Law firm has charged Legislature $78K for ‘redistricting advice’ so far - Greater Baton Rouge Business Report
An out-of-state law firm has charged the Louisiana Legislature $78,081 for providing “redistricting advice,” according to an invoice released Thursday after a public records request. It’s unclear when the law firm performed the work and what type of services it provided.
The Legislature released an invoice that provides only the lump sum of money the law firm is charging the state for assistance on new political maps. There is no itemized list of expenses on the invoice made public, such as individual attorneys’ billable hours or a breakdown of what portion of the bill might have been spent on the lawyers’ travel.
The publicly released invoice also doesn’t detail any range of months or specific dates during which the law firm performed its work. The Legislature received the bill March 14 and it must be paid by April 14. Money Louisiana makes from taxpayers and state fees will be used to cover the cost.
“This doesn’t make much sense to me,” Sen. Jay Luneau, D-Alexandria, said upon hearing a description of the BakerHostetler invoice legislative staff has released. “I would hope anything like this that we would do in the Senate would have an itemized list attached to it.”
Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, hired the law firm on behalf of the Legislature in December to help the state’s new political maps withstand lawsuits from civil rights organizations. The leadership has been secretive about the firm’s work.
Most of the state’s 103 legislators weren’t aware that a law firm had been hired until weeks after its contract went into effect. Only four Republican lawmakers—those working on maps preferred by Cortez and Schexnayder—had access to the attorneys during the redistricting process.
BakerHostetler is expected to defend the Legislature in the lawsuits that have been filed to block the new maps.
The law firm’s December contract with the Legislature was specific about the type of expenses that could be expected, even if the released invoice included little detail about the actual charges.
BakerHostetler planned to bill the Legislature at least $10,000 per month for three months, and the fee would escalate to $60,000 per month once the state was sued over the maps, which happened for the first time in February. The six BakerHostetler attorneys working on Louisiana’s redistricting case would charge rates ranging from $355 to $915 per hour, according to the law firm’s contract. Read the full story from Louisiana Illuminator.
source: https://www.businessreport.com/politics/law-firm-has-charged-legislature-78k-for-redistricting-advice-so-far
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