Role of city attorney as much at issue as candidates

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Listening to the two candidates for Milwaukee City Attorney talk, you might get the sense that they are running for different offices.

Attendees at the Milwaukee Bar Association’s debate on March 10 between incumbent Grant Langley and challenger Rep. Pedro Colon could be forgiven for coming to that conclusion.

Colon repeatedly emphasized the need for the city attorney to be proactively engaged in fighting crime, improving schools, and growing the local economy.

“My opponent wants to narrow the role of city attorney, so that people don’t expect much,” Colon said.

Langley, on the other hand, repeatedly noted that the job of the city attorney is to advise policymakers and defend the city in litigation, not to be a policymaker himself.

“Back in 1984, the reason I ran for this office was to eliminate politics, and professionalize the office,” he said. “The job is to provide the best legal services. I have been doing that for 24 years.”

Issues for Legislators

The issues raised by Colon, Langley said, are fine issues for legislators to address, but are not an issue for the city attorney.

“I’m not running for district attorney,” he said.

Noting that lawyers are trained to be advocates, Colon promised to be an advocate for the people in the city, emphasizing in particular, challenging the state’s method of funding education, which he contends, is “choking the ability to educate the poorest children in the state.”

“The taxpayers of Milwaukee are being short-changed,” Colon said. “To make the city taxpayers whole is not politics, that’s leadership.”

Langley countered that it is not the city attorney’s job to make the decision whether to sue the state over school funding, but rather to advise the school board of the pros and cons of doing so.

Should the board elect to file suit, he said he would then advise hiring an outside firm with expertise in school law on a contingency fee basis.

Addressing Crime

On the issue of crime, Colon said the city attorney has a role to fill, independent of the district attorney and police — obtaining injunctions against drug and gang houses.

Langley said he has been closing drug houses ever since enabling legislation was passed in 1989 declaring them a public nuisance.

“Whenever a felony drug charge is filed, a copy of the complaint comes to the city attorney office,” he noted. “We have been abating drug houses every day since the 1990s.”

Langley also emphasized that the city attorney’s job is not a high publicity office. While the job entails closing drug houses, it also entails overseeing a staff of 37 attorneys doing low-profile, but necessary, work related to tax, pensions, the environment, collections, municipal finance, government housing, and ordinance enforcement.

Langley’s handling of the city’s unsuccessful case against manufacturers of lead paint also arose as an issue during the debate.

Langley defended his role, stating that he advised the common council that success was doubtful at best, and that he hired an outside firm on a contingency fee basis, so that taxpayers would not be burdened if it was not successful.

“Sometimes, you are not successful in cutting-edge litigation,” Langley said. “We hired a local firm, of which my opponent was a part of, and a national firm, and they did an outstanding job.”

But Colon said that, as city attorney, Langley should have tried the case himself, rather than hiring outside counsel.

“To outsource the risk on a contingency fee basis falls short of the city attorney’s commitment,” Colon said.

Legal Experience

The candidates’ differing legal experience came up, as well. Langley said that, to his knowledge, Colon had never prosecuted a case, tried a case to a jury, or argued an appellate case in any state or federal appeals court.

Colon said that he had handled jury trials and administrative hearings, and cited a case in which Langley’s office had been chastised by Court of Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine for incivility in a brief.

Langley replied, “We have hundreds of cases pending at any time, and he pulls out one footnote from one case six years ago. We made a mistake, and we must do better than that.”

Acknowledging Langley’s 37 years of legal experience in the city attorney’s office, 13 as an assistant city attorney, Colon said, “It’s a bit unfair to say that unless you were there when Nixon was president, you are not qualified.”