Here's the first thing Torcivia says as he steps up to the podium to give his pitch at the special meeting at City Hall:
"I was looking at your web site this morning and I was amazed at your legal budget -- a million dollars. It shouldn't be anywhere near that."
So that got everyone's attention right off.
Torcivia was sharp. Really sharp. And smooth.
He's got a New York accent (Brooklyn, I think) that he can't hide. So he hits on his homeboy credentials next, talking about his parents buying a home in Lake Worth way back when, and spending some part of his boyhood here.
In the 90s, he told them, he was Lake Worth's labor attorney, handling all negotiations with the unions, of which there were many more then.
He's good on code enforcement issues, he says, mentioning the overgrown grass on 10th Avenue North that you see when coming into town from West Palm Beach. "That's not the image you want," he tells the commissioners.
...At which point one might begin to ponder the breadth and scope of the job Torcivia is applying for.
Is he going to be running everything around here? It seems he might be.
He would monitor all spending on outside counsel (i.e. litigators who are handling the big law suits against the city), saying, "It's not Donald Trump's money. It's taxpayer dollars."
He would also help the commissioners work more efficiently, working with the city manager, Michael Bornstein, to do better prep for meetings so that they don't last five hours, or six.
"Most of our cities are two hours or less," he says of the commission meetings of the six cities his firm represents (Wellington, Palm Springs, Highland Beach, Belle Glade, and two others).
So what parts of the five-hour commission meetings won't be occurring any longer now that Torcivia is
With an attorney's communication with his client (Lake Worth) protected by attorney-client privilege, a lot of things of interest to the public can easily, could easily, (will easily?) slip behind this veil. The documents held at the offices of Glen J. Torcivia & Associates will not be public. Or at least not presumed to be public. So with this attorney seeming to be willing to handle so many things on behalf of the hapless commissioners, it's all a bit concerning from the perspective of the public's right to know.
It won't necessarily a problem. But it could be. There are municipalities where long-term city attorneys become so powerful that they begin to act more like the mayor, with the elected officials following orders. This isn't democracy. Those who are elected by the people have to be in charge, with the attorney just giving advice on matters of law.
Glen's good. But he might be too good. Watch him. He just might take over.
His basic bio: He's a graduate of SUNY New Paltz (1976, majored in political science) and got his law degree at Albany Law School). In addition to running Glen J. Torcivia & Associates, which he founded in 1989, and helping serve six cities as city attorney, he's a special counsel for the Health Care District of Palm Beach County and wrote what became known as the "Palm Beach County Health Care Act." Before starting his own firm, he was an assistant attorney with the Palm Beach County Attorney's Office (1984-1989).
"I think they got it right," he told Channel 12 a month ago about the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare.
http://www.cbs12.com/news/features/raw-news/stories/vid_68.shtml
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Best line spoken by Torcivia yesterday: "Doing what?"
He said this in response to Commissioner Andy Amoroso, who asked how Torcivia can do all of the city's legal work on a part-time basis whereas until this point the city has had two full-time attorneys, with each working 40 hours a week, so together putting in a total of 80 hours...
And that's when Torvicia said: "Doing what?"
He walked it back a bit, saying he knows Elaine (Humphreys) and she's a nice person, and his firm could just do things more efficiently...
But he didn't walk it back that much. So I'm left wondering: Doing what? What were the two attorneys employed by the city doing all day, Monday through Friday? Just hanging out, waiting for someone to call with a question?
And I'm wondering also: Why didn't anyone else ever point out that a $1 million legal budget for a town with a population of 34,910 is out of whack? What else could those millions have been spent on? It would have been nice to just return it to property owners, or to cut out some of the outrageous building and permit fees and give our local contractors a break for once.
Seems it's probably time for a someone who really knows municipal budgeting to comb through Lake Worth's budget. It was supposed to be trimmed up as much as it possibly could be. Guess it wasn't.
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