorney’s Office over $4 million. No, it costs taxpayers over $4 million. Does anyone realize how much fraud Bill Postmus has been accused of that they are trying to collect on?
I don’t have the exact amount but it is between $1100 and $1200. Even if convicted, does anyone think he is going to do jail time for that? Do all of you really believe this matter is worth over $4 million?
What’s funny is that the only possible conviction outside of Adam they could get in these cases is Greg Eyler AND that is only if he somehow chickens out and takes a plea deal. But don’t count on it.
One of his charges MUST be dropped altogether for reasons I will not explain. And the other charge MUST be reduced to a misdemeanor. On the latter, the law is totally on his side so he would be a fool to take a plea just to get on with life a little sooner. As long as he can hang on, his cases will go away.
Third District Supervisor Neil Derry
We here at iePolitics have been pretty hard on Supervisor Derry for a while now but we also recognize that he is the only supervisor to have any sense of ethics. Neil deserves a big “thank you” for making the Ruth Stringer termination finally happen. No, he couldn’t do it alone, but none of the other supervisors had backbone enough to make it happen.
The average citizen has no clue how significant getting Ruthie out as top legal Beagle really is. This woman caused more unnecessary grief for more people, but, more importantly, she cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars with her second-rate legal advice that was usually based on politics and vengeance rather than sound legal principles.
There are two perplexing matters before the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, the first on Tuesday and the second on Wednesday, that have us wondering if crack(ed) legal Beagle Ruthie Stringer has been given the axe . . . finally. Our very bestest and mostest dependable sources are being quite obstructive and obstinate about giving iePolitics the scoop on this one.
And that’s not fair. This is like being four years old again on Christmas Eve and unable to sleep in anticipation of the big day. Except in this case, we have to wait three and a half days to find out what is going on. Where are our sleeping pills when we need them?
I have never been in favor of contracting out services in lieu of hiring county employees until now. But County Counsel is out of control.
Already, County Counsel contracts almost all trial work as they do not have a single experienced trial attorney on staff. They also contract out all complicated cases as they do not have a single experienced litigator on staff either. And that is saying a lot as I believe they have around 50 attorneys in their office.
San Bernardino County’s million dollar attorney may very well cost the county even more. Tomorrow, as part of closed session, the lawsuit against the Assessor’s folks is on the agenda. Closed session is a very good place for it.
Of course we do not know the county’s reason for putting the case on the agenda. We do know what happened last week with the case and wonder if Legal Beagles Ruthie Stringer and John Hueston have fessed up to the board about how they screwed up. You mean the Million Dollar Man screwed up? He most certainly did Ollie.
On Tuesday’s agenda is this:
County Counsel
20)
Talk about a group of individuals that just won’t learn. You’re not going to win these cases so why keep feeding Ruth’s flame? If you dumped Ruth and Hueston, you might be able to hire a seasoned litigator who could mete sage legal advice instead of telling you what you want to hear. Continue reading
Was the true scope of the law firm hired by San Bernardino County Human Resources Director Andrew Lamberto to mount a politically explosive investigation really focused on just three questions?
Will county supervisors answer that question soon, or just try and delay until after the June election.
The Santa Monica office of law firm of Curiale Hirschfeld Kraemer, LLP was hired to investigate misconduct allegations leveled against District Attorney Michael Ramos and certain members of his management team by Investigative Technician Cheryl Ristow. Ristow says she a had a 17-month long affair with Ramos and that when the affair became public last may she was retaliated against after expressing concerns to management.