Oklahoma pays law firms $24M
Out-of-state businesses are receiving major contracts from agencies
BY JULIE BISBEE and PAUL MONIES
Comments 
13
Published: March 22, 2009
©2009, The Oklahoman
Out-of-state firms are among the top private law firms receiving contracts from state agencies, according to an analysis of reports from the attorney general’s office by The Oklahoman.
Oklahoma State Capitol building. The Oklahoman archive
Multimedia
More Info
Top five firms being paid by the state
Here’s a list of the firms and what they were paid by state agencies during the past three fiscal years, according to payment records from the Office of State Finance.
Davis Graham & Stubbs, $945,852
A Denver-based firm that worked with the state’s police and firefighters pension and retirement system tax documents and has represented the retirement system in court. The Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System does have staff attorneys, and assistant attorneys general did not have expertise in IRS law, the attorney general’s office said.
McAfee & Taft, $904,494
The law firm is one of the largest in the Southwest and has had several state contracts, including contracts with CompSource Oklahoma, Regents for Higher Education and the University Hospital Authority.
Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison and Lewis, $785,547
The firm includes former Attorney General Michael Turpen and James Orbison, chairman of the Lottery Commission. The firm has had contracts with the Department of Human Services, state Banking Department, Transportation Department, Health Care Authority and others.
Phillips, McFall, McCaffrey, McVay and Murrah, $475,009
This Oklahoma City law firm, now named Phillips Murrah, has had contracts to do work for the law enforcement and firefighters retirement fund, CompSource Oklahoma and the Department of Environmental Quality over the past three years. Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma City, is an "of counsel” member of this firm and does not receive compensation from the firm.
Ryan, Whaley, Coldiron, Shandy, $239,198
The Oklahoma City law firm has had contracts to do work for the Transportation Department, Grand River Dam Authority and the Tax Commission. The firm includes former U.S. Attorney Patrick Ryan, who prosecuted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
Top 15 law firms getting state contracts for the past 3 years
The amounts are projected by the agency and may not reflect how much attorneys actually receive. The attorney general does not track the amount, just the total an agency spends on outside private counsel, said Susan Noland, who oversees the division of the attorney general’s office.
Slover & Loftus
The Washington, D.C.-based firm specializes in law that regulates transportation, energy and fuel supply. The firm had a contract with the Grand River Dam Authority. Private attorneys were hired because assistant attorneys general did not have legal expertise in this area, the attorney general’s office said.
Jenkens & Gilchrist
The now-defunct Dallas law firm did work on behalf of the Transportation Department, defending the agency in a contract claim of more than $4 million on a privatization maintenance contract investigated by the multicounty grand jury in 2006. The law firm went out of business in 2007 after being investigated for fraudulent tax shelters.
Holloway & Monaghan
The Tulsa-based law firm specializes in real estate, business litigation, condemnation and land-use litigation. The firm has worked for the Transportation Department on legal proceedings to buy private property for highway projects. The attorney general’s office said its attorneys did not have sufficient expertise for this work.
Conner & Winters
The Tulsa-based law firm specializes in energy, real estate, health care and aviation and airlines law. The firm did work for the Oklahoma Tax Commission and assisted commission attorneys at trial for the past three years.
Davis Graham & Stubbs
The Denver-based firm has worked on the state’s police and firefighters pension and retirement system tax documents.
Tom R. Gann
The Tulsa attorney has done condemnation work for the Transportation Department.
Taylor, Burrage, Foster, Mallett, Downs & Ramsey
The Claremore-based firm includes former state representative and Sen. Stratton Taylor and current state Sen. Sean Burrage, D-Claremore. The firm had a contract with the Grand River Dam Authority on condemnation proceedings in a floodplain in Ottawa County.
Fogg, Fogg and Handley
The El Reno law firm has worked on condemnation proceedings to acquire private property for a highway project.
William Bailey Cook, III
The Ada attorney has worked for the Transportation Department on condemnation proceedings.
Phillips, McFall, McCaffrey, McVay and Murrah
Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison and Lewis
Ryan, Whaley, Coldiron, Shandy
The Oklahoma City law firm has had contracts to do work for the Transportation Department, Grand River Dam Authority and the Tax Commission.
Lynn A. Mundell
The Tulsa attorney has had contracts to do condemnation work for the Transportation Department.
McAfee & Taft
The law firm is one of the largest in the Southwest and had several state contracts, including contracts with CompSource Oklahoma, Regents for Higher Education and the University Hospital Authority.
Holladay & Chilton
Oklahoma City firm has done work on condemnation projects for the Transportation Department.
Julie Bisbee, capitol bureau and Paul Monies, database editor
Who is doing the work?
Law firms from Washington, Dallas and Denver, as well as firms that include former state officials, are among the top law firms receiving state contracts, according to The Oklahoman’s analysis.
The attorney general’s office tracks how much money each state agency spends on private legal services but does not track the dollar amount private firms are paid.
Agencies submit paperwork with a projected contract amount but are not required to list how much a firm is actually paid. In some cases, it can be less than the contract amount, depending on how much work is involved.
Some law firms are hired for their expertise.
Robert Jones, an attorney and the executive director of the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System, said the Denver-firm Davis, Graham and Stubbs is one of a few law firms that specializes in this sort of work. The law firm has three separate contracts to help manage pension funds for firefighters, police and other law enforcement officers.
"That’s what the board is paying for,” Jones said. The firm ensures that the multibillion dollar pension fund meets IRS requirements and holds its tax-free status.
"Nobody wants to think of our fund not qualifying,” Jones said.
The projected contract amount for the firm is often higher than the actual amount paid at the end of the year, he said.
"I do that so I don’t have to go back and adjust my budget with the Office of State Finance,” he said.
Law firms of former officials receive contracts
Former state officials also benefit from public contracts with private law firms. Over the past three state fiscal years, the law firm of Taylor, Burrage, Foster, Mallet, Downs & Ramsey has had four separate contracts with the Grand River Dam Authority. The law firm includes Stratton Taylor, a former state representative and former ranking Senate Democrat from the Claremore area. The firm also includes current Sen. Sean Burrage, D-Claremore.
Records from the attorney general’s office show the law firm had contracts totaling $1.4 million over the past three years. Taylor said some of the contracts were amended and his law firm was paid much less than the contracted amount. The attorney in Taylor’s firm working on the GRDA contracts billed the electric cooperative $446,179.51 over the past three years, Taylor said. GRDA is funded by ratepayer dollars and does not get a direct budget appropriation.
"Contract amounts for us are not like contracts to build a building,” Taylor wrote in an e-mail. "It’s a ceiling (and) doesn’t reflect the amount actually paid and is, in our case, for a multi-year project.”
Taylor said his firm specializes in handling cases where private property is seized for public projects across the state.
"We do more eminent domain work than any other firm in the state,” Taylor said. "We have a lot of experience in that, and we are sought out to do that sort of work.”
Former Attorney General Michael Turpen’s law firm, Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison and Lewis has also been paid for work done at state agencies, including the Department of Human Services and the Transportation Department. The firm had contracts worth $1.25 million and was paid $785,547, according to records from the state Office of Finance.
Over the past three years, the state Transportation Department paid private attorneys $5.9 million. Grand River Dam Authority, a utility company that provides electricity in northeastern Oklahoma, paid private attorneys $4.2 million in the same period.
Norman Hill, Transportation Department general counsel, said hiring private attorneys often benefits the state. For matters outside Oklahoma City, local attorneys often understand the local judicial system better, Hill said. In other cases, attorneys with specialized knowledge in complex legal issues can often more efficiently represent the state.
"That’s not to say the AG’s office isn’t competent,” Hill said. "But sometimes we have to find people that are competent on the outside. The AG’s office isn’t capable of doing this type of work because they don’t have the available resources.”
A case for reform?
As the state faces a $900 million budget drop, agency expenses are facing tighter scrutiny.
"It seems a lot of people are making big bucks off of taxpayers,” Downs said.
"Earlier this year, it came to light that higher education spent $60 million for travel and now tens of millions more is being spent on outside attorney services. The time is long overdue for the Legislature to ask tough questions of agency heads that come every year to ask for more money.”
A bill making its way through the Legislature would require state agencies to put legal services contracts out for competitive bidding. House Bill 2167 filed by Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa, would create the Private Attorney Retention Sunshine Act. The bill says contracts that exceed $5,000 should be put out for competitive bidding. If a contract for legal services exceeds $500,000 it would have to be approved by the governor, according to McCullough’s bill.
McCullough, an attorney, says his bill mirrors a policy put in place at the Indiana attorney general’s office. The policy requires a public accounting of law firms that have contracts with the state and requires competitive bidding, said McCullough, who had worked in Indiana under former Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter.
"This is not a witch-hunt,” McCullough said. "This is something to improve transparency and make us take a little harder look at market-based selection.”
Pushing a bill saying contracts that exceed $5,000 should be put out for competitive bidding. If a contract for legal services exceeds $500,000, it would have to be approved by the governor.
Prev
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
Thank you for joining our conversations on newsok. We encourage your discussions but ask that you stay within the bounds of our terms and conditions. Please help us by reporting comments that violate these guidelines. To review our rules of engagement, go to Commenting and posting policy.
Log in below or sign up (it's free).
to put sharp, inovative, eager legal minds to good use, Edmondson with that kind of money could have hired the best prosecutors in the nation. He could have stimulated the local Oklahoma economy for real. Hire OU and OCU law students their are some who are ready to come home, who have seen our state's agencies screw the citizens with their incompentence, mismanagement, and dishonesty long enough, I feel certain several would like to take a bite out of crime, protect the state's assets, build a better more responsible accountability of taxpayers money,and could do a better job than Edmundson has been doing! Its also time for Assistant AG Noland to tell it like it is or resign making excuses for her boss and her offices shortcomings is ridiculous.
---
There aren't any "retired" IRS number crunchers living in Oklahoma? Let's pass 2167! "If you can't bid em, you can't get em."