Crain benefits from own bill
He sponsored a measure to let county treasurers hire their own attorneys, a position he now has.
He sponsored a measure to let county treasurers hire their own attorneys, a position he now has.
Then-freshman state Sen. Brian Crain, R-Tulsa, sponsored legislation in 2005 that eventually cleared the way for a contract with the Tulsa County Treasurer's Office that currently pays him $4,000 a month.
Senate Bill 478, cosponsored by Rep. Ron Peters, R-Tulsa, added county treasurers and county assessors to the list of county officials authorized to employ their own general counsel.
In 2007, the law firm Crain was associated with — Boone, Smith, Davis, Hurst & Dickman — was contracted to represent the Treasurer's Office in all bankruptcy proceedings for a fee of $3,000 a month, $1,000 of which went to the state senator. Crain himself contracted with the county the next year at a fee of $4,000 a month.
The Tulsa County Board of Commissioners recently agreed to renew Crain's contract under the same terms for fiscal year 2010. Thus far, Crain has been paid $60,000 for his services as an attorney.
The agreements, approved by the Board of Commissioners, do not require Crain to detail his legal work on behalf of the Treasurer's Office.
Crain said last week that he did not have future employment in mind when he sponsored the legislation, noting that the original version would have allowed for other county elected officials, including county commissioners, to hire outside legal counsel.
He sponsored the bill "because I thought it was in the best interest of Oklahoma that county treasurers could hire their own attorneys to represent them in these matters," he said.
Crain said he learned that lesson as a Tulsa County assistant district attorney from 1996 to 1999, when he occasionally did bankruptcy work on behalf of the Treasurer's Office.
"When you're a county, you really needed to have the ability to get legal services that are very specialized to your legal requirements," he said. "District attorney's offices weren't necessarily funded to do that; therefore, they were very limited in how they could provide effective legal action and do the kind of criminal work they needed to do."
$1.35 million collected
Tulsa County Treasurer Dennis Semler said he was happy to see the law changed because it allowed him to hire another former assistant district attorney, Gordon Edwards, who, like Crain, had done work for the Treasurer's Office.
Semler said he valued Edwards' work so much that for several years before the law was changed, the Treasurer's Office paid the District Attorney's Office $50,000 a year to help fund Edwards' position.
When the law took effect in 2005, Edwards — who has since retired from the DA's Office — was hired by Semler. Edwards was paid a straight retainer fee of $2,000 a month while bringing in $3 million in back taxes from 2005 to 2007, according to figures provided by the Treasurer's Office.
The $2,000 monthly fee was a "sweetheart deal" made possible by the fact that Edwards was working out of his home, Semler said. The treasurer said he measures Crain's job performance the same way he measured Edwards' job performance — by the back taxes he collects for the county. Through May, Crain had collected $1.35 million, records show.
"I'm concerned about how much money is coming in and how much he collects and are we getting good value," Semler said. "But in terms of us monitoring his day-to-day activity, of course I don't do that."
Semler said he agreed to pay Crain $4,000 a month because that is what Crain told him he would need to continue doing the job.
"I felt like, looking at the return we were getting, that justified that kind of fee," Semler said. The treasurer said he preferred the flat fee because it allowed him to control his costs.
Crain, who is paid a base salary of $38,400 for his work in the state Senate, defended the arrangement. He said that at any given time the county is involved in about 400 bankruptcy cases. Records show an average of about 400 bankruptcy accounts a year on file in the Treasurer's Office over the last three years.
"If you assume 400 cases, that's about $10 a month per case on my contract," Crain said. "I think the county is getting a pretty fair deal out of the situation."
Crain said that any other pay arrangement, such as billing each time services are rendered, could become cumbersome and time-consuming given the sheer number of cases he is involved in.
Didn't expect to benefit
"I was comfortable doing it on a fixed rate not for any other reason than I'm a better lawyer than an accountant," Crain said. He also said his hiring did not represent any kind of quid pro quo with the Treasurer's Office.
In sponsoring the bill, "I had no expectation but that this was better for county government," Crain said.
He also had an answer for those who might find it unseemly for a lawmaker to be filling a position he helped create.
"I feel very comfortable that I followed the letter and the spirit of the ethics rules and was a proponent of legislation that I didn't believe I was going to benefit from," he said.
Crain noted that he did not go looking for the job and that the agreement he signed has been vetted by not only the treasurer but all three county commissioners.
"This was not done without the knowledge and approval of four people who stand for election based on their performance," he said.
Assistant District Attorney David Iski said he could not speak on behalf of the county commissioners. But he added that, as their legal counsel, he had not "found any conflict with the state Ethics Commission rules for Brian Crain as a lawyer to represent the Treasurer's Office in federal bankruptcy court."
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