Why doews Sound Transit need 52 legal firms?

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Sound Transit's legal juggernaut stymies light-rail opponents 
Agency has contracts with army of law firms 

Monday, October 23, 2000

By CHRIS McGANN SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

When Rainier Valley neighbors needed legal help to keep light rail off their streets, they went to the law firms most likely to donate services -- the biggest ones.

But one reply became all too familiar: "Sorry, we've got a contract with Sound Transit."

That's no accident, activists say.

Sound Transit has contracts with 52 law firms including most of the largest in the state, records show.

The agency is not obligated to, and does not, use all of those firms. But all of the firms, because of their contractual relationship, are under an ethical obligation not to help Sound Transit's foes.

Neighborhood activists say the agency's growing legal army -- part of a "spread the wealth" contract policy -- makes it almost impossible for low-income communities to obtain legal defense. Rainier Valley, for example, tried a dozen big firms only to find them already tied up by Sound Transit.

Furthermore, one legal expert says the agency could be wasting tax money by spreading law contracts so broadly, because using a single large firm typically brings discounts of up to 45 percent. The agency disputes that contracting 52 firms costs more. But Portland's Tri Met, a similar transit agency in Oregon, finds it most efficient to use just one to three outside firms.

Sound Transit has paid more than $911,000 for outside legal services since voters approved Sound Move -- a $4 billion bus and rail project -- in 1996.

Meanwhile, it still pays nearly $500,000 a year in salaries for in-house legal counsel, records show.

Contracting 52 firms is a shift from the single-firm policy Sound Transit began with in 1996. Until 1998, the agency used Preston Gates and Ellis -- the state's second-biggest law firm -- for nearly all legal needs.

Emory Bundy, an outspoken Sound Transit opponent, said enlisting so many law firms suggests one objective: "to keep them out" of opponents' reach.

Today, Sound Transit has contracts with seven of the 10 largest firms in the state, including all five of the largest, with access to thousands of the region's top lawyers. Each of its 52 contracted firms, spread throughout the region from Tacoma to Everett, has agreed to help as needed in one or more specialty fields.



-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), October 23, 2000

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