Council opts to contract prosecution services

Persuaded that experience counts when

it comes to legal services, the Whitefish City Council voted 4-2 on

Feb. 22 to approve a two-year contract extension with the Hedman

Hileman LaCosta law firm to provide prosecution services.

Councilors John Muhl-feld and Ryan

Friel voted in opposition, saying they’d prefer to see the city

move to an in-house prosecutor.

The contract is capped at $90,000 for

legal services with $3,600 added for ancillary costs. The figure

matched an estimated in-house cost calculated by city manager Chuck

Stearns.

Clif Hayden, the city’s chief

prosecutor, and Caleb Simpson, who joined the firm last year after

three years at the Flathead County Attorney’s Office, met with the

council earlier in a Feb. 7 work session. Hayden said that was the

first time he could recall the council ever reviewing the

prosecution contract.

Circumstances have changed over the

years, Hayden pointed out at the work session. Whitefish Lake

lakeshore violations are now handled by another law firm, and the

city recently established civil penalties as a way to pursue

misdemeanor violations without filing criminal charges.

Simpson noted that people charged with

a crime mount a more vigorous defense than in the past because of

the impact criminal records have on employment and crossing the

Canada border.

The state’s public defender system has

also brought young attorneys with good ideas into municipal court,

driving up prosecution costs.

As a result, according to the law

firm’s figures, prosecution costs from 2009 to 2010 increased 30

percent to $75,583, while paralegal costs increased 14 percent to

$44,134.

With resort tax cases and other civil

cases, the total reached $130,327 for 2010, a 24 percent increase

from 2009 to 2010.

Hayden said he only charges the city

about half his normal hourly rate and does much of the work pro

bono because he enjoys it. Hedman Hileman & Lacosta also

benefits by using city prosecution as a training ground for new

lawyers.

The law firm provides 80 years of

collective experience, he said, noting that 95 percent of criminal

cases plead out rather than go to trial, a point backed up by

police chief Bill Dial. The chief called the city’s civil and

criminal attorneys’ service “the best in the state.”